Why Classical Studies?

What, then, is the true nature of God?  Flesh?  Far from it!  Land?  Far from it!  Fame?  Far from it!  It is intelligence, knowledge, right reason.

- Epictetus, "Discourses" as taken from "The Wisdom of the Ancient Greeks" by Steven Stavropoulos

Classical studies speaks to me in a language that my soul can understand.  Of the poets and philosophers who acknowledge the existence of a soul, there seems to be a running belief that the soul is not just some lump of white light that resides in your heart, but is something that grows and acts and is acted upon.  Menanader, Epictetus, Sophocles, Plato - they speak of spiritual matters logically, believing that spirituality can and should be understood through the application of logic and reason.  More recently, P.J. O'Rourke said that many of the misunderstandings about the nature of life that young people have could be eliminated by a classical education ("Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut", pg. 201).  I look forward to obtaining this education, albeit later in life.  The works of those ancients and the society that they created laid the foundation for all civilization.  We have as much to learn from them today as the students who sat at their feet did thousands of years ago.