I have never read Virgil. Or Plato. Or Aristotle. Barely any Shakespeare or Chaucer. It tad bit of Dante.
Partly, none of these were ever emphasized in the school I attended. For this I feel robbed.
Partly, when they were taught (such as when reading Homer), the teacher made no effort to make them interesting and stress how many thousands of things branched forth from them. The descendants of the Oddessy are everywhere when you look around. For this I feel gipped. Not exactly robbed. Maybe like someone had a juice filet mignon but then served it up to me well-done and smothered in A1 sauce. I didn’t know until way later how wonderful of food I could have been, in some sense, WAS, eating.
Here though, Lewis, probably one of the most well-read men of the century, describes part of his own weak education:
Parrot critics say that [Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustrum] is a poem for classicists, to be enjoyed only by those who recognize the Homeric echoes. But I…knew nothing of Homer. For me the relation between Arnold and Homer worked the other way; when I came, years later, to read the Iliad I liked it partly because it was for me reminiscent of Sohrab. Plainly, it does not matter at what point you first break into the system of European poetry. Only keep your ears open and your mouth shut and everything will lead you to everything else in the end.
-C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, p.53