ABSTRACT
Most people who would hate to see the classics go down are not so much worried about the languages themselves. What is to be feared is that this decline might lead to a sadly diminished knowledge and understanding of the ancient world. The new emphasis will be on the ancient world and what it can yield for our own lives and the languages will be seen as the means to understanding it for those who wish to take this to any serious depth. Shakespeare may have had little Latin and less Greek but the ancient world was real to him. The chapter aims to make a specifically educational point about the study of the ancient world of Greece and Rome. The beginning of wisdom is in the making of critical comparisons. The generalisation that the Greeks of the fifth and fourth centuries bc, especially in Athens, were clear-minded critical thinkers, needs many footnotes.
