If my fantasy of the Latin teacher seems too wayward, here’s a more realistic example. Instead of devoting your full attention to the noble vocation of classical scholar and teacher, you are forced to divert your time and energy to a rearguard defence of the proposition that the Romans existed at all: a defence against an exhibition of ignorant prejudice that would make you weep if you weren’t too busy fighting it. Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Romansh: all these languages and their constituent dialects sprang spontaneously and separately into being, and owe nothing to any predecessor such as Latin. The entire world came into existence only just beyond living memory. Yet you find your precious time continually preyed upon, and your class’s attention distracted, by a baying pack of ignoramuses (as a Latin scholar you would know better than to say ‘ignorami’) who, with strong political and especially financial support, scurry about tirelessly attempting to persuade your unfortunate pupils that the Romans never existed. That’s a big undertaking and it takes time, concentration, dedication. IMAGINE that you are a teacher of Roman history and the Latin language, anxious to impart your enthusiasm for the ancient world – for the elegiacs of Ovid and the odes of Horace, the sinewy economy of Latin grammar as exhibited in the oratory of Cicero, the strategic niceties of the Punic Wars, the generalship of Julius Caesar and the voluptuous excesses of the later emperors. Dawkins sifts through rich layers of scientific evidence-from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record from natural clocks that mark the vast epochs wherein evolution ran its course to the intricacies of developing embryos from plate tectonics to molecular genetics-to make the airtight case that 'we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random selection.' His unjaded passion for the natural world turns what might have been a negative argument, exposing the absurdities of the creationist position, into a positive offering to the reader: nothing less than a master’s vision of life, in all its splendor. 'Intelligent Design' is being taught in our schools educators are being asked to 'teach the controversy' behind evolutionary theory. Now, he launches a fierce counterattack against proponents of 'Intelligent Design' in his New York Times bestseller, The Greatest Show on Earth. He revolutionized the way we see natural selection in the seminal bestseller The Selfish Gene. Richard Dawkins transformed our view of God in his blockbuster, The God Delusion, which sold millions of copies in English alone.

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