Classics

For a topical guide to this subject, see Outline of classical studies.

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean World; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity (Bronze Age ca. BC 3000 – Dark Ages ca. AD 500). Initially, study of the Classics (the period’s literature) was the principal study in the humanities. Traditionally, the Classics studied the Mediterranean civilisations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, yet, Ancient Egypt was beyond the discipline. Contemporary classicists study a broader Classics field that comprises the Oriental ancient Mediterranean World, thus, Orientalist scholars concentrate upon the near and far Eastern Mediterranean civilisations — the Persian Empire, the kingdoms of Ancient India, et al.

History of the Western Classics

The word “classics” derives from the Latin adjective classicus: “belonging to the highest class of citizens”, connoting superiority, authority, and perfection. The first application of “Classic” to a writer was by Aulus Gellius, a second-century Roman writer who, in the miscellany Noctes Atticae (19, 8, 15), refers to a writer as a Classicus scriptor, non proletarius (“A distinguished, not a commonplace writer”). Such classification began with the Greeks’ ranking their cultural works, with the word canon (“carpenter’s rule”). Moreover, early Christian Church Fathers used canon to rank the authoritative texts of the New Testament, preserving them, given the expense of vellum and papyrus and mechanical book reproduction, thus, being comprehended in a canon ensured a book’s preservation as the best of a civilisation. Contemporarily, the Western canon defines the best of Western culture. In the ancient world, at the Alexandrian Library, scholars coined the Greek term Hoi enkrithentes (“the admitted”, “the included”) to identify the writers in the canon.

The method of study in the Classical World was “Philo’s Rule”: μεταχάραττε τὸ θεῖον νόμισμα (“Metacharatte to theion nomisma”) — the law of strict continuity in preserving words and ideas. Although the definitions of words and ideas might broaden, continuity (preservation) requires retention of their original arete (excellence, virtue, goodness). “Philo’s Rule” imparts intellectual and æsthetic appreciation of “the best which has been thought and said in the world”. To wit, Oxford classicist Edward Copleston said that classical education “communicates to the mind . . . a high sense of honour, a disdain of death in a good cause, [and] a passionate devotion to the welfare of one’s country”, thus concurring with Cicero that: “All literature, all philosophical treatises, all the voices of antiquity are full of examples for imitation, which would all lie unseen in darkness without the light of literature”.

Legacy of the Classical World

The Classical languages of the Ancient Mediterranean world influenced every Western European language, imparting to each a learned vocabulary of international application, thus, Latin was the international lingua franca in matters diplomatic, scientific, philosophic, and religious, until the seventeenth century. In turn, the Classical languages continued, Latin evolved into the Romance languages and Ancient Greek into Modern Greek and its dialects. Moreover, it is in the specialised science and technology vocabularies that the Latin influence in English and the Greek influence in English are notable, however, it is Ecclesiastical Latin (a dialect), the Roman Catholic Church’s official tongue, that remains a living legacy of the classical world to the contemporary world.

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