Finally, I want to express an opinion on a matter that I have heard discussed all my academic life. The fields of study in the classics, it is asserted, have been exhausted; there are no more worlds to conquer. Nothing could be less true. There is still plenty of gold in them thar hills, not to mention the newer metals more precious than gold. The fact is that there can be no exhaustion of material in the humanities, since their business is with values, which are not only enduring but many-faceted.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Plenty of Gold in Them Thar Hills
Berthold L. Ullman (1882-1965), "The Ph.D. Degree in the Classics,"
Classical Journal 41.8 (May, 1946) 363-366 (at 366):