The phrase "ancient distinction" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a long-standing or historically significant difference or classification between two or more things.
Example: "The ancient distinction between the ruling class and the common people has shaped societal structures for centuries."
Alternatives: "historical difference" or "time-honored distinction".
The ancient distinction among monarchies, tyrannies, oligarchies, and constitutional governments, like other traditional classifications of political systems, is no longer very descriptive of political life.
Her outwardly bookish existence challenges the ancient distinction between active and contemplative ways of living, but the work of thinking is notoriously difficult to show.
France was to become a constitutional monarchy, but one in which "the ancient distinction of the three orders will be conserved in its entirety".
An ancient distinction between faith as bare assent to orthodox doctrine (fides informis) and faith as existential trust in God's grace (fides formata) gave rise to the further distinction between faith as a set of doctrines to be believed (fides quae creditur) and faith as personal involvement (fides qua creditur).
This ancient distinction launched philosophy as we emerged from Plato's cave.
The distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that overlaps three other distinctions: the ancient distinction between technê and episteme, the distinction between practical and theoretical knowledge, and the distinction between procedural and declarative knowledge.
The big bang also meant the scrapping of fixed commissions on share dealing and of ancient distinctions between stockbrokers, who advised clients, and jobbers, who bought and sold shares on their behalf.
With the changes produced in the vocalic system in Koine, the ancient pitch distinction was lost and stress became dynamic (as in English), its place being indicated orthographically by a uniform stress mark; but it remained confined to the three last syllables of a word (the trisyllabic, or window, constraint).
Perhaps the easiest way to understand the difference between the poetic and technological modes of revealing Heidegger contrasts is to think in terms of the ancient Greek distinction between poiesis and technê.
If you rise in the Police Department to become commander of the Fifth Precinct in Chinatown, the perquisites include an office in the ancient headquarters, certain distinction on Mulberry Street -- and the counsel of a slight Chinese man who will turn 78 before summer.
In ancient times the distinction was clear: The manor house and the farmland around it constituted principal, and the right to live in the house or to collect the farm rents was income.
