"You've gotta read this! This book's a classic!" exclaimed my roommate as she happily turned the pages of the latest installment in the Harry Potter series. I looked up, mildly amused, from where I was sprawled on my bed, laboring through the list of warriors in Homer's The Iliad. Then my eye fell on the stack of books on my desk VirgilÍs The Aeneid, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex were just a few of the titles that lingered in my memory as I turned my attention back to the seemingly unending list of ways that one could be sliced, diced, and bludgeoned to death by the primitive weapons of ancient Greece. A classic. Funny, that's what my professors keep saying about that ever-mounting stack of epics and tragic poetry that adorns the corner of my workspace. Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Aristophanes, and don't forget the classic artists -- David, Michelangelo, Raphael to name but a few. What is it about the works of these men that allow them to be branded "classics" by the vast majority of the population? Somehow it seems a far cry from the Quidditch matches and potions lessons that J.K. Rowling has recently made so popular.

"The Classics" quite obviously embody something that is drastically different from those pieces of so-called "pop-culture" which book and movie reviews haphazardly dub "classics in their own right". This is easy enough to see; one need only observe the voracity with which my roomie devours the last hundred pages of magic and mischief that abound in her self-proclaimed classic novel, and the discipline which I exert to keep my eyes from straying from the pages of what is widely accepted as a classic Greek epic. This is clearly something that goes far beyond enjoyment and popularity. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the classics seem to be representative of different cultures throughout history. Where Harry and friends don't seem particularly representative of modern western culture, the figures in The Iliad and Agamemnon are some of the only surviving evidence of what ancient Greek culture was about. Given it is hard for modern society to objectively interpret these works-just look at the Freudian spin which has been put on Oedipus, but these "classics" serve as windows through which our modern society can catch a glimpse of those that have gone before. That is not to say that the classics are purely a historical tool and are lacking in aesthetic merit. Some may argue that certain works are rendered classic simply because they are what have survived the destructive forces of time, but there is obviously a reason that they have stuck around long enough for us to appreciate them in the 21st century. I suppose it has to do with the fact that though they are links to past cultures, they also help us to discover a bit about our own unique culture. The thing about the classics is that they embody certain paradigms and themes that are able to reveal insights about modern culture and experiences.

I continued to ponder the phenomenon of the classic as I put on my coat and said an unheard goodbye to my blissful, enraptured roommate, and headed out of my dorm for a much needed study break. My wanderings led me to the door of the Snite Museum, and I entered, hoping to find some inspiration from classics of a different sort. As I passed various depictions of the Madonna and child, I looked for some of the characteristics typical in classical painting: clarity, unity, simplicity. I noted the facial expressions and attitudes of the subjects in these paintings, and I saw that the subjects seemed realistic, while at the same time attaining a kind of idealistic perfection not present in the other artistic styles. I paused by a 16th century depiction of a Spanish Lawyer in what was once called Flanders and smiled as I looked at the decidedly non-classic caricature, which was, perhaps, in its day the popular Harry Potter of the Spanish art world. I climbed the stairs to the second floor, and as my attention was grabbed by the stately bust of Napoleon resting on its pedestal in the corner I was struck by another characteristic of "the Classics" -- their influence on subsequent works and cultures. The Napoleon facing me with a blank stare was strangely reminiscent of busts I had seen from the Roman Empire. The closely cropped hair, the soft, youthful facial features, while not unlike other depictions of Napoleon, lacked the typical French flair found in other representations and instead gave him the look of a Greco-Roman emperor. Recalling my high school European history class, I observed that this statue was probably commissioned for reasons similar to the Roman emperors who had busts of themselves made and distributed throughout the empire. Napoleon wanted to be seen as a leader not unlike the great Roman emperors, and thus had his bust given out across his own empire as a visual sign of his power and rule. It particularly fascinated me to realize that our modern society would consider this bust a classic sculpture in its own right, even though at the time it was fashioned it was itself based on what Napoleon viewed as classic sculpture.

As I left the museum, my mind lingered on the classical purpose and historical influence of the bust of Napoleon, and my thoughts turned to Virgil's The Aeneid. It, like the Napoleonic bust, echoed an earlier classic, namely the Homeric epic The Iliad. Again, I had found an example of the emulation of a pre-existing classic work that was deliberately fashioned for political and historic reasons. The Aeneid was created as a founding story of Rome. Although, this founding myth has the unique quality of being developed after the founding and establishment of the Roman Empire. The Greek epic was used as a basis for the formulation of the Roman myth specifically due to the fact that Greek culture was heralded as "classic" in the time of the birth of the Roman Empire, and the epic viewed as the highest form of literature. It occurred to me at this point that although, in both the case of the bust and the secondary epic a classic form was used as a basis for the work and its use, they maintained their own uniqueness and lost little of what made their predecessors classic while developing the definition of classic for future cultures.

I reentered my room and greeted the roommate who was now extolling the merits of her newly found "classic" to a friend via instant messenger. I wondered what, if anything from this age of technology and pop-culture would be considered a classic to future generations and mused that it probably wouldn't be the popular fiction that my friends were currently reading. I returned to my own study of the literature which scholars have deemed classics with a new outlook. People often make the erroneous assumption that the classics are labeled as such due to their "inherent greatness". However, I have discovered that there are many other factors that contribute to making them such. They are most certainly valuable works, but they are not the be-all end-all of literary and artistic expression.