Thursday, December 08, 2022
Like a Dog
Richard Rutherford, Introduction to Culture in Pieces:
Essays on Ancient Texts in Honour
of Peter Parsons (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011), p. 7:
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His initial handout at graduate seminars was often adorned with a photocopied image of the delightful red-figure cup by the Euergides painter, which shows a dog scratching itself with its hind leg.15 The use of the image hinted at a quotation from Housman: 'A textual critic engaged upon his business is not at all like Newton investigating the motions of the planets: he is much more like a dog hunting for fleas.'16The cup: Peter Parsons died on November 16, 2022.
15 Beazley 1963, 96, no. 136, reproduced in Vickers 1978, no. 35.
16 Housman 1922, 68–9 = 1972, iii. 1058.