(Untitled)

[greenelephant]

D.M.
D. R. SHACKLETON BAILEY
QVI VIXIT LXXXVIII.
OPTIMO VIRO ERVDITISSIMOQVE
BENEMERENTI
TIRONES FECERVNT

VOBIS PRO MVLTIS OFFICIIS GRATIAS SEMPER AGEMVS
AVE ATQVE VALE

Comments

[poldy]

Really? I hadn't heard. Were you a student of his?

[greenelephant]

I got an email yesterday from the classicist grapevine. Not a student, but some of my advisors had known him (reasonably) well and used to regale us with stories. I merely humbly marvel at the man's intellect and scholarship.

[aspasia02]

Ooohh. wow. what a loss.

[greenelephant]

Indeed. I can't read Cicero without thinking of him.

[poldy]

Shack Bailey, I believe, attended some lectures by Housman. I sometime wonder what will happen if we lose all those scholars who have the linguistic resources to emend texts as these two did.

[greenelephant]

really? wow. It does boggle the mind to think how learned Shack and Housman and Willamovitz and Mommsen and Syme and all the other Greats have been. Back when I had time, I used to love to read the history of classical scholarship (Sandys, etc.). And then I think about how little *I* know, and how few people are even qualified to teach prose comp., much less textual criticism, and the future does seem dire for philology.

[iterum]

On this general theme of decline from a Golden Age, and I certainly don't mean to sound callous, but Shackleton Bailey was one of the people whose names loomed so large I didn't realize he hadn't already died.

[vaznetti]

Oh, alas! And to lose Shackleton Bailey and Brunt in the same month, as well.

[greenelephant]

Oh, I hadn't heard about Brunt. This is very sad indeed.

[phasma_aphanes]

all the giants are disappearing. thank god they perfected lucan's text first.