Why do the Classics matter? 

This month, we delve into something slightly different: why the classics matter and why teaching the ancient world remains relevant today. Our starting point is Italo Calvino’s celebrated essay Why Read the Classics? Calvino argues that a classic is not simply an old, prestigious book, but a work that continues to generate new meanings. Classics reach us carrying centuries of interpretations, adaptations and cultural associations, yet they can still surprise us when we return to the original text. Above all, they help us form our own relationship with the past rather than accepting what we think we already know about it. The same principle can be applied more broadly to the study of antiquity. Ancient texts, objects, buildings and landscapes are not static relics preserved at a safe distance from contemporary life. Each generation approaches them with new questions and finds different ways of understanding what they reveal about communities, identities, power, belief and everyday experience. Teaching the classics is therefore not simply about transmitting established knowledge or asking students to admire an inherited canon. It is about learning to read critically, compare different kinds of evidence and recognize how interpretations are constructed. It allows us to confront societies very different from our own while also asking how the ancient world continues to shape our languages, institutions, stories and physical surroundings. Over the month, we will explore how classical texts and material remains can be brought into everyday teaching, how they can open conversations between past and present and why antiquity continues to deserve a place in the way we understand the world.

The debate surrounding Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey may appear, at first glance, to be another passing argument about a major film adaptation. Questions have been raised about costumes, weapons, appearances and the extent to which the production should reproduce the world of ancient Greece accurately. Yet beneath these discussions lies a much more important question: how do we understand the relationship between history, mythology and the ways in which the past is represented?

Homer’s Odyssey is not a historical record of events at the end of the Bronze Age. It is an epic poem shaped by oral performance, poetic imagination and generations of storytelling. Its world contains recognisable elements of human experience—war, migration, family, hospitality, loss and the desire to return home—but it is also inhabited by gods, monsters and magical objects. Odysseus encounters man-eating Cyclops, a many-headed sea creature and a goddess who transforms his companions into pigs. Another divine figure places all the winds inside a bag. Trying to extract history from such a poem is therefore complicated. The society imagined by Homer may preserve distant memories of earlier periods, but it also reflects the values, institutions and concerns of the communities in which the poems were composed and performed. The Odyssey is neither simply history nor simply fantasy. It is evidence of how people used stories to think about themselves and their world. 

Helping pupils understand this complexity is one of the great strengths of teaching Classics. It allows them to ask important questions. What kind of evidence is a poem? Can a myth preserve memories of real places or events? How can archaeology be used alongside literary sources? What happens when different kinds of evidence appear to contradict one another? Who created these stories, who listened to them and why did they remain meaningful? These questions teach far more than knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean. They introduce pupils to the fundamental processes through which knowledge is created and evaluated.

Modern adaptations of ancient myths are sometimes criticised as though they were altering something that had previously remained unchanged. Yet the ancient Greeks themselves continually reworked their stories. There was no single authorised image of Odysseus or one definitive way of representing the events of the Odyssey. Poets, performers, painters and playwrights adapted myths for different audiences and purposes. The Kabirian vases produced near Thebes, for example, presented episodes involving Odysseus and Circe through exaggerated and comic figures, probably drawing upon humorous performances associated with the Sanctuary of the Kabiroi. Ancient audiences could encounter the same mythical figure as a heroic warrior, a clever survivor or the subject of parody. Myths could be solemn, political, religious, entertaining or deliberately ridiculous. Their adaptability was one reason they endured.

This offers teachers a particularly effective way of introducing pupils to ideas about reception and interpretation. A myth does not travel unchanged from antiquity into the present. Every retelling involves choices: which characters to emphasise, which themes to develop and which elements to adapt for a new audience. A modern film adaptation is therefore not simply a reproduction of Homer. It is another stage in a long history of reinterpretation. Recognising this does not prevent us from discussing its creative decisions or historical references. Instead, it gives us a more informed basis from which to do so.

Archaeology can also illuminate how myths were understood and used in the ancient world. By at least the fourth century BCE, the island now known as Ithaca was closely associated with Homer’s hero. Local coins carried images and names connected with Odysseus, while inscriptions demonstrate that the relationship between the island and the epic tradition had become part of local identity. Earlier finds, including Geometric bronze tripods deposited in Polis Cave, may suggest that the site possessed particular religious or cultural significance long before this association became explicit. Such evidence does not prove that Odysseus was a historical person or that the events described in the Odyssey occurred. It shows something equally interesting: ancient communities connected stories with landscapes, objects and collective identities. This distinction is crucial. Archaeology is not merely a tool for proving or disproving myths. It can reveal how people interacted with them, commemorated them and used them to understand particular places. In the classroom, this provides an opportunity to show pupils that evidence does not always answer the question we initially ask. A coin depicting Odysseus cannot demonstrate that he existed, but it can tell us that people wanted to associate themselves with him. A group of objects deposited in a cave may not identify the cave as Homer’s, but it can help us reconstruct the activities, beliefs and memories connected with that landscape. Learning to recognise what evidence can and cannot tell us is essential to historical thinking.

The importance of History and Classics does not lie only in preserving knowledge of past societies. These subjects teach pupils how to assess claims. Pupils learn to distinguish between a primary source and a later interpretation, between archaeological evidence and literary tradition and between a plausible argument and an unsupported assertion. They learn that sources were created by people with particular aims, experiences and limitations. They also learn that uncertainty is not a weakness: sometimes the most intellectually honest conclusion is that the evidence does not allow us to know something with confidence. These skills are increasingly important in a world where historical claims circulate rapidly and are often detached from their original context. Images, quotations and archaeological discoveries can easily be used to support arguments they were never capable of sustaining. A strong historical education gives pupils the confidence to pause and ask: Where does this information come from? What kind of evidence supports it? Is this a fact, an interpretation or an imaginative reconstruction? Are other explanations possible? Teachers of History and Classics create the space in which these habits can develop. Their work helps pupils become more careful readers, more thoughtful participants in public discussion and more aware of the complexity of human societies.

The ancient world continues to appear in films, novels, video games, political speeches and public debates because it remains deeply embedded in modern culture. Greece and Rome are repeatedly invoked when people discuss democracy, citizenship, empire, warfare, identity and belonging. This does not mean that the ancient world provides simple lessons for the present. Indeed, one of the most important contributions of Classics is to demonstrate how unfamiliar antiquity often was. Ancient societies organised citizenship, ethnicity, religion, gender and social status in ways that do not map neatly onto modern categories. Studying them carefully challenges assumptions that contemporary ideas are timeless or universal. It reveals that societies can understand the world in radically different ways. At the same time, ancient texts and objects allow pupils to encounter recognisable human experiences across enormous distances of time. The grief of separation, the fear of an uncertain journey, the responsibilities of hospitality and the desire to find one’s place in the world remain central to the Odyssey because they remain meaningful to us. Classics therefore invites pupils to recognise aspects of themselves in the past while also learning not to remake the past entirely in their own image.

It can sometimes be difficult to see the long-term effects of a lesson on Homer, an archaeological object or an ancient coin. Yet these lessons contribute to something much larger. When a teacher asks pupils to compare a literary source with archaeological evidence, they are teaching intellectual discipline. When pupils examine different versions of a myth, they are learning that culture is created through interpretation and debate. When they encounter unfamiliar societies, they are developing the ability to understand people whose assumptions differ from their own. These are not marginal outcomes. They are among the foundations of an informed, critical and resilient society.

The debate surrounding a film such as The Odyssey will eventually pass. New adaptations will appear and new disagreements will take their place. What will remain important is whether audiences possess the knowledge and critical skills needed to understand what they are seeing and the tools to recognise interpretation when they encounter it. That begins in classrooms, through the patient and invaluable work of teachers who show pupils that the past is complex, fascinating and always worth questioning.

20/07/2026

Why should children learn about people who lived thousands of years ago? It is a fair question. Ancient Greece and Rome can sometimes seem very distant from the lives of children today. Yet Classics is not simply about memorising emperors, gods and battles. It brings together history, archaeology, art, literature, languages, politics, philosophy and science, helping pupils develop skills that are useful far beyond the ancient world. When it is taught well, Classics encourages children to ask questions, examine evidence and think carefully about how societies work. It helps them understand where words, ideas and institutions come from, but also teaches them not to accept familiar stories without questioning them.

It strengthens language and literacy

One of the most familiar arguments for teaching Classics concerns its contribution to literacy. Latin and ancient Greek have had an enormous influence on English, particularly on academic, scientific, medical and legal vocabulary. Learning classical languages helps pupils recognise roots, prefixes and suffixes, allowing them to approach unfamiliar words with greater confidence. Latin also provides what might be described as a grammatical skeleton. Because pupils must identify how words function within a sentence, they become more aware of grammar, syntax and sentence construction in English. They learn to look closely at language rather than simply absorbing it intuitively. These benefits can extend beyond English. Latin-derived vocabulary and grammatical structures can support the study of modern European languages, including French, Spanish and Italian. Classical language teaching therefore does not isolate pupils in the ancient world. It gives them tools that can strengthen their communication across several subjects. Research also suggests that carefully structured Latin teaching can be particularly valuable for pupils with special educational needs, pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and those learning English as an additional language. Its patterns, rules and repeated structures can make language visible and manageable, while the process of gradually deciphering a text can give pupils a strong sense of achievement.

It teaches pupils how to solve problems

Translating Latin or ancient Greek is often compared to cracking a code. Pupils must identify patterns, test possible solutions, revise their assumptions and work systematically towards the most convincing interpretation. A successful translation rarely comes from guessing the meaning of each word in isolation. It requires pupils to understand how multiple parts of a sentence relate to one another. These habits of mind also matter in mathematics and science. Both translation and mathematical problem-solving require logical sequencing, attention to detail and the ability to hold several possible relationships in mind at once. Even when pupils do not continue studying Latin or Greek, the analytical discipline developed through translation can support their learning elsewhere. Classics also teaches pupils that interpretation is not always straightforward. A word may have several possible meanings, an archaeological object may have been used in more than one way and an ancient author may present a biased or incomplete account. Pupils must therefore learn to assess context, compare evidence and explain why one interpretation is more persuasive than another. These are essential academic skills, but they are also essential life skills.

It connects different subjects

Classics is especially valuable because it crosses conventional subject boundaries. A single topic might involve reading a myth, examining the remains of a temple, analysing an inscription, studying the geography of the Mediterranean and discussing how political power was represented through architecture. This encourages pupils to understand that knowledge does not exist in isolated compartments. Literature can be read alongside material evidence. Art can reveal political messages. Scientific analysis can tell us where an object was made or what people ate. Archaeology can challenge accounts written by members of ancient elites by revealing the lives of enslaved people, workers, women, migrants and children who appear only rarely in surviving texts. The ancient world therefore offers an ideal environment in which to practise combining different forms of evidence. Pupils learn not only what people in the past believed or did, but also how we know—and how much remains uncertain.

It helps us think about modern problems

Classics can also be taught as an applied subject. Ancient evidence provides a lens through which pupils can examine some of the most urgent questions of the twenty-first century, including migration, climate change, political participation, misinformation and the construction of expertise. Ancient societies experienced environmental pressures, epidemics, displacement, political conflict and rapid social change. Their responses cannot provide simple solutions to modern problems, but they can help pupils recognise that human communities have always had to make difficult collective decisions with incomplete information. The ancient world can also unsettle modern assumptions. Ideas that now appear natural or inevitable—about borders, citizenship, family, gender, religion or political authority—have taken very different forms in different societies. Comparing those forms helps pupils distinguish between what is universal to human experience and what has been created by particular historical circumstances. This comparative perspective is especially important in discussions of citizenship and democracy. Studying Athens, for example, allows pupils to explore both the possibilities and the exclusions of direct political participation. They can ask who was allowed to speak, vote or hold office, but also who was excluded: women, enslaved people and migrants. Classics does not require pupils to celebrate the ancient world uncritically. It gives them evidence through which to investigate both its achievements and its inequalities.

It develops teamwork and confidence

Classics education is not confined to reading texts or memorising dates. Project-based activities can involve archaeological investigation, dramatic performance, object analysis, debate, reconstruction, creative writing and collaborative research. These approaches develop skills that are difficult to measure through examinations alone. Pupils learn how to listen to different interpretations, divide responsibilities, manage a shared task and communicate their findings clearly. They can practise forms of leadership that do not depend on speaking the loudest, including careful organisation, inclusive listening and helping a group remain focused on its purpose. Such skills are valuable in almost every form of later study and employment. Classics provides a particularly effective setting for developing them because ancient evidence is fragmentary and open to discussion. Pupils must work together not simply to locate a correct answer, but to construct a reasoned interpretation.

It helps us question stories about the past

Teaching Classics matters not only because the ancient world has influenced later societies, but also because that influence has often been selectively constructed. Greek and Roman antiquity has sometimes been presented as the exclusive foundation of a supposedly unified “Western civilisation”. This narrative has been used to marginalise other histories and, at its most damaging, to support ideas of European or white superiority. Ancient Greece and Rome have also been invoked to justify colonialism, racial hierarchy, slavery and exclusionary forms of nationalism. Avoiding Classics would not make these uses of the past disappear. It would leave pupils less prepared to recognise and challenge them. A critical approach instead asks how particular images of the ancient world were created, who benefited from them and which histories were omitted. Pupils can examine how ancient art, political language and ideas about citizenship have been reused in later periods. They can also investigate the connections linking Greece and Rome with Africa, Asia and the wider Mediterranean rather than treating classical societies as isolated European civilisations. This does not diminish the importance of Greece and Rome. It places them within the broader, interconnected ancient world to which they belonged.

It shows that Greece and Rome were part of a wider world

Greek and Roman societies were not universal starting points from which all important history developed. They were specific societies shaped by their own environments, institutions, conflicts and relationships with neighbouring peoples. Recognising this allows Classics to become more inclusive rather than less significant. Pupils can study Greece and Rome alongside ancient Egypt, Persia, North Africa, the Near East and other societies with which they interacted. They can investigate movement across the Mediterranean, the exchange of technologies and beliefs and the complex identities of people living within ancient empires. Teaching Classics in this way also creates space for pupils whose own heritage has often been excluded from traditional accounts of the ancient world. Islamic, African and Asian histories no longer appear as secondary additions to a European narrative, but as part of a much larger and more complicated human past.

It teaches pupils to deal with complexity

Perhaps the greatest value of Classics is that it resists simple answers. Ancient societies produced extraordinary art, literature, architecture and political thought, but they were also characterised by slavery, warfare, inequality and exclusion. Their achievements and injustices cannot be separated into convenient categories. Pupils must learn to appreciate cultural achievements without ignoring the systems of power that supported them. They must consider evidence produced by elites while looking for the experiences of people whose voices were not preserved. They must recognise the influence of the classical past while questioning exaggerated claims about its uniqueness. This ability to hold apparently conflicting ideas together is an important form of intellectual maturity. It encourages pupils to move beyond either idealising or condemning the past and towards understanding it.

Classics is a subject for the future

Classics should not be taught because the ancient world offers a perfect model for modern society. It should be taught because it gives pupils the knowledge and intellectual tools needed to examine how societies are built, how power is justified, how evidence is interpreted and how the past continues to shape the present. Its traditional strengths remain considerable. Classics supports literacy, vocabulary, logical reasoning and cultural knowledge. Yet its importance reaches further. Applied and critical approaches allow pupils to explore contemporary problems, challenge inherited assumptions and recognise how historical narratives can sustain inequality. The purpose of teaching Classics is therefore not simply to conserve a cultural treasure trove. It is to make the ancient world available for questioning, comparison and debate. By examining both the richness of antiquity and the troubling ways in which it has been represented, pupils can become more thoughtful readers, more careful investigators and more critically engaged citizens. Classics matters because the past is never entirely past. Its languages, stories, institutions and imagined legacies continue to influence the world in which we live. Teaching pupils how to understand—and challenge—that influence is one of the most important reasons for keeping the ancient world in the classroom. 

15/07/2026

Okay, I know I am biased here. Italo Calvino is one of my favourite writers ever. Being Italian, I grew up reading his books from childhood, first encountering their humour, imagination and apparent simplicity, and only later beginning to understand their extraordinary intellectual depth. Calvino is one of those writers who changes as you change. The stories I read as a child for their impossible characters and fantastic settings became, when I returned to them as an adult, reflections on identity, politics, history and the ways in which people construct meaning from the world around them. The books had remained the same, but I had not.

That experience lies at the heart of Why Read the Classics? First published as a collection of essays after Calvino’s death, the book brings together his reflections on writers ranging from Homer, Ovid and Pliny the Elder to Ariosto, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy and Borges. Yet it is much more than a series of literary commentaries. It is an exploration of how books survive, how readers change and how the past continues to speak within the present.

For anyone interested in antiquity, this is not an abstract question. Why do we still read Homer? Why return to Ovid’s transformations, Pliny’s attempt to catalogue the natural world or the ancient stories that generations of writers, artists and communities have repeatedly reshaped? Why should words composed in societies so distant from our own continue to matter?

Calvino’s answer is that a classic is not simply an old or prestigious book. It is a work that continues to produce meaning. His most famous definition describes a classic as a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

This does not mean that a classical work contains a single timeless message waiting to be uncovered. Quite the opposite. Classics endure because they cannot be exhausted by one reading, one interpretation or one historical period.

Returning to Ancient Texts

We often imagine rereading as repetition. Yet we never truly read the same book twice. A person encountering the Odyssey at school may remember monsters, shipwrecks and the long journey home. Reading it again later may bring different elements into view: displacement, memory, identity, hospitality, violence and the cost of returning to a place that has changed during one’s absence. The poem has not changed. The reader has.

The same is true of Ovid. The Metamorphoses may initially seem to be a collection of extraordinary stories in which gods, humans, animals and landscapes change form. A later reading may reveal more troubling questions about power, desire, suffering, gender and the instability of identity.

Ancient texts are not static objects. They form relationships with their readers, and those relationships develop over time. For Calvino, this capacity to generate new readings is not incidental to the classic. It is what makes a work classical.

The Classics Before We Read Them

Calvino also observes that classics often reach us before we have read them. Most people know something of the ancient world through fragments. We recognize the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, Medusa, Narcissus and Icarus. We encounter them in paintings, films, novels, advertising and everyday language. Ancient stories have become so deeply embedded in modern culture that they can feel familiar even when we have never approached the original texts.

But this familiarity can be deceptive. The Odyssey becomes a story of adventure. Medusa becomes simply a monster. Narcissus becomes a warning against vanity. Complex figures are reduced to symbols, while stories are stripped of their ambiguity, historical setting and emotional force. Returning to the text can therefore be an act of rediscovery. What seemed familiar becomes strange again. This is one of the pleasures of reading the classics directly. We discover how much has been omitted, simplified or transformed by later tradition. We begin to see how every generation has remade antiquity according to its own concerns.

Ancient stories have never remained still. Romans reworked Greek traditions. Medieval writers gave them new moral and religious meanings. Renaissance artists reshaped them visually. Modern writers have used them to examine war, colonialism, sexuality, trauma and political power. Reading a classic means entering this long process of transmission and transformation.

Texts, Places and Material Remains

For those of us drawn to archaeology and the ancient world, classics acquire another dimension. They are not encountered only on the page. Ancient literature exists alongside temples, theatres, roads, houses, tombs, inscriptions and objects. Texts provide stories and voices, while archaeology reveals the material settings within which ancient lives unfolded. Neither gives us the whole picture. A literary source may describe ideals rather than ordinary experience. It may represent the perspective of a narrow social group. Archaeological remains are fragmentary, altered by time and often difficult to interpret. Yet bringing texts and material evidence together allows a more complex ancient world to emerge.

Reading Homer changes the experience of standing before the remains of a Bronze Age settlement, even when we know that poetry and archaeology cannot be matched directly. Reading Pliny can transform the way we think about Roman attitudes towards nature, technology and knowledge. Reading ancient accounts of cities, rituals and journeys can make archaeological landscapes feel populated again.

The reverse is equally true. Visiting an ancient city changes the way we read: distances become visible, streets acquire gradients and surfaces, buildings become part of neighbourhoods rather than isolated plans. We become aware of heat, light, water, movement and the effort required to cross a landscape. Monumental architecture is placed alongside workshops, drainage systems, kitchens and ordinary houses. The physical remains challenge the simplified ancient world constructed by literary tradition. They remind us that the past was inhabited not only by the figures whose names survive in texts, but by countless people whose lives are preserved primarily through objects, buildings and traces of daily activity.

Classics and archaeology therefore work best not when one is used merely to illustrate the other, but when each raises questions about the limits of the evidence.

Seeing the Present Through the Past

Calvino does not argue that the classics matter because they offer simple lessons for modern life. Ancient societies were not versions of our own, and their values cannot be transferred directly into the present: this distance is part of their value. Reading ancient literature means encountering societies organized around profoundly different ideas about citizenship, slavery, family, gender, religion and political authority. The familiar exists alongside the deeply unfamiliar. We may recognize grief, jealousy, ambition, fear or longing, but these emotions operated within social structures different from our own. Ancient characters are neither completely alien nor simply modern people in different clothing. Classics make us confront this tension.

They can also help us see that the present is not inevitable. The ways in which we organize communities, define status, use public space and understand the relationship between individuals and society have long histories. Ancient texts and archaeological remains show us alternative systems, including both their possibilities and their injustices. This is not about searching the past for ready-made solutions. It is about using historical distance to ask better questions.

The Classics as a Journey

Reading the classics is itself a form of travel: it moves us between periods, places and ways of understanding the world. It requires imagination, but also attention to historical difference. Like visiting an archaeological site, reading an ancient text involves reconstruction. We work with what survives, aware that much has been lost. We move between fragments, contexts and later interpretations. The experience depends partly on knowledge, but also on curiosity and the willingness to look again. A classical work does not remain alive because it has been placed on a syllabus or declared important by an institution. It remains alive because people continue to return to it. They translate it, reinterpret it, argue with it and place it in conversation with new evidence. They read it before visiting an ancient place, or visit a place and then return to the text with new questions.

Books That Continue to Speak

Calvino’s answer to the question posed by his title is ultimately simple: we read the classics because some works continue to speak. They speak from societies distant from our own, preserving their ideas, conflicts and contradictions. They speak through the many generations that have copied, translated and transformed them. They speak through modern literature, art and popular culture, often before we have encountered them directly. Most importantly, they speak differently each time we return.

For me, this is true of Calvino himself. I began reading him as a child because his books were imaginative, strange and enjoyable. I return to him now because those same books open questions about history, knowledge and the relationship between people and the worlds they inhabit. Perhaps that is also the greatest value of reading the classics of antiquity. They do not provide an uncomplicated route back to the past. They offer something more interesting: an ongoing conversation between surviving words, material remains and the questions we bring to them: the classics have not finished saying what they have to say because we have not finished asking them questions.

05/07/2026