It is tempting to think that, as the saying goes, those were the days. But were they? Wasn't there an even earlier time when one's reading knowledge of Latin and Greek was a certificate of being a cultured person? Weren't there some old geezers still alive in 1981 who whined about the devolution of society in which supposedly cultured people are incapable of spicing up a conversation with a well-timed quote from Homer or Virgil?
Perhaps when I think that "those were the days," what I really mean is that "those were my days," while the earlier and the later days are always someone else's days which are either hopelessly antiquated or depressingly primitive and vulgar...
