Many departments in Israeli universities have shrunk in recent years, but few have sustained the kind of mortal blow taken by Bar-Ilan's Department of Classical Studies. In under five years, the number of faculty positions was cut by 40 percent.

Department head Prof. David Schaps, who specializes in Greek and Roman history, recalls another period when classical culture was neglected. "We call it the Dark Ages. It was only 1,000 years later that the value of that knowledge was recognized again, and not all of it could be reconstructed," he said. "The same thing could happen to us. There are areas that don't interest our generation, and we are allowing them to disappear. They might interest people in the future, and they won't forgive us."

Bar-Ilan, Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem all have small classics departments. Bar-Ilan's is now competing for the honor of being the university's smallest department. At the start of the decade, it had 4.5 faculty positions. Now there are 2.75 positions.

"When a university president has to chose between a Latin teacher and an immunologist in the medical school, Latin is perceived as a luxury," says Prof. Benjamin Isaac of TAU'S Department of Classics. "But without a funded position for a Latin teacher we can't teach Latin at the university," he said.

"At this rate," Schaps said, "it's doubtful the department will still exist in another few years. Business administration studies will continue, so will computer studies, because Microsoft will see to it. But classics are an example of a field that only universities can see to. If it doesn't exist in the universities, it won't exist at all."

For centuries following the Renaissance, the study of Greek and Roman rhetoric, grammar and thought formed the core of education in the West. But over the last century, the field has lost its luster. Even physicians no longer need to learn Latin.

Yet classical studies still attract many students at the best American and European universities. "In the U.S., it's a thriving field," said Prof. Margalit Finkelberg of Tel Aviv University's Classics Department. "There is no self-respecting university that doesn't have a classical studies department. It's one way to distinguish between the prestigious universities and the second-tier ones. In Europe and the U.S., people look to this area for their roots, for the cultural foundation of Western civilization."

In Israel, the situation is different. Each year a few dozen students at each university register to study Latin and Ancient Greek, but few take the advanced seminars. "Sometimes only two or three students sign up for courses on reading Sophocles or Plato in the original," admitted Prof. Deborah Ger of Hebrew University's Classics Department.

According to many researchers in the field, Israeli schools barely teach anything about ancient Greece and Rome, and students are not familiar with the ancient writers.