For the average middle school or high school student, hearing the name Aristotle or Socrates either evokes confusion or a vague recollection of a noteworthy figure from Ancient Greece Day in world history class. Casual mentions of the epic battles between Hector and Achilles at the gates of Troy or the precarious nautical journeys of Aeneas or Odysseus are often met with blank stares, and discussions on Augustine stealing pears from an orchard are confronted with bewilderment.

In contrast, reading the texts that were considered for generations the hallmarks of a “well-rounded” education meant that students would have been well-versed in the rhetorical defense Socrates made before his Athenian jury in the Apologia or the idea of the golden mean from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The Homeric epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid informed the imaginations of students as much as the newest fantasy novel.