‘To think that two thousand years of history have left their mark on the marble of Rome can be mentally stirring.’ For this reason, investigating the fortune of ancient Rome is a privileged way to understand what made and makes a classic classic.

Reproducing the many nuances that had already given rise to his Classici elettrici, Roberto Andreotti takes the reader on a journey through a tradition that is revealed to be not pure or ideal, but full of contradictions. A commentary on the Metamorphoses thus reveals the deeply literary reasons for Ovid's revival. A new translation of Virgil's Eclogues is compared with Seamus Heaney's pastoral “struggle”. A biography of Marcus Aurelius debunks conventional misunderstandings about the emperor-philosopher...

In a highly original “second-hand” exposition, the resurgent popularity of ancient literary and figurative testimonies is examined, starting from their sometimes oscillating reception in the twentieth century, and continuing to the present day. Canonical interpretations are thus evoked and discussed, bringing together classical authors, modern interpreters and contemporary readers, seamlessly blending philology, the history of tradition and existential chronicle.

Amidst permanence, unexpected revivals and new points of view, new questions of meaning emerge, contributing to a redefinition of the classics from a contemporary perspective. This culminates in a hot take on 9/11 filtered through the lens of Euripides.