Much of that heritage has been translated into modern languages.
Re:The mainframe is alive and thriving
by nescioquid on Thursday March 11, 2021 @10:50PM
(#26432031)
I believe this comment betrays a mean ignorance of philology -- a discipline to which I'd expect most hackers would be sympathetic, at least insofar as the art of n-way merges may apply, and a vain commitment to the search for (optimal) objective truth.
Texts from the ancient world are handed down to us not from on high, or a single authoritative source (please consider the problem of duplication prior to computers or mimeographs), so considerable effort and erudition is entailed in comparing sources, filling in lacunae (here's a true warrant for what most consider a sesquipedelian word), all of which is predicated on perusing (in vain) an intuition for "pure et clare latine" and a hard-nosed insistence on _attested sources_ on matters of usage and expression.
I treasure, uncountably, the continuity afforded by training new generations in "antique" languages and dialects. It addresses a much deeper and more valuable problem than shitting out the next side-hustling platform.
Are Latin and Ancient Greek dead? Ostensibly yes. But not useless. Besides teaching, there is a tremendous amount of books and texts written in Latin and Ancient Greek. To study them, one would invariably need to learn the language.