The past may prove a stubborn and uncooperative partner. In the classical canon, where the extant literature produced by women could be read in an afternoon, there is simply no scope for gender parity. In fact, there are only two ways to shift the inveterate focus from Dead White Males. One route is to look beyond elite forms of control (literature, art, architecture, political, military power) for data that allow reconstruction of the rest of ancient civilisation — of women, children, the poor, the disabled, immigrants, slaves. Excellent research is being conducted in these fields, though considerably hampered by a dearth of direct evidence, literary or material. The other is to wrest the Classics out of antiquity: to look not at not how the Greco-Roman world was but at how it has been received in modernity. The closer to the present day the lens pans, the easier it becomes to find the Classics refracted through other cultures and communities. Both approaches currently enjoy unprecedented academic activity.

And yet, for all these apparent and immutable problems with the classical world, as a discipline it retains a considerable and active presence in British universities. More than 6,000 undergraduates study the subject — 50 per cent more than 25 years ago — under the supervision of some 600 academic staff. While this same period has seen a considerable expansion of the country’s university sector, that only partially explains the burgeoning appeal of the Classics. Intriguingly, the number of full-time undergraduates reading the subject in its traditional form — studied via Ancient Greek and Latin — has climbed steadily since 2009 (to 1,593 in 2017), while Classical Civilisation — studied via texts in translation — is falling more swiftly (to 2,245 in 2017).

Latin, in particular, is slowly shedding its supposedly privileged status through more open-access teaching routes. The Cambridge Schools Classics Project promotes the expansion of Latin across the country’s state secondary schools, with the hope of increasing both the number of British pupils studying Latin (roughly 50,000), and the number (roughly 10,000) taking a GCSE in the subject. In London, The Latin Programme is doing excellent work to improve English literacy in disadvantaged primary schools. Outside the classroom, scores of online videos, made in Britain and beyond, now provide detailed, graduated linguistic courses for any student whose curiosity cannot be satisfied by the curriculum on offer. The draw of these languages persists: encouragingly, over the last five years several hundreds of UK students — the great majority from the maintained sector — have applied to study Classics at Oxford and Cambridge without any prior training in Latin (or Greek). Both universities offer an intensive preliminary course which gives them the linguistic wherewithal to enter after one year the Classics degree proper. Across British universities, some 400 undergraduates start learning Latin afresh each year, and some 300 Ancient Greek.