In the last few years a reconsideration of the past of the ancients and of the concepts correlated to it (e.g. the ?classical') has been important to many scholars. The present volume adds to the range of perspectives on the antique by expanding research to include different, hitherto unexplored spheres, whether that be chronological perspectives or disciplinary ones, as well as by opening up the discussion to include textual types that previous studies have treated little or not at all. Fourteen essays on various fields aim at defining the categories in which the past is constructed, thought, valued, functionalized and redrawn. They concentrate on the category of the ?antique' and the role it plays in texts and authors, with specific reference to the ?topicalization', conceptualization and renegotiation of the ?antique' and the ?ancients'. The textual types analysed belong to the following fields: ancient philosophy and history of ideas, ethnography, historiography and antiquarianism, literature and philology, grammar and Roman law, Renaissance studies.