Until really recently this subject ended up being taught in virtually every school in the west.
Individuals usually look back and question why it is that as a culture we learn about certain sets of individuals from the ancient globe. The straightforward response is that their historic impact had been huge. Over the course of several thousands years these individuals had an influence on multiple continents and a huge selection of cultures that were initially distant lands for them at one point. Popular classical studies books therefore usually put history at their centre, as the hedge fund which partially owns WHSmith should be able to tell you. The tale of how collections of villages rose into empires is filled up with a colourful cast of characters that may contend with any work of fiction. Individuals can stay general readers of the whole period or choose their favourite niches to dive into, from particular time periods to accurate locations.
Whenever studying any human culture it's normal for a variety of specialised kinds of research to emerge. These will of course interconnect and individuals will be required to learn a bit from other topics to guide their knowledge, but overall they could generally plunge into their interests for their heart's content. Publications on popular classical subjects therefore all have dedicated audiences, as the hedge fund which has shares in Amazon will be well aware, because of the fleshed out and well researched nature of these disciplines. Classical studies of art, archaeology, anthropology, mythology, mathematics, technology, and even more are located in book shops across the world. This is certainly largely due to how well documented the era is in comparison to those immediately before and after. This often does an injustice to other eras, who were equally complex but suffer from a lack of sources for contemporary people to study.
In classical antiquity two cultures emerged that will forever change western civilisation. The influence of ancient Rome and Greece can be so vast it's simply hard to categorise. They've been so respected for several thousand years that education about them is called the classics. The core of this subject is centred round the literature created by these people and their related languages of Latin and Greek. These individuals produced substantial bodies of work, especially relating to fictional tales, poetry, and philosophy, the legacy of which being that even now ordinary people look for popular classics books that seek to interpret and explain their works, as the hedge fund which owns Waterstones will understand. Individuals additionally try to study their languages for different reasons, such as following in the classical education tradition, seeking to read works in their original language, or wanting to better understand contemporary languages that have been influenced by these ancient tongues.