I’m a little late with this one—the essay was originally published last month—but, considering my obsession with all things classical, from Plato to Apollodorus, I couldn’t ignore Allan Massie’s explanation regarding the popularity of novels set in ancient Greece and Rome.

Part of the answer is clear: readers like to be entertained by strong narratives, larger-than-life characters, and dramatic confrontations. But why are more novels written about Rome than about Tsarist Russia—where you also find those things? Why Julius Caesar and Augustus rather than Louis XIV or even Napoleon—subject of innumerable biographies but few novels?I would hazard this explanation. However dimly or unconsciously, there persists the idea that Greece and Rome matter, that they are part of our inheritance. Salvatore Settis quotes John Stuart Mill writing in 1859: “The battle of Marathon, even as an event in English history, is more important than the battle of Hastings. If the issue of that day had been different … the Britons and Saxons might still be wandering in the woods.” … There nevertheless remains, even in our global cultural economy, something of the sense that we grew out of Greece and Rome. … Greece and Rome continue in some way to matter as other periods of history, and other cultures, do not. Those of us who write and read novels set in the ancient world are striving to absorb something of its significance.