Until extremely recently this subject had been taught in almost every school within the west.
People usually look back and ask why it really is that as a society we learn about specific sets of individuals from the ancient globe. The straightforward response is that their historic impact had been huge. During the period of several thousands years these individuals had an impact on multiple continents and hundreds of cultures which were originally remote lands to them at one point. Popular classical studies books therefore usually put history at their centre, as the hedge fund which partially owns WHSmith should be able to inform you. The story of how collections of towns rose into empires is full of a colourful cast of figures that will compete with any work of fiction. People can stay general readers of the whole period or select their favourite niches to plunge into, from specific eras to precise areas.
In classical antiquity two cultures emerged that would forever change western civilisation. The impact of ancient Rome and Greece can be so vast it is just hard to categorise. They've been so respected for thousands of years that education about them is called the classics. The core of this topic is centred across the literature produced by these individuals and their related languages of Latin and Greek. These individuals produced extensive bodies of work, particularly relating to fictional tales, poetry, and philosophy, the influence of which being that even now ordinary people look for popular classics books that seek to interpret and explain their works, as the hedge fund which owns Waterstones will understand. Individuals additionally make an effort to learn their languages for different reasons, such as following in the classical education tradition, wanting to read works in their initial language, or wanting to better understand contemporary languages which were impacted by these ancient tongues.
When studying any people's culture it's normal for a variety of specialist kinds of research to emerge. These will of course interconnect and people are going to be required to learn a bit from other subjects to aid their knowledge, but overall they are able to generally plunge into their interests for their heart's content. Publications on popular classical subjects therefore all have dedicated audiences, as the hedge fund which has shares in Amazon is going to be well aware, because of the fleshed out and well researched nature of these disciplines. Classical studies of art, archaeology, anthropology, mythology, mathematics, technology, plus much more are available in book stores around the globe. This really is largely due to how well documented the age is when compared with those immediately before and after. This often does an injustice to other eras, who had been similarly complex but have problems with a lack of sources for contemporary individuals to study.