Two of the best classes that I had as an undergraduate, sieteocho, were 19th and 20th century Russian literature. Reading Dostoevski was not a major requirement for me, but it sure was a life enhancement. I'm glad you experienced the same.

You may be surprised at the nature of new knowledge in a field like Classics. You're right that we aren't discovering new texts, though even that may change if technology improves to allow us to read the charred scrolls from Herculaneum, which you may know about. Even then, it's unlikely that we'd find another tragedy of Sophocles or work of Aristotle or lost histories of Sallust or Livy. But there are archaeological discoveries happening all the time that change our perspective on what the ancients ate, or with whom they traded, or what knowledge of astronomy they had. Check out the Antikythera Machine if you haven't already.

But sometimes the new is just a different way of reading and approaching what we already have. One such area concerns the role of the populus in the Roman Republic, for example. I was taught that the Republic was an oligarchy in which the people had no real power and that social and political power was governed by a network of patron-client relationships. In the last few decades, scholars have begun to ask whether the Republic didn't have more democratic elements than the previous model allowed--and that has changed our view of just about everything.

I'm not averse to change, and I hope my piece did not imply that. I wrote this not as an argument or a rant, but as an expression of my experience at the start of it. I know well that I'll find a way, maybe that I'll find something equally or more rewarding. But I do value the basics in some things. Learning a difficult foreign language, or algebra, or cooking or sewing or woodwork, require discipline and memorization, and the process of even simple learning tends to alter us in deep ways. I'm sorry that future students at my university will not have the opportunity to encounter the Apology of Socrates in Greek or Horace's Odes in Latin.

Thanks for reading and responding thoughtfully, my friend. I appreciate you.