I was literally just thinking about this yesterday

Respectfully disagree. Here's my experience: I was skeptical at first but now I'm a convert

The role of rhetoric in ancient education is almost impossible to overstate. From approximately age 12 onward, educated Greeks and Romans spent years learning to speak persuasively in public. Everything else in ancient intellectual culture was shaped by this training.

The best challenge structure is one that asks you to read something in a category you haven't tried, not a quota.

The literary culture of the Augustan age — Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Livy — was funded largely through Maecenas's patronage, which is itself funded by Augustus. Understanding the literary ideology requires understanding the political economy.