CLASSICS

The term cla ic, first writers of universally acknowledge d is generally applied to any literature, particularly to that ancient Greece and Rome. When the Cla ical Age of Greece was (about 300 B.C.), the Gr. writers objects of study as they are to and a ‘science’ of cla . scholarship up. In the Alexandrian Age (300 B.C.-A.D. 10) the library at Alexandria a center of cla . study, and its edited Homer, and Aris toph anes of Byzantium other poets besides; later came Didymus, with whom the andrian Age ends. The Alexandriana had a regular canon, beginning Homer and ending with Polybius. temporary with the school of Alexandzia was that of Pergamum, 3rd and centuries B.C. When Rome had conquered Greek was the language of the half of the empire; and Rome had to learn from Greece in letters, as Romans had never been a literary Hence Roman literature followed models, and educated Romans of and succeeding times all knew The August an Era was one which duced not only the greatest Latin ture but some literary criticism. in us wrote On the Sublime, and Dionysius In the next five centuries there several grammarians, among them Herodian, and Theodosius of Alexandria. In Latin scholarship during these or just before there were several nent scholars. Virgil and Horace,.who had themselves absorbed so much Gr. culture, soon became regular for critical study. Quintilian was only a great authority on oratory, wrote on the literature of his country as well. One of Suet on i us’ works, now lost, was used in the 7th by Isidore of Seville. Later, important work was done by Symmachus, Iinaris Sidonius, and Boethius, the of whom stands between cla . medizval culture. The Middle Ages are sometimes ferred to as if during the whole of period a total eclipse of cla . and everything pertaining to anc. zati on took place, only to be to light again at the Renai ance. Though there is much truth in this, must not be pre ed too far, for never was a period when the study Greek became totally extinct in West; neverthele Gr. scholars were few, and while Latin remained dominant literary language till the cent., much of the best Latin literature was entirely forgotten and neglected. Greek was studied in Ireland in the and 8th centuries, and in England introduced by ‘Theodore of (d. 690), Archbishop of Canterbury. Owing to the work of Alcuin, there some cla . study at the court of the Great. Aristotle was trans. Arabic in the Hast, and his works, taken to Spain by the Moors, trans. into Latin, and then studied the schoolmen in Paris and elsewhere. Greek was studied in England Bishop Gro eteste (d. 1253), and Roger Bacon (d. 1294), who wrote Alex Greek Grammar, « The Renai ance began in Italy in with the 14th cent,, and anc. MSS. were Con eagerly sought for, and in the 15th cent. much Greek was read in Italy; but in the 2nd 16th cent. the New Learning found its chief home N. of the Alps. The greatest Greece, of Renai ance scholars was Erasmus; eastern who taught and studied in England, much France, Italy, and Switzerland. Since the then cla . scholarship has gradually people. progre ed, becoming more scientific, Gr. aiming at exact knowledge of the past this rather than exact imitation of cla . Greek. forms of literature in the present. There pro have been many famous cla . scholars liter a in England, France, and Germany. DurLonging the 16th and 17th centuries France produced most; in the 18th, England and Germany. were CLASSIFICATION, an arrangement were of things into groups or cla es, such that the members of any group resemble each cents., other in one or more qualities while emidiffering in these qualities from members of other groups, ‘Natural’ cla ification of is based on the intrinsic nature of the authors things cla ified, while ‘artificial’ cla i not fication is arbitrary, being determined by but qualities extrinsic to the real nature of own the things. cent.