Classics  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

1872 photograph of the western face of the Greek Parthenon

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Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics also includes Greco-Roman philosophy, history, archaeology, anthropology, art, mythology and society as secondary subjects.

In Western civilization, the study of the Greek and Roman classics was traditionally considered to be the foundation of the humanities and has traditionally been the cornerstone of a typical elite European education.

Etymology

The word classics is derived from the Latin adjective classicus, meaning "belonging to the highest class of citizens." The word was originally used to describe the members of the Patricians, the highest class in ancient Rome. For example, Aulus Gellius, in his Attic Nights, contrasts "classicus" and "proletarius" writers.By the 2nd century AD the word was used in literary criticism to describe writers of the highest quality. By the 6th century AD, the word had acquired a second meaning, referring to pupils at a school. Thus, the two modern meanings of the word, referring both to literature considered to be of the highest quality and the standard texts used as part of a curriculum, were both derived from Roman use.

See also

• Classic book
• Classical tradition
• Great Books of the Western World
• Humanism
• Literae Humaniores
• Loeb Classical Library
• Neoclassicism
• Philology
• Western culture
• Western world