How Classics Should Change

I love the ancient world and there’s nothing I want more than for other people to love it, too. I want a whole new generation of classicists — from every background, every school, every walk of life — to discover it and be transformed by it the way I was, to fall in love with a world that feels ancient and yet can still be seen and felt around us in very real and meaningful ways.

And then I look at how we actually treat that new generation, and I despair.

We Classicists say we want fresh blood, that we’re worried about declining numbers, the possible death of the field. And then we hand a student classicist a Latin conjugation table and make them memorise it for a multiple-choice test. We sit them down with Caecilius and his dog in their garden — the same Caecilius, the same dog, the same garden of Pompeii, the same Cambridge Latin Course dusted off decade after decade — and we wonder why their eyes glaze over. We take one of the most dramatic, violent, strange, beautiful, vibrant, vivid, and terrifying bodies of material in human history and we make it boring. We reduce it to the infamous “death-by-textbook”.

And that’s if you even get access in the first place. Because Classics in the UK is, overwhelmingly, the preserve of the rich. Latin at GCSE? Greek at A Level? Almost exclusively private schools. Classical Civilisation GCSE? I challenge you to find a single state-maintained school that offers it as an option; I looked and couldn’t. If your parents couldn’t pay fees, the gate was closed before you knew it existed.

And the gatekeeping runs all the way up from the classroom teacher to the esteemed academics. Want to engage seriously in Classics? Better have a Classics or Classical Studies degree. Want your opinion to count? Better know the languages, and have the qualifications to prove it. Read Homer in translation and had a genuine insight you’re excited to share? Sorry, unless it’s a certain translation or in the original Greek, your commentary’s not “academic” enough. Teachers won’t share resources without charging, or actively discourage students from choosing the subject because they “aren’t bright enough for the GCSE spec” (believe me, this happens). Academics lock their work behind paywalls and indecipherable jargon. We are, ultimately, in many ways a profession that talks about “widening participation” while keeping the circle small and ensuring those ancient walls remain tall and insurmountable for all but a select few.

We built walls around the ancient world and wonder why nobody’s coming in.

These are my twelve points. These are the things I believe need to change about the subject we love most if it is to survive. They represent purely my own opinion through my experience in the field, and you are welcome to disagree with them. As you will see further down, open discussion without fear of disagreement is one of them!

I. Tear Down the Gates.

Classics belongs to everyone who is curious about it. The old boys’ network ends now. Prestige is not scholarship. Pedigree is not merit. Classics needs to stop becoming the exclusive remit of private schools and be open to all who want to study it, not a select, privileged few.

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II. Languages Are Tools, Not Loyalty or Membership Tests.

Teach Latin and Greek widely, generously, and, well… not through the same photocopied tables or exercises that were outdated a generation ago. Welcome the person who meets Homer in translation just as warmly as the one who parsed their first Homeric hymn at the age of 6. The ability to speak or read Latin or Ancient Greek are not pre-requisites to forming an opinion or appreciation of a deeply beautiful and wide-reaching culture and should never be treated as such.

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III. Burn the Pedestal.

Greece and Rome were not golden ages. They were complex, often brutal societies built on rampant slavery, imperial violence, and relentless patriarchal rule. We study them because they were human, often painfully so, not because they were perfect or ideal role models

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IV. The Ancient World Was Not White.

… In more ways than one. On a literal level, the marble was painted. But on a deeper level? The Mediterranean was deeply and unashamedly multicultural. Egypt, Persia, Phoenicia, and North Africa were not footnotes. They were not incidental or peripheral to Ancient Greece or the Roman Republic or Empire — they were central to the story. Any version of antiquity that portrays it as a white ethnostate or a utopian society that existed in isolation from its neighbours is a dangerous fantasy.

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V. Confront the Appropriation.

White supremacists and ethnonationalists have claimed the Greco-Roman world as their inheritance and have corrupted the arts we love most to serve fascist and supremacist agendas. They are wrong. Silence is complicity. Classics must actively contest the far-right hijacking of its material and assert that we will not stand for the corruption of our literary heritage for political or ideological agenda.

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VI. Kill the “Western Civilization” Myth.

There is no clean arrow of time from Athens to Rome to England to America. That narrative was invented by Empires to serve Empires. Stop telling fairy tales and start looking closer at history.

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VII. Open the Canon.

Homer and Virgil are extraordinary. Aeschylus deserves to be called a master each and every time. But they are not the whole story. Papyri, inscriptions, graffiti, curse tablets, bones, pottery — these are the fragments of the past and the voices of the enslaved, the poor, the migrant, the woman, the child. Classics has for so long given voice to the elite who were fortunate enough to have their works survive. The spotlight now needs to shift to the voiceless. Listen to them.

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VIII. Embrace Interdisciplinarity.

Anthropology, postcolonial theory, English literature, critical race studies, gender studies, digital humanities, comparative mythologies — these are not threats to Classics. They are its future. Do not be afraid to explore the golden classical threads in any work, whether that’s science fiction or a building you happen to admire. A discipline that refuses to talk to its neighbours is talking to itself in an empty room.

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IX. Reception Is Not a Side Hustle.

How the ancient world lives in Black or Asian poetry, African American literature, video games, fantasy literature, and TikTok is not lesser scholarship. It is where Classics matters right now and where you’ll find the loudest, most vibrant beating pulse.

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X. Scholarship Belongs to the Public.

If your work is behind a paywall, written in impenetrable jargon, and read by eleven people, you are hoarding knowledge, not preserving it. And if you won’t share a worksheet without monetising it while claiming to care about the subject’s future, or you gatekeep the profession because you don’t like that person or their opinions — ask yourself what you actually care about.

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XI. Classics Is Not And Should Not Be a Class Marker.

In the UK, when ancient languages are offered almost exclusively in private schools, the message is clear: the ancient world is not for you. Every child in every school should have the chance to meet it. Access is not a perk locked behind wearing a toga. It is a right. Gatekeepers are just as culpable as curriculum-setters.

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XII. Rename, Reframe, Reimagine.

If “Classics” implies these cultures are supreme above all others, we need to ask why and address the question in active discussion. We study these societies because they are fascinating, not because they are superior. The moment we forget that distinction, we become propagandists and machines of rhetoric, not scholars of antiquity. The discussion we have needs to be open, inclusive, wide-ranging – as varied and vibrant as the Mediterranean culture we’re studying.

The ancient world is vast, strange, beautiful, and often unsettling... but deeply human in every conceivable way. The discipline built around it has been allowed to remain too small for too long. For everyone who was ever told they didn't belong in Classics: You do. Come into the light. The campire is crackling and the gods and heroes can't wait to hear your story.