Classics.

Classics. The term classici was originally applied to those citizens of Rome that belonged to the first and most influential of the six classes into which Servius Tullius divided the population. As early as the second century after Christ it is applied figuratively by Gellius to writers of the highest rank, and this mode of designation has since been very generally adopted both in literature and art. Most nations have had at some one time a more than usually rich and abundant outburst of literature, and they usually style this the Classical period of their literature, and its most distinguished writers their Classics. Thus, in Latin literature the classical period may be regarded as extending from the time of Varro, Cicero, and Lucretius, from about 80 B.C., to the time of Juvenal and Suetonius, about 180 A.D.; and is divided into a Golden and a Silver Age. But as the great productions of the writers and artists of antiquity have continued to be looked upon by moderns as models of perfection, the word classics has come to designate, in a narrower sense, the best writers of Greece and Rome, and 'classical' to mean much the same as 'ancient.' The question of the relative value in modern education of the study of the classics in this sense has been much discussed. For 'Classicism,' see ROMANTICISM.