The active use made of classical antiquity for a variety of (anchoring) purposes starts in antiquity itself. Irrevocably, our ideas about antiquity are filtered by over 2000 years of ‘reception’. The best way to remain conscious of this fact, is to make reception studies an integral part of Classics and therefore also of our agenda. We have selected four case-studies: (1) an unexpected form of reception of Greek art: Greco-Buddhist art; (2) a longue-durée study of a type of narrative (epic); (3) a case-study from the Renaissance (a name explicitly anchoring this period in classical antiquity); (4) the use of classical languages in Italian Fascism and German National-Socialism.
