Laudator Temporis Acti

K.J. Dover, "On Writing for the General Reader," The Greeks and their Legacy: Collected Papers, Vol. II: Prose Literature, History, Society, Transmission, Influence (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 304-313 (at 307):

Friedrich Leo once told the young Eduard Fraenkel that he should choose between variant readings, or between acceptance and rejection of a proposed emendation, ‘as if the fate of his immortal soul depended on the rightness of his choice’. Individuals’ reactions to this anecdote depend on whether they have really noticed the words ‘as if’ and have attached importance to them. Leo did not say, and I have no reason to suppose he believed, that the salvation of his soul actually depended on his decisions as a textual critic. He was simply integrating ‘life’ and ‘work’ in a way which, if we encountered it in a scientist, would occasion little surprise. From a Classicist it will seem to some only to confirm an existing stereotype.

Misrepresentation of the character of Classics as an activity, quite a different matter from misrepresentation of the world which the Classicist studies, is conspicuous enough on the fringe of Classical writing, and its spores, carried this way and that, generate patches and streaks of corruption even in the professional core. The stereotype of the Classical scholar may not be as stark and as enduring as the frock-coated doctor and the cane-waving schoolmaster still occasionally to be found in comics, but it is definable. This scholar is vain and factious, delighting in victory over trifles, yet capable of an instant solidarity with his fellow-practitioners if the insight of an amateur threatens to solve a problem which collectively they have failed to take seriously or even to comprehend. Conflicting specialists are always a consoling spectacle, for ignor­ance likes to be reassured that there is no advantage in knowledge. When specialists agree, they are inevitably cast in the unsympathetic role of Goliath.