Classics is an academic discipline that focuses on all aspects of the ancient Greek and Roman world, including its influence on the modern world. Classics is extremely diverse, encompassing the history, languages, literatures, arts, politics, philosophies, religions, science, technology, architecture, archaeology, and later reception of the ancient cultures of the Greek and Roman Mediterranean. As such, Classics is inherently multidisciplinary, and has many connections to other academic disciplines. In fact, as the oldest academic discipline, Classics laid the foundations for many others, and still serves as an excellent complement to them.

Much of the work done within Classics could be classified as detective work because comprehension of these ancient civilizations must be assembled from the traces they have left behind. Finding and interpreting these traces is a process that requires meticulous attention to detail and the application of broad general knowledge within a flexible methodological framework.