This monograph represents the first interdisciplinary, theoretical research into the phenomenon of the classics in the social sciences and humanities — in sociology, economics, political science, psychology, philology and linguistics, and philosophy, as well as in mass culture. The work also analyzes issues such as understandings of the classics, ways of interpreting the “classical legacy” and our very conceptions of the classics, methods of deploying and mastering classical ideas, types and styles of approaches to specific classical authors and works, and finally the role and function of the classics in social knowledge and the humanities.