Usually, the engagement with the handed down tradition is directed towards the past, while everything new points to the future. Whether one or the other is more important has been a matter of dispute for centuries. This dispute, which was fought in 17th century France under the name Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, shook the exemplary status of the Greco-Roman antiquity and the principle derived from it, the imitatio of the ancient models, with its attack.