I believe in reading original texts when possible—please, go learn Greek and Latin and other foreign languages if you don't already know them—but there is no doubt that a good translation, with just the right turn of phrase, can be illuminating even to someone who does not need it.
"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, January 28, 2024
Please
Joshua T. Katz, "The importance of Homer," The New Criterion (February 2024):