Editing Marcus Manilius (section)

=== A. E. Housman edition ===
The work is also known for being the subject of the most salient of [[A. E. Housman]]'s scholarly endeavours; his annotated edition he considered his magnum opus, and when the fifth and final volume was published in 1930, 27 years after the first, he remarked he would now "do nothing forever and ever." He nonetheless also thought that it was an  obscure pursuit; to an American correspondent he wrote, "I do not send you a copy, as it would shock you very much; it is so dull that few professed scholars can read it, probably not one in the whole United States."<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n13/frank-kermode/nothing-for-ever-and-ever|title=Nothing for Ever and Ever|first=Frank|last=Kermode|date=5 July 2007|issue=13 |pages=7–8|access-date=27 April 2017|journal=London Review of Books|volume=29 }}</ref> It remains a source of bafflement to many that Housman should have elected to abandon (as they thought) a poet like [[Propertius]] in favour of Manilius. For example, the critic [[Edmund Wilson]] pondered the countless hours Housman devoted to Manilius and concluded, "Certainly it is the spectacle of a mind of remarkable penetration and vigor, of uncommon sensibility and intensity, condemning itself to duties which prevent it from rising to its full height."  This is, however, to misunderstand the technical task of editing a classical text.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Edmund Wilson: Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 1940s|last=Wilson|first=Edmund|publisher=Library of America|year=2007|isbn=978-1-59853-014-8|location=New York|pages=71}}</ref> In the same vein, [[Harry Eyres]] interpreted it as  "what you could see as an act of self-punishment" that so many years were devoted to "a minor Roman versifier whose long didactic poem on astrology must rank as one of the most obscure in the entire annals of poetry".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Eyres |first=Harry |title=Horace and me: life lessons from an ancient poet |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-374-17274-9 |pages=72}}</ref>