Why My 85-Year-Old Friend Has Devoted the Last Years of Her Life to Reading the Ancient Classics Seth Kaplan on Encountering True Devotion to Art, For Its Own SakeJoan is eighty-five years old, and I fell a little in love with her on Thanksgiving. I didn’t fall in love with Joan the way you’re thinking, or maybe it’s exactly the way you’re thinking. Joan spends four to five hours every day reading Homer and Virgil and Sophocles in their original languages. What would it feel like to love something the way Joan loves Ancient Greek and Latin poetry? What would it feel like to love something the way Joan loves Ancient Greek and Latin poetry?