Those of us whose subject is Roman poetry can feel there is life in the old dog yet. We need only point to the books which have appeared since the industry tooled up afresh after the second world war, just over a quarter of a century ago. I don't mean so much the new texts and commentaries, which after all cater for and circulate chiefly among those with a vested interest in the subject: their proliferation often seems to me a symptom of an Alexandrian age in classical studies more than a true renaissance. Or for that matter the host of new translations —a phenomenon more difficult to assess because of the way in which it is bound up with the economics of publishing. I mean the books which have been written to extend and renew our understanding of Roman literature. Their number is impressive, and each year there seem to be more of them. Many are good, and some have in fact renewed and extended our understanding. I make these my starting point since it is a reasonable assumption that the men who wrote these books had in mind an audience that wanted to understand Roman literature, an audience for whom the task of re-interpretation seemed worth while.

For it is generally agreed that interpretations of the classics, like translations, are short-lived. They last in fact about a generation. Then a style of writing dies, a shift in our capacity to respond dims old responses, brings new awarenesses, while the work we translate or interpret—I am speaking how of course only of the acknowledged masterpieces of Roman literature—remains infinitely meaningful. To each generation the major work appears to speak in a new language and to say new things, so that the translator has to say afresh what it said, and the interpreter to explain afresh what it meant. At the same time our understanding of the literary tradition, in which the individual major works form the high points, also changes.