The classics were a part of the Zeitgeist essentially - related to the legacy of Rome and Latin as a trade, church, and academic language. It was a universal thing and I believe the works themselves were incidental (although influental) compared to the intellectual culture itself in valuing study.
This is somewhat begging the question of why those heroic people loved reading and debating the classics. One could argue that working class libraries and the tiny pockets of diverse private education were destroyed by government subsidy and the system of state education. This system now picks the tunes and imposes them universally. To influence a compulsory national curriculum one then has to compete with all the various propagandists anxious themselves to grasp the levers.