Scholars should seek to understand the thinkers they study in the context of their times. Plato bought and sold human beings. Should he be blacklisted? Classical scholars today lack the breadth and linguistic competence of their predecessors. Instead of gratitude for what they have been bequeathed, too many seek to prove themselves superior by citing ideas incompatible with contemporary dogma.
"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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Sunday, August 25, 2019
Should He Be Blacklisted?
William M. Calder III, "Unfair to Wilamowitz?" Classical Review 54.2 (October, 2004) 552-554 (at 553):