In his introduction to Friedrich Leo's Kleine Schriften, Eduard Fraenkel recalled one of his first encounters with the scholar who would become his mentor: ‘soon after my arrival <in Göttingen> Leo invited me to lunch on a Sunday. After lunch, we went into his lovely garden and he inquired in a friendly way about my work. At the time, I had read most of Aristophanes and began to enthuse about him to Leo, going on at length about the magic of the poetry, the beauty of the choral songs, and heaven knows what else. Leo let me declaim without interruption, perhaps for ten minutes, with no hint of impatience or disapproval. When I had finished, he asked ‘exactly what edition are you reading Aristophanes in?’ I thought to myself ‘was he even listening to me? What has that question got to do with what I was telling him?’ After a moment's ill-tempered delay, I answered ‘in the Teubner edition.’ He replied ‘oh, you read Aristophanes without a critical apparatus.’ He said it absolutely calmly, with no harshness and no trace of mockery, just honestly amazed that a tolerably intelligent young man could do such a thing. I looked down at the grass and had a single overwhelming sensation: νῦν μοι χάνοι εὐρεῖα χθών [‘now let the broad earth gape open for me’= Iliad 4.182, 8.150, with νῦν substituted for τότε]. Later it seemed to me as though in that moment I had grasped the meaning of proper philological study.