Litterae Humaniores
I know it is in bad taste to quote from one’s own letters, but this really is too absurd:
Am reading some of the letters exchanged by Mommsen1 and Wilamowitz,2 the latter always offering to be of service in scrounging up inscriptions. I do wish I could totter about Italy complaining about the lack of classical inscriptions and misplacing German friends…
Found out, too, that Mommsen’s a funny looking bird, with beady eyes and bad hair, while Wilamowitz looks the perfect Prussian. Curious, tho’, that I never knew Wilamowitz married Mommsen’s daughter. I wonder if she was a funny looking bird with beady eyes and bad hair. Hmmm — probably…
- Mommsen wrote a monumental history of ancient Rome—which is still read (or at least cited) to this day; he won the Nobel prize for literature in 1902. [↩]
- Wilamowitz is perhaps the most important, most famous philologist the world has produced. See this review of a Wilamowitz bibliography; the best brief English-language introduction to Wilamowitz I could find on-line. Curious readers are encouraged to google for other sources. [↩]