LETTERS
The Institute for Ancient Studies, Berlin
Since the political change in the former German Democratic Republic, the “Institut für Altertumskunde” at the Humboldt University, Berlin has been refounded as it existed under Wilamowitz, Norden and Jaeger. The great library of this Institute was destroyed during World War II and now consists of the unordered remains of the library of Ludwig Deubner. After 1945 because of the lack of Western currency as good as no purchases of new publications could be made. We request that all colleagues and friends of Classical Studies look through their private collections for possible duplicates or unneeded volumes. The greatest need is for runs of journals, particularly non-German ones. We will be grateful for the smallest contribution and shall in time set out and publish a list of contributions and contributors. Please send volumes to:
Institut für Altertumskunde
Humboldt Universität
Unter den Linden 6
0-D-1086 Berlin
BRD/Federal Republic of Germany
Hermann Funke
Berlin
Dear Editor,
I read Elizabeth Block’s review of The Student’s Catullus in your screen dump [i.e., on e-BMCR: ed.] with great interest. It was instructive, for example, to read that “Catullus can have had little or no thought of female poets.” If Miss Block had read as far as poem 51 in my commentary, she would have learned that Sappho, whose fr. 31 inspired that poem, was a female poet.
Near the end, she says, “All teachers of Catullus should be grateful for another choice [of commentaries].” If Miss Block had finished reading the short introduction to my book (or if she had been qualified to review it in the first place), she would know that there is another choice, and a good one at that, in Phyllis Young Forsyth’s Catullus: A Teaching Text (University Press of America, 1986). Though Forsyth’s assumptions are not the same as mine, her commentary is sound and useful. I would recommend it highly to teachers or students who do not find The Student’s Catullus to their liking.
Sincerely,
Daniel H. Garrison
To the Editor:
Anton Bierl, in his precise review of the Dover Festschrift (BMCR 2.3 [1991] 113-117), notes “the almost exclusively British origin” of the contributors and further says that one sees, despite Sir Kenneth’s international reputation, “how local Dover’s personal influence was.” It is true that continental scholars are not well represented. But may I point out, merely for the record, that Sir Kenneth himself asked that contributors should be drawn only from his pupils and colleagues at the two universities (Oxford, St. Andrews) where he taught. Several continental scholars were eager to write but did not fall within Sir Kenneth’s specified limits. His personal influence has in fact extended far beyond the roster of contributors.
Mortimer Chambers
University of California at Los Angeles