Books: Latin Without Tears

POETS IN A LANDSCAPE (267 pp.)—Gilbert Highet—Knopf ($6.50).

OVID'S THE ART OF LOVE (206 pp.)—translated by Rolfe Humphries—Indiana University ($3.75; paperback, $1.45).

A book is born; a classic is forever reborn. Each generation supplies its own Pygmalions—men with the love and skill to breathe new life into the literary monuments of the past. As Pygmalions to the ancient Roman poets, two lifelong classics scholars and teachers, Gilbert Highet (Columbia) and Rolfe Humphries (now a lecturer at New York City's Hunter College after 32 years at Long Island's Woodmere Academy), have love and skill to...