What classic area of study is now mostly reserved for academic consideration?
Philosophy has become an increasingly academic discipline. More of its practitioners lament this situation than occurs with the sciences; nonetheless most new philosophical work appears in academic journals. Major philosophers through history—Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Augustine, Descartes, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche—have become as canonical as any writers. Some recent philosophy works are argued to merit the title "literature", but much of it does not, and some areas, such as logic, have become extremely technical to a degree similar to that of mathematics.
There has been a trend in writing the history of this period to depict Hellenistic art as a decadent style, following of the Golden Age of Classical Athens. Pliny the Elder, after having described the sculpture of the classical period says: Cessavit deinde ars ("then art disappeared"). The 18th century terms Baroque and Rococo have sometimes been applied, to the art of this complex and individual period. The renewal of the historiographical approach as well as some recent discoveries, such as the tombs of Vergina, allow a better appreciation of this period's artistic richness.