Neville Morley, professor of classics at the University of Exeter, seems a bit defensive about his field of scholarship. In Classics: Why It Matters, one almost wonders at times if he concedes the irrelevance of Greece and Rome in a world where America’s president knows only of gyros and pizza. While acknowledging that knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman literature has often been the preserve of educated elites, and been used as a brickbat of conservatives, he cites Karl Marx’s classical erudition for its revolutionary potential. As he puts it, the “ideas of the past may be idealized and simplified, sometimes to an absurd degree, but they have the power to show that things could be different in the future because they have been different in the past.” In the new millennium, classical studies have been altered by new perspectives, including feminism, and an awareness of the interconnectedness of many ancient cultures. Interpretations are variable and always subject to change.
