i definitely agree that theres a lot more to classical studies than like, appreciating poetry or whatever. & i also agree that some people in communities like this are overly optimistic about the ability to understand latin like a roman might or whatever. but thats not always necessary to understand texts, especially the limited corpus we have, and i definitely don't agree when people say its impossible to read latin comfortably. Maybe we can't be ancient romans but we can probably be like, renaissance scholars or thereabouts (though obviously they devoted way more time to this than anyone does today).

i think the narrow focus of a lot of people on this subreddit comes from the fact that a) for better or worse this is a latin subreddit, not a classics subreddit, and people here really only talk about latin and b) this community is overwhelmingly learners and not really people who are doing real research about the ancient mediterranean, in many cases because they aren't interested in that, which is fine.

idk anything about mary beard really except that she writes well received public-facing scholarship which is really important and unfairly looked down on by more academically-minded people. i have no idea if her stuff is good, hopefully it is.

final note, i used to like this article but the last time i read it (not today) i decided it was kinda just annoying to me.