This all began when I picked up Kenneth Clarh's "Civilisation", which is a book which begins essentially at the middle ages and traces the development of Western Civilization up through the mid-20th century. The biggest way it does this is by looking at the art produced by each period, so as I was reading this, I was strongly impressed by the few times in Western history when there have been explosions of creativity, and sometimes those explosions of creativity were so huge, they were nothing short of inspired miracles... like in the cases of DaVinci and Michaelangelo and the others at the time. In any case, I finished the book and just needed to draw. I suppose part of this is about how we (of western civilization) have always felt and still feel the effects of Greek civilization, and my own curiosity about the Greeks and how they were so gosh-durned aesthetically brilliant. Another part of this is how the classical aesthetic hasn't really changed much over the millenia --- there seem to be universal ideals of beauty that are like natural laws. They don't change.