I’ve read on rogue­clas­si­cism of the death of Ken­neth Dover, and thought it might be worth shar­ing what may be the first assess­ment of his work as a Hel­lenist in print.

When Ken­neth Dover was just 19 (in 1939) Oxford pub­lished his win­ning lines for the Gais­ford Prize for Greek Verse. His model was a selec­tion of 113 lines from Racine’s Phè­dre, and this pub­li­ca­tion was reviewed very favor­ably by the great Lionel Pear­son (per­haps best known for The Local His­to­ri­ans of Attica, pub­lished three years after this review), who wrote that this “Oxford prize ver­sion in iambic trime­ter is a reminder that the whole­some and fas­ci­nat­ing prac­tice of Greek verse com­po­si­tion has not been aban­doned by Eng­lish under­grad­u­ates and that their stan­dard is a high one.”

I’d like to quote at length to show the respect the young Dover earned from Pear­son, and which he should still com­mand from us now:

The open­ing scene of the Phè­dre intro­duces a theme entirely strange to the story told by Euripi­des. Hip­poly­tus, after first giv­ing the excuse that it is high time he departed in search of his absent father, explains to his tutor Theramenes that he must flee from Troezen because he has fallen in love with Ari­cia, whom he can never marry because of his father’s deadly feud with her broth­ers, the Pal­lan­ti­dae; and since he has not yet per­formed any heroic exploits, he dares not face the shame which his love is likely to bring him if he remains behind; the irreg­u­lar loves of The­seus, he feels, can be excused only in con­sid­er­a­tion of his ben­e­fits to civ­i­liza­tion; he him­self can­not give that excuse

ὡς ταὐτὸ κείνω πανδίκως φράσαι παθεῖν.

Such argu­ment is in the Euripi­dean spirit and it is admirably pre­sented in lucid idiomatic Greek.

— CW 33. 5 (1939), p. 52

At 19 Dover was a mas­ter of Greek verse in a way that it seems none of us can be today, and in that he seems to have belonged to another time. The scholar he became seems just as out of time, but I sup­pose great schol­ars always do.

Read­ing through his com­men­taries (e.g., his The­ocri­tus is still the best in my eyes) is an expe­ri­ence unmatched by more mod­ern, chat­tier, less-definite works. He could be author­i­ta­tive while being frank about the state of the evi­dence, cut­ting through the com­mon mis­takes and false sup­po­si­tions of other edi­tors with­out con­de­scend­ing. He was, unlike so many, will­ing to say that a ques­tion could not be answered, and both his front mat­ter and notes were tem­pered by good judg­ment and atten­tion to the needs of his read­ers. (Too often today schol­ars are prone to cram their research into every page, whether the reader needs it or not.)

I’ll be giv­ing some time again to read­ing through his works and find­ing inspi­ra­tion from his example.

Pos­si­bly related:

1. Dover’s The­ocri­tus: a review (reprint: Bolchazy-Carducci)
2. Verse Com­po­si­tion Resources
3. Lat­est book finds
4. Every­thing You Ever Wanted to Know About Texts but Were Afraid to Ask
5. Did some­body say meter?