When the Chairman of Council asked me to read a paper at the Jubilee Meeting of the Classical Association, I felt highly honoured by this kind invitation. Twice before I have enjoyed the privilege of reading papers at General Meetings of the Association during the last war, when I had been most hospitably received in this country and had found a new home at Oxford. I confess I still feel quite at home here, and it gives me enormous pleasure to come over from Munich and to speak to you once more; so I am deeply grateful to you for giving me this opportunity.

But I think I owe you at least one word of explanation for the strange title of this lecture. The Chairman of Council said in his letter ‘that although one lecture should be given on the history of the Classical Association, the other papers should look forward rather than backward’. Now, I had been doing some work on a Hellenistic poet myself, especially during the years at Oxford; as far as I am concerned, I have finished with studies in that province of learning.