Browse our books below. You can also search for books.
LUCRETIUS, De rerum natura libri sex. Edited with Introduction and Commentary by W.E. Leonard and S.B. Smith. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1942. 886p. Original red cloth. Spine gilt titled. Nice copy. (Rare). ‘The new edition of Lucretius is ‘the result of newly life-long interests of two scholars which some fifteen years ago became merged in a cooperative enterprise’. Leonard has contributed the General Introduction. Smith is responsible for the text, the Commentary, and the Introcution to the Commentary. Their collaboration, helped by the craftsmanship of the University of Wisconsin Press, has produced a volume which no student of Lucretius, of the classics, of philosophic literature can afford to ignore. (…) My main objection is that one needs a critical text in addition. (…) But at least two things can be said in favour of this text. The editor has often introduced a fresh punctuation; and punctuation is interpretation. (…) Another improvement is that Smith does not share ‘the queer dislike of capitals in what we call ‘personifications’ (…). So far as I know, he is the first Lucretian editor to print Natura time and again with a capital, likewise Voluptas, Magna Mater, Letum, Aetas, Mors, Fortuna, etc. (…) Nothing is more difficult than to give a fair review of a commentary. The merits of this part of Smith’s work are obvious. It is short in words and rich in information. The translations of words are sound and often excellent (…). The book of Leonard and Smith will be for a long time to come the standard Lucretius, at least in this country.’ (PAUL FRIEDLÄNDER in The American Journal of Philology (1945, pp.318-324). € 195.00 (Antiquarian)