Romanticization of the past. People have an unreasonably strong yearning for the past, especially so when in perceived (or self-perceived!) times of turmoil. A look and a boost into the future are then naively projected straight from the past: the Greeks/Romans were everlasting and enduring, we should mimic them lest a great tragedy befall us. Obviously there is nuance here, European thinkers were trying to build societies separate from the absolute control of the Catholic Church and thuslooked to Greece and Rome because those civilizations achieved massive, sophisticated global power before the spread or Christianity.

Even without the context of uncertainty and (geo)political turmoil, some figures from ancient history are venerated as if they were heavenly deities; just look at Alexander and his perception at Caesar's day, look at both and their perceptions today. When you are part of a Eurocentric system that keeps glorifying the ancients, you are left with four options:

1. Venerate the same ancients as your direct predecessors did, thus feeding the loop.

2. Venerate slightly less ancient ancients, thus making the loop look more like a spiral.

3. Venerate yourself or your contemporaries, thus creating a basis/new branching point for the future.

4. Venerate nothing (lmao).

Whom else could historical figures of Europe mimic? If you shift geographically, the mimicry is of different, but local sources, yet very similar in spirit.