THE CHARACTER OF THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE

No one has ever brought together on the shelves of a single library all that has been written in Latin and ancient Greek. The collection would be imposing even by modern standards; and for quality as well as for quantity. But its most remarkable feature would have nothing to do with its size or even with the great number of masterpieces it contained. More has been written in English alone; and the best of English writers can take their place without question alongside their classical predecessors. No, the noteworthy and indeed unique characteristic of such a collection would be the space of time it covered, extending from Homer to the present day. For although ancient Greek has been truly a dead language for almost two centuries, Latin is still used by scholars and by the Roman Catholic Church.

The question therefore arises as to how much of this monumental array we can regard as the proper subject-matter of classical studies. No one has ever suggested that the latest Papal encyclicals should be read by classicists alongside Livy and Virgil. But men have wondered about Psellus, and the superiority of Petrarch to Cicero has been seriously maintained. There have been teachers prepared to include Alan of Lille in the curriculum, just as there have been others who were prepared to exclude Tacitus.

We shall find, however, that in practice modern students of the classics tend to regard any work written after the close of the sixth century A.D. as falling outside their proper field of study; and they also tend to neglect the theologians and other specifically Christian authors who flourished before that date.