Is ancient history relevant today?
The study of ancient history is valuable, not because history repeats itself, but because historical issues do. For example, material on the Peloponnesian War and the Second Punic war is relevant to the future military commanders training at the Naval War College because of the military and political issues and policies involved in those wars as reported by Thucydides and Polybius. In his interview with The Historian, Peter Calvocoressi, a distinguished writer of contemporary history, acknowledges his debt to the classical education in Greek and Latin language, literature, and culture that he received at Eton in the late 1920s. Such testimony undoubtedly seems eccentric to many readers of this journal, who consider an education in the languages and history of antiquity…
