From gordon.campbell@jesus.oxford.ac.uk Fri Oct 1 02:48:28 1999 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.08) with ESMTP id CAA34274 for ; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 02:48:27 -0700 Received: from oxmail.ox.ac.uk (oxmail4.ox.ac.uk [163.1.2.33]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.08) with ESMTP id CAA08629 for ; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 02:48:26 -0700 Received: from sable.ox.ac.uk ([163.1.2.4]) by oxmail.ox.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.10 #1) id 11WzIf-0002F1-00 for classics@u.washington.edu; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 10:48:25 +0100 Received: from jesu0211 (helo=localhost) by sable.ox.ac.uk with local-smtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 11WzIe-00083a-00 for classics@u.washington.edu; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 10:48:24 +0100 Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 10:48:24 +0100 (BST) From: Gordon Campbell Reply-To: Gordon Campbell To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Dead Poetry Society In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Erin O'Connell asks for suggestions of works that 'need' new commentaries. I would say all of them. I don't mean this flippantly, but commentary writing, although maybe a dying art, is still an art, and a commentary is more than simply something made for use. I see commentaries as one of the formats for scholarly investigation and exposition, along with the monograph. We don't ever say that Vergil has been 'done' because every other scholar in the universe writes books and articles on him, nor should we say that there is no 'need' for a new commentary on the Georgics. P. Michael Brown produced a commentary on Lucretius 3 last year, but I certainly hope this will not put other people off writing another one. A. S. Pease, of course, produced stunning commentaries on Cicero, but despite, or even because of, the extraordinary accumulation of information in them I would say that there is a great need for further commentaries on De natura deorum especially. Yours, Gordon Campbell. .