Horace: Odes Book I (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics)

I'm a current Classics graduate student, and this commentary has been really helpful. I've been going back and forth between the Nisbet/Hubbard and the C. Smith, which are either too heady or too sparse, respectively. The notes here seem to flesh out the Smith in a way that makes a lot of sense for what a student would be looking for in terms of help. Totally accessible and helpful! As a mid-level student, I think it's great!

What we have here, on a scale appropriate to the series, is a commentary characterized by the clarity, learning and modesty to be found in Barrett's 'Hippolytus'. Experienced readers will appreciate how lightly Meyer deploys his wide-ranging and independent scholarship. The result is a commentary on each ode that can be read through quickly and with pleasure. The economy of the commentary is due to a very focused (but by no means exclusive) concentration on the language, which is what the student both wants and needs. The comments are not elementary, but never pedantic or abstruse, and always helpful. The tone is lively and crisp - sometimes perhaps too colloquial - but a refreshing change from the moribund prose into which a less experienced, less self-confident commentator often stumbles.A general sketch of the contents will indicate how student-friendly this book is: a readable (20 pages) but very well written introduction is followed by the text. There is no apparatus criticus to distract and confuse the intermediate student. The commentary is at the back, and begins with individual notes before finishing with a general discussion of the ode. This arrangement is particularly felicitous, since the reader isn't cluttered with interpretative ideas before starting on the notes, the backbone of any commentary and the reason the student is reading it in the first place.Meyer has done justice both to Horace and to students of his poetry. Buy a copy of this book before CUP reissue a ghastly print-on-demand counterfeit in its place.