Nowadays a Greek or Latin work is to most people a rather strange object, whose structure and conventions and world of ideas are very far from being readily intelligible.
"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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Monday, June 15, 2026
A Rather Strange Object
Trevor J. Saunders, "The Penguinification of Plato," in William Radice and Barbara Reynolds, edd., The Translator's Art: Essays in Honour of Betty Radice (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987), pp. 152-162 (at 152):