COMMAGER, S., — The Odes of Horace. A Critical Study.

Indiana University Press, Bloomington / London, 1967. XIV,365p. Paperback. Cover and edges bit grimy. Spine with reading traces. Signature on half title. 'The book is the work of an intelligent and well-read scholar with a livelu and ingenious mind and a gift for epigrammatic phrasing. The love poems are well characterized, and the treatment of Horace's imagegery, though sometimes far-fetched, is often illuminating, as in the discussion of the Cleopatra ode. There is much that is well said in the chapter on the World of Nature, which is concerned not with Horace's siuscepttibility to natural beauty but with his use of the themes of alternation, growth, and decay, youth, old age, and death. The discussion of the political odes provides an interesting contrast to Fraenkel's treatment. (...) Along with sensitive and stimulating criticism goes much that is unconvincing.' (M.L. CLARKE in The Classical Review (New Series), 1963, pp.293-294).