Instant Classics
- Épisodes
- 72
- Parution
- hebdomadaire
- Dernier épisode
- 12 Nov 2026
À propos du podcast
Join world-renowned classicist Mary Beard and Guardian chief culture writer Charlotte Higgins for Instant Classics — the weekly podcast that proves ancient history is still relevant. Ancient stories, modern twists… and no degree in Classics required. Discover The Odyssey and join the book club at: https://www.exploringtheodyssey.com
Épisodes 72
Medea 3: The Immortal (with Edith Hall)
Mary and Charlotte explore Medea’s afterlife, from Ancient Athens into the 21st Century - the way her story continues to beguile and challenge us. To do this, they are joined by Edith Hall, Professor of …
Notes de l’épisode
Mary and Charlotte explore Medea’s afterlife, from Ancient Athens into the 21st Century - the way her story continues to beguile and challenge us. To do this, they are joined by Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at Durham University and renowned author of many books including the recent Medea: A Life (Yale University Press, 2026)
Edith describes her life-long relationship with Medea - from watching the same 1970s production that changed Mary’s life - to this year’s book. Having two children along the way certainly changed her perspective. Ultimately, she understands Medea as a narcissist, unable to connect with anybody’s needs but her own.
Edith also talks about the challenge Medea has always presented to theatre-goers. She believes the reason why Euripides’ play ‘lost’ the Athens theatre competition in 431BC is because Medea knows she is about to do wrong, but does it anyway (tragic heroes are normally convinced of their righteousness until the last moment). With the rise of European nationalism in the 19th Century, directors became interested in the outsider-exile quality of Medea’s story, casting her as a Jewish woman then, in the 20th Century, as a black woman. Feminist (and anti-feminist) readings of Medea date back to the 1850s when changes to the divorce laws in the UK gave women greater rights.
Today, actors and directors have to answer big questions about whether she is experiencing psychosis or a cold schemer. Or both. Edith describes her experience working with the legendary Helen McCrory on her National Theatre Production in 2016.
Further reading:
In addition to the bibliography we gave for our first two episodes on Medea . . .
For Robert Brough’s burlesque on Medea, see E. Richardson’s article, “‘A conjugal lesson’” in the journal Ramus 2003. The text of the burlesque itself is available online: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858023958535&seq=3
The career of Amy Levy is discussed by Linda Hunt Beckman, Amy Levy (Ohio UP, 2000)
The Cambridge Greek Play has a really good website, with plenty of detail on its history: https://www.cambridgegreekplay.classics.cam.ac.uk/ For the production of Medea we mentioned, see https://www.cambridgegreekplay.classics.cam.ac.uk/past-plays-0/medea-1974
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BONUS Instant Classics live at the FT Weekend Festival
In September, Mary and Charlotte appeared at the FT Weekend Festival for a wide-ranging conversation covering Greek tragedy, Ukraine, the Bayeux Tapestry, tech bros and - inevitably - Christopher Nolan’s The …
Notes de l’épisode
In September, Mary and Charlotte appeared at the FT Weekend Festival for a wide-ranging conversation covering Greek tragedy, Ukraine, the Bayeux Tapestry, tech bros and - inevitably - Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Here - as a bonus - is a recording of that event, with our thanks to the FT Weekend Festival.
Further reading:
We both draw on our recent books in this discussion: Charlotte’s Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War (Jonathan Cape, 2026), and Mary’s Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old (Profile Books, 2026)
For the gruesome bits of the Bayeux Tapestry, see the full online version: https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/discover-the-bayeux-tapestry/explore-online/ (we have now posted a podcast episode on the Bayeux Tapestry)
One of the most evocative translations of Sappho is by Anne Carson, If Not, Winter (Knopf, 2002). We discuss Carson, the newest classical Nobel laureate, in a recent episode of the podcast. There is a good new translation of Catullus (with facing Latin text) by Stephanie McCarter in the Penguin Classics series.
Those unfamiliar with the phrase “Caecilius est in horto”, can find it in Book 1 of the Cambridge Latin Course (revised version, Cambridge UP, 2022)
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Recorded at the FT Weekend Festival. © The Financial Times Limited 2026. All rights reserved. Used with permission
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Medea 2: Princess and Witch
Last episode, we saw how Medea was driven to murder her own children, using Euripides’ famous play as our primary source. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte delve deeper into Medea’s life both before and after …
Notes de l’épisode
Last episode, we saw how Medea was driven to murder her own children, using Euripides’ famous play as our primary source. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte delve deeper into Medea’s life both before and after this shocking incident. Her earlier adventures are told through Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, written in the 3rd Century BCE.
Prince Jason of Iolcos is sent by his uncle to steal the Golden Fleece from King Aeëtes of Colchis. Knowing his task is impossible, Athena, who is Jason’s protector, makes King Aeëtes’ daughter Medea fall in love with him and betray her own people. Princess Medea is also the niece of Circe and has inherited her aunt’s witchy powers. Medea helps Jason steal the fleece and escapes with him across the Black Sea.
They have many adventures on the way home, many of which involve Medea killing someone. She murders her own brother, when he is sent out to capture her. She tricks the daughters of Jason’s uncle/usurper, King Pelias, into killing their father, which forces her and Jason’s flight to Corinth.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is the best source for what happens after she kills her children and Jason’s new bride. She flees again, this time alone, to Athens where she marries King Aegeus. But killing has become an addiction. She tries to trick Aegeus into murdering his son Theseus, but Aegeus uncovers her plot and banishes her. She is never heard of again.
Further reading:
A good recent translation of Apollonius with a very helpful introduction is by Richard Hunter, in the Oxford World’s Classics series
One innovative discussion of Medea in Apollonius is R. Buxton, “How Medea Moves” in Bartel and Simon (eds), Unbinding Medea (MHRA, 2010). Online: https://classics.domains.skidmore.edu/lit-campus-only/secondary/Apollonius/Buxton%202010.pdf
For Ovid, we concentrate on his treatment of Medea in Metamorphoses VII, 1-424; but he also focuses on her in his Heroides 12 (an imaginary letter from Medea to Jason).
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Medea 1: Child killer
Medea is one of the most intriguing characters in Greek mythology: a sorceress, scion of the sungod, and a serial killer. In the first part of a new series, Mary and Charlotte begin with the incident for which …
Notes de l’épisode
Medea is one of the most intriguing characters in Greek mythology: a sorceress, scion of the sungod, and a serial killer. In the first part of a new series, Mary and Charlotte begin with the incident for which she is most famous: the murder of her own children.
The main source for this version of her story is Euripides’ play of 431 BCE. Mary and Charlotte both have powerful memories of encountering the play for the first time, just at the age when they were first becoming interested in ancient Greece, and how it shaped their understanding of the classics.
In the hands of another, less brilliant playwright, the story could be single-noted. Medea, jilted by Jason (of Argonaut fame), murders his new spouse and her father, then murders her two children with Jason, seemingly out of spite. But Euripides asks us to sympathise with Medea at crucial moments in the play, going out of his way to show how unfair Athenian society was not only to Medea but to all women. The men in the play - King Creon, Jason and the King of Athens - are truly dreadful and Medea is articulate about the prejudices of the patriarchy, the institution of marriage and the domestic responsibilities of wives.
Finally Mary and Charlotte ask why Euripides has Medea kill her own children, because there are other accounts of her story in which this doesn’t happen. Is he asking us to see how far we are willing to go in our sympathies and reflect on our own capacity for violence?
Next week, we’re looking at Medea’s early life and how she helped Jason in his search for the Golden Fleece.
Further reading:
Euripides’ Medea is available in multiple translations, online and in Penguin Classics etc. Charlotte used the one collected in the useful recent anthology of Greek tragedies under the title The Greek Plays, edited by Mary Lefkowtiz and James Romm (Modern Library, 2016).
W. Allan, Euripides Medea (Bristol Classical Press, 2002) is a short introduction to the play .
Edith Hall’s recent book Medea: A Life (Yale, 2026) offers an intriguing ‘biography’ of this mythical figure.
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Exploring Anne Carson
It’s not every year that a classicist wins the Nobel Prize for Literature (in fact, it hasn’t happened since 1959), so Mary and Charlotte interrupt the schedule to reflect on Anne Carson’s extraordinary career …
Notes de l’épisode
It’s not every year that a classicist wins the Nobel Prize for Literature (in fact, it hasn’t happened since 1959), so Mary and Charlotte interrupt the schedule to reflect on Anne Carson’s extraordinary career as both a classicist and a poet.
Carson is most famous as a poet, but her work is rooted in her scholarly essays and translations of Ancient Greek. Mary and Charlotte talk about how her pioneering book Eros the Bittersweet (1986, based on her phd thesis) linked Sappho to love poetry throughout the ages, including Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf - at a time when ‘Comparative Literature’ was a dirty phrase. This book also informed Carson’s own bittersweet love poetry in books like Glass and God and The Beauty of the Husband.
Mary and Charlotte also discuss Autobiography of Red, her bold re-interpretation of Stesichorus’ account of the monster Geryon and Heracles, which not only responds to an Ancient Greek poet most people haven’t heard of, but brings the story into the present day.
Further reading:
We discussed in particular, Eros the Bittersweet (available in many different editions) and Autobiography of Red (available online here: https://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PSPA254/AUTOBIOGRAPHY%20OF%20RED.pdf)
H of H Playbook is published by Jonathan Cape in the UK and by New Directions in the US.
Her full (immense) biography has its own wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Carson_bibliography
The interview with Carson in the Paris Review is here: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5420/the-art-of-poetry-no-88-anne-carson
The 2013 New York Times profile is here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/magazine/the-inscrutable-brilliance-of-anne-carson.html
And in the Iowa Review, here: https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/iowareview/article/id/15965/ (there’s a download link)
Daniel Mendelsohn engaged with Carson on Sappho in the New York Review of Books 14 August, 2003
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Roman Cancel Culture
We think of cancel culture as a 21st-century phenomenon, but it’s been going on since the ancient Egyptians (if not earlier) and the Romans were enthusiastic adopters as a strategy for control. Mary and …
Notes de l’épisode
We think of cancel culture as a 21st-century phenomenon, but it’s been going on since the ancient Egyptians (if not earlier) and the Romans were enthusiastic adopters as a strategy for control. Mary and Charlotte discuss ‘damnatio memoriae’ (condemnation of memory) - the practice of erasing a person from public life and history, usually after their death. (Pedant alert: Romans didn’t use the term ‘damnatio memoriae’ - it was coined much later - and Mary and Charlotte admit straight up that to use the phrase ‘cancel culture’ is a cheeky, and inaccurate, anachronism.)
Further reading:
The classic study of this is Harriet Flower The Art of Forgetting (Univ of NCarolina Press, pb, 2011)
The full text and translation of the senatorial decree on Cn. Piso is in A Cooley, The Senatus Consultum de Cn Pisone patre (Cambridge UP, 2023)
On recarving, see E. R. Varner, From Caligula to Constantine (Uni of Washington Press, pb. 2000).
Charlotte writes about Carausius and the Tullie House inscriptions in Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain (Vintage paperback 2014)
We refer again to the Severan Tondo, now in Berlin: https://search.smb.museum/object/obj-681547
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What did Roman emperors really look like?
There are thousands of surviving busts and sculptures of Roman emperors, but… do we actually know what they looked like? The problem is that the function of these statues was less to do with realistically …
Notes de l’épisode
There are thousands of surviving busts and sculptures of Roman emperors, but… do we actually know what they looked like? The problem is that the function of these statues was less to do with realistically representing the supreme ruler (if at all), and more about asserting his power over the empire. Mary and Charlotte delve into the complexities of representation in ancient Rome.
People across the Roman Empire certainly had an image in mind when they thought about Augustus, because it’s estimated there were over 50,000 sculptures of him – and his profile was on millions of coins. But these idealised images are very different to Suetonius’ descriptions of an almost toothless, blotchy-faced man with various skin conditions. And, of course, Suetonius had his own agenda when it came to describing the emperors of the past. So where does the truth lie? The buff hero of sculpture, the dermatologically fascinating figure of Suetonius, somewhere in between, or none of the above?
There are clues, from documents and other sources, which suggest some attempts at resemblance were made in official portraiture - for some emperors at least. And a remarkable surviving painting of Septimius Severus suggests he may have been black, despite the lack of any written commentary on this subject. But even here… the skin tone may have indicated patriarchal seniority rather than ethnicity. As ever, if we leave you more unsure of your history then when you started, we feel we’re doing our job!
Further reading:
Mary has written about Roman imperial portraiture in several places. Try her Emperor of Rome (Profile, pb. 2024), especially the chapter “Face to Face”; or The Twelve Caesars (Princeton UP, pb, 2023) (most of the book is concerned with modern images of emperors, but it starts with Roman versions of emperors)
An important turning point in modern studies of Augustus’ portraits was P Zanker’s The Power of Images (UMichigan Press, pb, 1990)
One useful discussion of Hadrian’s beard (and there are many others) is C. Vout’s “What's in a beard? Rethinking Hadrian's Hellenism” in S.Goldbill and R. Osborne, Rethinking Revolutions (Cambridge UP, pb, 2010)
Lea Cline and Nathan Elkins (eds), The Oxford handbook of Roman imagery and iconography. (Oxford UP, pb., 2025) offers a series of more theoretical approaches.
The Severan Tondo is in the Antikensammlung in Berlin. Here is the object webpage: https://search.smb.museum/en/object/obj-681547
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The Bayeux Tapestry: Britain’s Lost Latin masterpiece
Mary and Charlotte delve into the stitching of the Bayeux Tapestry, a 224-foot long narrative embroidery charting William the Conqueror’s successful invasion of England in 1066. Little is certain about the …
Notes de l’épisode
Mary and Charlotte delve into the stitching of the Bayeux Tapestry, a 224-foot long narrative embroidery charting William the Conqueror’s successful invasion of England in 1066. Little is certain about the creation of the textile, but it was likely commissioned by one of the Norman victors, Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who was granted lands in Kent by his half brother William the Conqueror, shortly after the conquest, and it is widely believed the actual labour was primarily done by women in Canterbury. An English story told by English craftspeople - no wonder England is so excited about its temporary visit to the British Museum.
But what does the Bayeux Tapestry have to do with ancient Greece and Rome? Well, quite a lot actually. There are 338 Latin words on the tapestry, providing added context to the images. The words say things like ‘HIC HAROLD REX INTERFECTUS EST’ (Here King Harold was killed). Those words also give names to participants lower down the social scale, like Turold and Wadard, who were retainers of Bishop Odo and - who knows? - might have been the Laurel and Hardy of their day.
The Latin words provide a vital piece of evidence to the ‘Made in England’ argument because the Latin is particular (and contains one or two telling inaccuracies). It includes some Norman variations, but also - and here’s the smoking gun - Anglo-Saxon variations too, suggesting that both Norman and Anglo-Saxon hands and minds were involved at various stages. Surely the greatest English-French collab until the Channel Tunnel?
The Latin language is one classical presence in the tapestry, but so too is the narrative form. Scholars have identified several ways in which the tapestry seems to refer to and even verbally echo Virgil’s Aeneid. There are other resonances too, such as the presence of Halley’s Comet (not called Halley’s Comet at the time, of course), which passed close to Earth in 1066. The sighting of a comet early in the Aeneid is one of inciting incidents that sets Aeneas off on his long journey to Italy.
Further reading:
A fantastically detailed and well informed series of podcasts from History Extra brings together scholars to talk about the tapestry in 5 episodes - highly recommended if you are lucky enough to have bagged tickets for the British Museum exhibition
The Bayeux museum has a wonderful version of the complete tapestry online: https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/discover-the-bayeux-tapestry/explore-online/
There is a vast bibliography on the tapestry itself. A major study has been produced by the BM to accompany the show, with more reading suggestions than any could need! The Bayeux Tapestry, edited by Sue Brunning et al (British Museum Press, 2026)
The studies of the Latin itself are usually very technical. One of the more approachable is: Gale Owen-Crocker, "The embroidered word: text in the Bayeux Tapestry." , in Signs on the edge: space, text and margin in medieval manuscripts, edited by Sarah Keefer & Rolf Bremmer, (Rodopi, 2007).
On the influence of Virgil in particular, there are two notable articles in journals: N. Rollason and M Lewis, “Harold-as-Aeneas”, Greece and Rome 2020.
T. A Heslop, “Regarding the spectators of the Bayeux Tapestry”, Art History 2009
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Classic Chats: Daniel Mendelsohn on translating the Odyssey
Mary and Charlotte talk to Daniel Mendelsohn, one of America’s most revered classicists, whose new translation of the Odyssey was published last year. Daniel’s decision to translate the Odyssey occurred rather …
Notes de l’épisode
Mary and Charlotte talk to Daniel Mendelsohn, one of America’s most revered classicists, whose new translation of the Odyssey was published last year.
Daniel’s decision to translate the Odyssey occurred rather unusually. In 2011, his 82-year-old father decided to attend his weekly Odyssey seminar at Bard College. In his memoir An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic (2017), Daniel recounts how through his father’s eyes he came to see the Odyssey differently - as well as their own relationship. In the book, he translated short passages which led to a commission from University of Chicago Press to translate the entire poem.
Daniel talks about the decisions he made in his translation - and, of course, how he tackled the word polytropos. He also talks about the response to his less than enthusiastic review of Nolan’s adaptation, why it’s nevertheless been a great moment for the Odyssey, and why literature is sometimes best when it’s NOT relatable.
Further reading:
Slightly confusingly, Mendelsohn’s Odyssey is published by University of Chicago Press in the USA and by Penguin Classics in the UK (adding to Penguin’s array of Odyssey translations).
Daniel has his own website: https://www.danielmendelsohn.com/ with links to many of his great classical (and other) essays.
Emily Wilson reviewed An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and and Epic in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/13/an-odyssey-a-father-a-son-and-an-epic-by-daniel-mendelsohn-review
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How Homer’s Odyssey Conquered the English-speaking World
Last episode, Mary and Charlotte looked at how Homer’s Odyssey was reinterpreted in the Ancient World by writers like Euripides, Virgil and Ovid. In this episode, they show how it shaped English fiction - from …
Notes de l’épisode
Last episode, Mary and Charlotte looked at how Homer’s Odyssey was reinterpreted in the Ancient World by writers like Euripides, Virgil and Ovid. In this episode, they show how it shaped English fiction - from Shakespeare through to Madeline Miller. They are joined by Jonty Claypole - Instant Classics producer and co-host of the Secret Life of Books podcast.
One of the great turning points of English literature was George Chapman’s translations of Homer in the 1590s and 1600s which introduced a new generation to Homer’s writing - including Shakespeare who seems to respond to Chapman (and Homer) in plays like Troilus and Cressida and The Tempest.
A hundred years later, the novel emerges with a series of books - Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews - which are implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, responses to The Odyssey. Homer also inspired some of the greatest poems in the English language, including John Keats’ On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer and Tennyson’s Ulysses.
Finally, Mary, Charlotte and Jonty look at how The Odyssey continues to inspire revision and reinterpretation - whether Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Derek Walcott’s Omeros, Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad or Madeline Miller’s Circe.
Further reading:
Richard Holmes’ recent book The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief (Harper Collins, 2025) contains a brilliant description of Tennyson’s Ulysses and the circumstances behind its competition.
Several modern versions of Homer are discussed by Henry Power in his Homer-Haunted: the many after-lives of an ancient poet (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Edith Hall explores how the various themes of the Odyssey have been adapted by many modern authors in The Return of Ulysses: A cultural history of Homer’s Odyssey (free online).
Jonty’s podcast is Secret Life of Books, which he co-hosts with Sophie Gee. Recent episodes go into more depth on some of the topics above - including whole episodes on Tennyson’s Ulysses and James Joyce’s Ulysses.
There is a free online text of Chapman’s Homer here
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How Homer's Odyssey Conquered the Ancient World
Ever since the Odyssey was composed, people have retold the story, played with it or used it as a departure point for similar or related stories. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte look at what happened next …
Notes de l’épisode
Ever since the Odyssey was composed, people have retold the story, played with it or used it as a departure point for similar or related stories. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte look at what happened next. How the Odyssey inspired other writers long before Christopher Nolan thought of adapting it for the big screen.
As now, the ancients were drawn to certain episodes more than others. One was the cyclops, who becomes the unlikely subject of a satyr play (think Benny Hill sex comedy) by the playwright Euripides in the 5th century BCE. two hundred years later, the poet Theocritus imagines the cyclops as an articulate, love-sick shepherd. Meanwhile, Apollonius of Rhodes responded to the epic scope of Homer’s story with the Argonautica - a famous story about Jason and his crew of Argonauts searching for the Golden Fleece.
Roman authors were equally drawn to the Odyssey. Virgil used it as a template for a foundation myth for Rome - a Trojan prince leaves Troy, experiences various adventures, including a trip to the underworld, and ends by founding Rome. Ovid, who takes a rather less referential approach to the Odyssey in his Metamorphoses, has a brilliant scene where he retells the Circe story from the point of view of Odysseus’ men as they are turned into pigs.
Further reading
The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes is available in World’s Classics and Penguin Classics English translations
Plutarch’s Gryllus is available online in translation
Theocritus’s Idylls are available in translation online - Idyll 11 is the Cyclops poem
Ovid’s Metamorphoses can be found in many translations, and also a decent one online. Circe and her pigs appear in book 14
Virgil’s Aeneid – there are many recent translations including by Sarah Ruden from Yale and online.
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The Vestal Virgins - just how virginal were they?
Few elements of ancient Rome have inspired quite such lurid speculation – by the Romans as well as ourselves – as the vestal virgins. Mary and Charlotte enter the (imaginary) temple of Vesta to separate fact …
Notes de l’épisode
Few elements of ancient Rome have inspired quite such lurid speculation – by the Romans as well as ourselves – as the vestal virgins. Mary and Charlotte enter the (imaginary) temple of Vesta to separate fact from myth.
The Vestal Virgins were six (at any given time) priestesses who tended the eternal flame at the Temple of Vesta - goddess of hearth, home and family. As their name suggests, they weren’t allowed to have sex, although could retire from duties (and marry) at the age of 30. Maintaining chastity was evidently a challenge of the job - or perceived as one - because several vestals were put to death for breaking their vows over the centuries. In exchange for this life of piety, they enjoyed certain privileges - such as being able to sit in the front row of the colosseum - and were power-brokers in Rome, even looking after Julius Caesar’s will (for any Dune fans, think Bene Gesserit!)
Charlotte grills Mary about an early article she wrote on the Vestals in 1980, in which she argued that the role of the virgins wasn’t to adhere to traditional notions of female purity, but actually to challenge them - the vestals shared privileges unique to married women, unmarried women and men. They were both gendered and ungendered, which is what makes them so compelling. Fifteen years later, Mary wrote another article which took (slight) issue with her earlier one, questioning to what extent the Romans even had ‘traditional notions’ of gender.
Further reading
Mary’s landmark (this is Charlotte’s editorialising!) article on the Vestal Virgins (“The sexual status of Vestal Virgins”) was published in the Journal of Roman Studies 1980; her reassessment is in R Hawley and B Levick (eds), Women in Antiquity: New Assessments (Routledge, pb, 1995)
Booklength studies of the Vestals include:
Robin Wildfang, Rome’s Vestal Virgins (Routledge, pb, 2006)
S. A. Takacs, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls and Matrons (UTexas Press, pb, 2008)
Ariadne Staples, From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins (Routledge, pb, 2012)
For their portraits: Molly Lindner, Portraits of the Vestal Virgins (UMichigan Press, 2015)
At the time she wrote her first article on the Vestals, Mary was very influenced by Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (Routledge, pb, reissued 2002; originally published 1966)
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Classic Chats: Robert Harris on ‘Agrippa’
Mary and Charlotte talk to best-selling author Robert Harris about his new novel ‘Agrippa’. Robert Harris has published 16 novels, of which nine have been made into films, including The Ghost Writer, Enigma and …
Notes de l’épisode
Mary and Charlotte talk to best-selling author Robert Harris about his new novel ‘Agrippa’. Robert Harris has published 16 novels, of which nine have been made into films, including The Ghost Writer, Enigma and the Oscar-winning papal thriller Conclave. Five of Robert’s novels are set in Ancient Rome: the Cicero Trilogy, Pompeii and Agrippa.
Robert discovered Agrippa while researching the Cicero Trilogy and became increasingly interested in this decisive, but largely forgotten figure, whose legacy is everywhere in Ancient Rome. He describes what interested him in the story: the friendship between the aristocratic Augustus and his plebeian sidekick, and the tension that inevitably developed between the two. He compares Augustus and Agrippa to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, only with higher stakes.
Further reading:
We covered the history of this period in the last episode, with further reading in the shownotes.
If you haven’t read Robert’s other Roman novels, they are all available in paperback:
Pompeii (Arrow pb, 2009) (A younger Mary Beard “fact-checked for the hard-back version of this – though didn’t find many mistakes!)
The Cicero Trilogy, Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator (Arrow pb, 2009, 2010, 2016)
Aprippa is published in hardback by Hutchinson Heinemann, 27 August, 2026
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Marcus Agrippa: Power behind the throne
Of all the Roman Emperors, Augustus has the reputation of being the most… well… august. That is to say, competent, level-headed and judicious. Not to mention one of the few who died of natural causes. But …
Notes de l’épisode
Of all the Roman Emperors, Augustus has the reputation of being the most… well… august. That is to say, competent, level-headed and judicious. Not to mention one of the few who died of natural causes. But, according to Mary and Charlotte, the main reason Augustus got anything done is because he had a secret weapon in the form of Marcus Agrippa.
We don’t know much about Marcus Agrippa’s early life, because he didn’t come from the aristocracy, but by the time he was thirty Augustus couldn’t do much without him. There is evidence that Agrippa managed the battles for which Augustus is famous, including the Battle of Actium, while Augustus pulled another sickie. When not defeating Rome’s enemies, Agrippa put a great deal of energy into building works. He constructed baths, temples (including the original Pantheon) and aqueducts. There are even stories of him getting onto a boat and rowing amidst the faeces of the Cloaca Maxima - Rome’s sewage system - to oversee improvements.
While Agrippa did not come from the upper classes, he ended up there. He is buried with the imperial family in the mausoleum of Augustus (which you can still visit) and his great-grandson Nero became emperor. Perhaps, when we call some great figure ‘august’, we should call them ‘agrippan’ instead!
Further reading:
Lindsay Powell, Marcus Agrippa: Right-hand man of Caesar Augustus (Pen and Sword, pb, 2023) is the fullest recent biography of Agrippa (otherwise, in English, you have to go back to the 1930s)
For the archaeology, the Pantheon in Rome remains Agrippa’s greatest and most visible monument, with his name prominently displayed (albeit rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian, probably to a new plan).
The probable residence of Agrippa and Julia in Rome lies underneath the later, Renaissance, Villa Farnesina near the Tiber bank. Both were exquisitely decorated. You can still see Raphael's designs in the later villa. Most of the major ancient paintings from Agrippa’s property have been removed to the Palazzo Massimo museum. The archaeology is briefly discussed here: https://www.digitalaugustanrome.org/records/villa-farnesina/
Paintings from another villa owned by Agrippa, at Boscotrecase outside Pompeii, can be seen in the Met Museum in New York.
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BONUS Emily Wilson on translating the Odyssey
A few months back we spoke to Emily Wilson on our subscriber series Exploring the Odyssey. Emily has been in the news recently, partly because her acclaimed 2017 translation of The Odyssey inspired Christopher …
Notes de l’épisode
A few months back we spoke to Emily Wilson on our subscriber series Exploring the Odyssey. Emily has been in the news recently, partly because her acclaimed 2017 translation of The Odyssey inspired Christopher Nolan, and partly because her criticisms of Nolan’s film have sparked debate. So we thought we would share the episode here on Instant Classics.
In the episode, Emily tells Mary and Charlotte why translating from Ancient Greek to modern English is so difficult, the choices she had to make from the outset and the challenges she encountered once underway.
In a surprise revelation, Emily confesses that she enjoyed the process so much she has decided to do it all over again and will ultimately publish a SECOND translation of The Odyssey - which is the equivalent of Odysseus spending ten years getting home only to decide he enjoyed the experience so much he’s going to repeat the whole trip.
Further reading:
One of Mary’s favourite ancient “reflections” on the story of Odysseus (inc the Laestrygonians) is the so-called “Odyssey landscapes” found in Rome, an ancient depiction of this part of the Odyssey story.
If you are interested in digging down into different translations, Patrick Reardon has a useful online essay, which compares passages of Emily’s translation with Daniel Mendelsohn’s and Richmond Lattimore’s.
The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson, is published in paperback by Norton
Her volume of essays, Crossing the Wine-dark Sea, is published by Profile Books.
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Classic Chats: Charlotte Higgins on Ukrainian Lessons
Mary talks to Charlotte about her book Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War. For the last four years, Charlotte has returned repeatedly to Ukraine to report on the cultural life of the nation as it defends …
Notes de l’épisode
Mary talks to Charlotte about her book Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War. For the last four years, Charlotte has returned repeatedly to Ukraine to report on the cultural life of the nation as it defends itself against Russia. Part of Putin’s attempts to legitimise the war lies in an age-old argument that Ukraine is simply an extension, or part of, Russia itself. Art and culture have always played a critical role in Ukraine’s identity and self-determinism –and never more so than now.
Charlotte talks about what first took her to Ukraine in 2022, some of what she has learned over the last four years, and how reading the classics, especially Homer and Greek tragedy, have helped her make sense of the current situation. And Mary and Charlotte discuss Ukraine’s classical past: histories of Ukraine often start with Herodotus and his account of the Scythians of the steppe; and the Black Sea coast, and Crimea, are dotted with some of the earliest Greek “colonies” or trading emporia.
Further reading
Charlotte’s book Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War (Cape) is published on 20 August.
Charlotte and Mary also mentioned Oleksandr Mykhed’s book The Language of War (Penguin, paperback, 2026), and Cassandra by Lesia Ukrainka (HURI, 2023)
On the classical connections of Ukraine, there is a good introduction to the ruins of Olbia. Euripides’ fifth-century play, Iphigeneia in Tauris (Iphigeneia among the Taurians) is set in the Crimean peninsula (English translations widely available in Oxford World’s Classics, Penguin Classics etc).
A BBC news article about the return of Scythian artefacts to Kyiv after a decade of court hearings.
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BONUS: Which Translation of the Odyssey should I read?
With the world gripped by Odyssey fever, Mary and Charlotte keep being asked the same question: which translation should I read? So here is a quick bonus episode to help you decide. Mary and Charlotte cover the …
Notes de l’épisode
With the world gripped by Odyssey fever, Mary and Charlotte keep being asked the same question: which translation should I read? So here is a quick bonus episode to help you decide.
Mary and Charlotte cover the waterfront of the modern translations (Emily Wilson and Daniel Mendelsohn), but also celebrate some past classics, like E.V. Rieu’s. In the end, the simple answer is don’t worry - work with what you’ve got most easily at hand. Any translation that has been printed by a major publisher has its merits.
Further reading:
The two recent translations we discuss at the start are:
Emily Wilson (translator), The Odyssey (W. W. Norton and co)
Daniel Mendelsohn (translator), The Odyssey (Chicago UP and Penguin Classics)
Both are available in paperback.
Earlier translations which you might enjoy, and trust, include::
Richmond Lattimore (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
Robert Fagles (Penguin Classics)
Robert Fitzgerald (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Peter Green (University of California Press)
E. V. Rieu (Penguin Classics)
Charlotte referred to Matthew Arnold’s lectures from the 1860s, “On Translating Homer”
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Classical Beach Reads
Summer is here (in the northern hemisphere at least) and with many listeners eyeing trips to the beach, Mary and Charlotte are here with some cracking beach read suggestions. Move over Carley Fortune, Ann …
Notes de l’épisode
Summer is here (in the northern hemisphere at least) and with many listeners eyeing trips to the beach, Mary and Charlotte are here with some cracking beach read suggestions. Move over Carley Fortune, Ann Patchett, and Tana French and make way for Herodotus, Lucian and Longus.
Charlotte does a hard sell for Herodotus’ Histories (all 700 pages) and Ovid’s (mercifully shorter) Heroides. Mary pushes the science-fiction humour of Lucian’s Selected Dialogues (while acknowledging it could do with a better title) and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe. Turning to modern books set in the ancient world, Charlotte champions Colm Tóibín’s House of Names, while Mary chooses Samuel Butler’s The Authoress of the Odyssey - which, published in 1897, pushes the definition of ‘modern’ a little, but we don’t expect anything less from a Cambridge don!
Finally, something for the kids… Mary is a fan of Caroline Lawrence’s Roman Mysteries and Charlotte feels equally enthusiastic about Percy Jackson.
Charlotte’s recommendations:
Herodotus, The Histories comes in many translations – Robin Waterfield for Oxford World’s Classics, and Tom Holland for Penguin Classics
Ovid, Heroides, also has translations in the World’s Classics and Penguin Classics series
Colm Tóibín, House of Names, Penguin, 2018
Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Puffin, 2013
Mary’s recommendations:
For Lucian’s Dialogues, the handiest translation is a selection of some of the best of his satire in Oxford World’s Classics. Peter Thonemann is producing a new translation of the whole lot in the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard UP), including the original Greek text too. Two volumes have appeared so far.
Longus, Daphnis and Chloe is also published in World’s Classics, and in Penguin Classics (with other works of ancient Greek fiction), and on its own in the Penguin Little Black Classics series.
Samuel Butler’s Authoress of the Odyssey is available in various modern reprints (often independently published) listed in online bookstores
Caroline Lawrence’s series of Roman Mysteries is published by Orion.
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Classic Chats: Count Binface (Bonus episode)
In this Clacton byelection special, Count Binface takes a break from the campaign trail and zooms in from his spaceship to chat with Mary and Charlotte about his deep interest in Ancient Greece and Rome. While …
Notes de l’épisode
In this Clacton byelection special, Count Binface takes a break from the campaign trail and zooms in from his spaceship to chat with Mary and Charlotte about his deep interest in Ancient Greece and Rome.
While denying all connection with an earthling called Jon Harvey who studied Classics at Oxford, Binface reveals the lessons he has learned by studying classical writers, like the Greek satirist Lucian, the failings of Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism, and his views on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
All of which begs the question: will Count Binface make compulsory Latin in state primary schools a central pledge in his manifesto? Listen to find out!
Further reading:
If you are confused about who Count Binface is, there’s a piece in the Guardian that explains it all…
Binface’s review of the Odyssey (paywalled)
And a link to Jon Harvey’s broadcasting including his BBC Radio 4 series, Could an Ancient Athenian Fix Britain?
For all the candidates in this byelection: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckge923jk3vo
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Classic Chats: Tom Hiddleston on Pompeii
Last week, actor Tom Hiddleston launched his new series - not the further adventures of Loki (at least, not yet), but Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston. Mary and Charlotte talk to Tom who reveals his …
Notes de l’épisode
Last week, actor Tom Hiddleston launched his new series - not the further adventures of Loki (at least, not yet), but Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston. Mary and Charlotte talk to Tom who reveals his life-long fascination with the ancient world, including a degree in Classics at Cambridge where he attended the lectures of one Professor Mary Beard.
Tom talks about the impact Mary’s teaching had on him and how that fascination for the Classics has never gone away. His new series, available to watch on Disney+ and National Geographic, focuses on several real people and the decisions they made in the hours before the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. It draws on new research and technology to uncover the hidden lives of some of those who survived - and some who didn’t.
Further reading
Mary Beard’s book Pompeii is strongly recommended by Charlotte! And there is a recent book by Jess Venner, The Lost Voices of Pompeii (Harper Collins, 2026), which picks up and develops some of the same themes.
In one of his first roles, Tom appeared in the Cambridge Greek play. You can find out more about this marvellous institution here: https://www.classics.cam.ac.uk/prospective/undergraduate/greek-play
and here: https://www.cambridgegreekplay.classics.cam.ac.uk/
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Christopher Nolan's Odyssey 3: The Pedants Revolt
Last week, Mary and Charlotte gave their instant verdict on Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey only hours after emerging from the premiere, dazzled somewhat by the proximity of so much A-list talent. A week later… …
Notes de l’épisode
Last week, Mary and Charlotte gave their instant verdict on Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey only hours after emerging from the premiere, dazzled somewhat by the proximity of so much A-list talent. A week later… they unleash their inner nerds to quibble with some of the decisions and omissions Nolan made in adapting Homer.
Their biggest gripe is the treatment of the female characters. Nausicaa and the ghost of Odysseus’ mother didn’t make the edit. Helen of Troy is robbed of agency and becomes a victim. The Gods are mostly cut and there’s even the implication that some of the more magical elements of the story might simply be a figment of the imagination resulting from too much lotus eating. Odysseus himself has become a bit of a goody two-shoes, only lying when he really has to and wracked by guilt of all the things he did at Troy, unlike Homer’s Odysseus who doesn’t think twice about ransacking innocent people.
It’s not all moan moan moan though. Who can disapprove of the enhanced role that Odysseus’ loyal dog Argus is given, complete with his own backstory, and the power of the canine performance? Give that dog an Oscar. Or better yet, a nice meaty bone.
Mary and Charlotte recommend:
No more reading than we suggested last week (except to urge people back to Homer itself). BUT if you haven't seen the film, you can see Argus the dog here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sxgHV-BmNrI
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Christopher Nolan's Odyssey 2: Instant Verdict
Mary and Charlotte emerge from the premiere of The Odyssey, pausing only for a night’s rest, before regathering in the morning with strong coffees to give their instant verdict on Christopher Nolan’s summer …
Notes de l’épisode
Mary and Charlotte emerge from the premiere of The Odyssey, pausing only for a night’s rest, before regathering in the morning with strong coffees to give their instant verdict on Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster.
Headlines
Winners: Complicated, twisty-turny timelines; multiculturalism; Samantha Morton; Charlotte Higgins
Losers: Feminism; humour; The Gods; Mary Beard
To find out what all this means, listen to the episode!
Further reading (and watching):
The basic message here is “go watch the movie”. Mary is perhaps less keen overall, but still urges you to go see. It is also worth having a look at (and comparing) Ubert Pasolni’s The Return which is focussed on the second half of the poem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_(2024_film)
Charlotte mentioned Colm Tóibín’s novel House of Names.
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Christopher Nolan's Odyssey 1: What you need to know before you go
Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey - the most eagerly anticipated event since Odysseus spied the shores of Ithaca - is almost with us at last. Mary and Charlotte have been exploring Homer’s epic over …
Notes de l’épisode
Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey - the most eagerly anticipated event since Odysseus spied the shores of Ithaca - is almost with us at last. Mary and Charlotte have been exploring Homer’s epic over the last year in the Instant Classics Book Club, but if you’re time poor or just want a little refresher, then you’ll find the basics in this pre-screening primer.
In the first half, they run through what actually happens in The Odyssey, as Odysseus, a twisty-turny man, makes his twisty-turny way back home. In the second, they pull out some of the big themes from the book - the problems of homecoming, post-traumatic disorder, the cost of war, growing up, fidelity, colonisation, and the thin line between so-called civilisation and so-called barbarism. This poem really does have everything, yet manages to be poetic and hugely entertaining while about it. In theory, it’s the perfect material for Christopher Nolan, who has long been fascinated with non-linear story-telling, the effects of war, and journeys. But whether he succeeds will be the subject of next week’s episode…
Further reading
Charlotte and Mary usually quote from Emily Wilson’s translation of the poem (W. W. Norton, 2018), but another good recent translation is by Daniel Mendelsohn (Chicago UP and Penguin Classics, 2025). But there are many translations on offer which will not mislead – so do not get too anxious about getting the “right” one.
Approachable introductions to the poem include:
Barbara Graziosi, Homer: a very short introduction (Oxford UP, 2019)
Edith Hall, The Return of Ulysses (I. B. Tauris, 2012)
Elton Barker and Joel Christensen, Homer: a beginner’s guide (Oneworld, 2013)
Moses Finley, The World of Odysseus is an old favourite (reissued by New York Review of Books, 2002)
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USA 250: “I’m Spartacus!”
Mary and Charlotte welcome Professor Maria Wyke back on the show to talk about two of the most famous words in cinema: “I’m Spartacus!” Hollywood has always had an obsession with Ancient Rome. So much so, the …
Notes de l’épisode
Mary and Charlotte welcome Professor Maria Wyke back on the show to talk about two of the most famous words in cinema: “I’m Spartacus!” Hollywood has always had an obsession with Ancient Rome. So much so, the Roman Epic - or sword-and-sandal - is a cinematic genre in its own right. Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier and a host of other stars, is perhaps the towering achievement. But what is Spartacus really about?
It was adapted by Dalton Trumbo from Howard Fast’s 1951 novel. Both men had fallen foul of the House Un-American Activities Committee and were blacklisted from Hollywood. Their names were proudly displayed at the start of the film, marking the decline of the Committee’s influence on American culture. In some ways, the refusal by Spartacus’ slave army to betray their leader to the Roman authorities is a message about free speech and solidarity. The character of black slave Draba who defies white supremacist authority is also a statement on the Civil Rights movement. But the brilliance of Spartacus is that it defies easy interpretation and deliberately plays with themes and symbols - not least in the crucifixion scene at the end of the film.
Mary, Charlotte and Maria move forwards a few decades to Gladiator - and argue the power of that film is the way it similarly seems to, but doesn’t quite, push a moral message. Gladiator 2 on the other hand…
Further reading
Our wonderful guest Maria Wyke’s book Projecting the Past (Routlege, 1997) has a fascinating chapter on Spartacus
Howard Fast’s novel Spartacus, on which Kubrick’s film was based, is on the Internet Archive.
See also:
A. Futtrell, “Seeing Red”, in Sandra Joshel et al. (eds), Imperial Projections (Johns Hopkins UP, 2001)
Martin Winkler, Spartacus: Film and History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007)
Martin Winkler, Gladiator: Film and History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004)
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USA 250: Building a new Rome
Shortly after its formation, the United States of America initiated a building program for both state and federal governments, turning to Ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration. As Mary and Charlotte discover… …
Notes de l’épisode
Shortly after its formation, the United States of America initiated a building program for both state and federal governments, turning to Ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration. As Mary and Charlotte discover… In-between duties like writing the Declaration of Independence, acting as Minister to France and being President, Thomas Jefferson found time to make inspiration trips to study Roman architecture in France. Although he didn’t design the Capitol in Washington DC, he set the tone with his designs for Monticello (his Virginia home) as well as the University of Virginia and Virginia State Capitol.
Over the decades, other influences gained greater prominence - whether nostalgic styles like the gothic or the modernity of Frank Lloyd Wright. But neo-classicism is on the rise once again. According to President Trump’s executive order Making Architecture Beautiful Again, ‘classical’ is the preferred style for federal buildings - in particular, the plan for a ‘United States Triumphal Arch’.
Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:
Donald Trump’s executive order on classical architecture.
Edwin Heathcote, the architecture critic of the Financial Times, on triumphal arches and DC.
The DC Commission of Fine Arts have published the schemes for Trump’s arch: https://www.cfa.gov/system/files/meeting-materials/1-CFA-16APR26-1-EOP_DOI_Arch-pres%20%5BApr9%5D.pdf
The first scheme for the Navy Memorial, including the triumphal arch is shown here: https://escholarship.org/content/qt9r40k5hd/qt9r40k5hd_noSplash_87482e06371178d8fcd9bb449eb06f39.pdf
A useful website for Jefferson’s classical architecture: https://www.monticello.org/jefferson-and/architecture
The temporary triumphal arch in DC is pictured here: https://ggwash.org/view/40678/dc-once-had-its-own-arc-de-triomphe
The detailed history of triumphal arches, from antiquity to now, is the subject of Peter Howell, The Triumphal Arch (Unicorn, 2021)
Mary’s The Roman Triumph (Harvard UP, pb, 2009) discusses the Roman significance of these arches, and the incident with Pompey’s elephants.
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USA 250: President Jackson and the Emperor’s Tomb
Last year, Mary spent nine months in Washington D.C. During this time, she became interested in visual iconography and real objects of Ancient Greece and Rome on display in the city’s museums and streets. In …
Notes de l’épisode
Last year, Mary spent nine months in Washington D.C. During this time, she became interested in visual iconography and real objects of Ancient Greece and Rome on display in the city’s museums and streets. In this episode, she tells Charlotte about her fascination with a sarcophagus in the Smithsonian collection, which was believed once to have held the remains of Emperor Alexander Severus.
In the 1830s, a US navy commander based in the Mediterranean ‘acquired’ the sarcophagus in Lebanon and sent it back home with the suggestion it could be used as a tomb for President Andrew Jackson. This forced the question: was it appropriate for an American president to be buried in a Roman sarcophagus? On one hand, the USA liked to position itself as the inheritor of Roman values. On the other, Severus, who became Emperor after his cousin Elagabalus (a favourite of the show) was bumped off, was a despot, even if a comparatively benign one. The problem was heightened by the fact Jackson was frequently accused of acting like a ‘Caesar’. The conundrum of the sarcophagus went right to the height of the tensions - then as now - in the USA’s idolisation of Ancient Rome.
As Mary reveals, there are many twists and turns to this story, which ends - bizarrely enough - with Peter Fonda’s Harley-Davison from the film Easy Rider. How are the two connected? Listen to find out!
Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:
Mary wrote about this sarcophagus a few years back in the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/a-tomb-not-fit-for-a-president-11634356860 (it’s pay-walled, but the free bit gives you a great picture of a couple admiring it); and it was the object that book-ended her Twelve Caesars: Images of power from the ancient world to the modern (Princeton UP, pb, 2023).
See also, from the Smithsonian: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/andrew-jackson-populist-even-deathbed-180962124/
The Roman archaeology of the sarcophagus: J B Ward Perkins, “Four Garland Sarcophagi in America”, in the journal Archaeology for 1958.
Andrew Jackson (and his Caesarism) features in the first chapter of Margaret Malamud’s Ancient Rome and Modern America (Wily Blackwell, 2009)
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USA 250: America’s Roman Revolution
In case you haven’t noticed… the USA is celebrating a special anniversary. Mary and Charlotte talk to one of America’s leading scholars of ancient Rome and its modern reception, Joy Connolly, about why so much …
Notes de l’épisode
In case you haven’t noticed… the USA is celebrating a special anniversary. Mary and Charlotte talk to one of America’s leading scholars of ancient Rome and its modern reception, Joy Connolly, about why so much of the struggle for independence deployed the words, images and sometimes actual clothing of the Ancient Romans.
They discuss George Washington’s production of the tragedy of Cato in the revolutionary army and Joseph Warren’s donning of a toga to incite the rebels. They ask why the Declaration of Independence and Constitution drew so heavily on Roman writers like Cicero and Virgil, why Cincinnati was named after the authoritarian Cincinnatus, and to what extent the Republicans and Democrats resemble the classical ideologies they named themselves after. Most of all, the big question: did the Founders know that Virgil’s words e pluribus unum (out of many, one), which became a rallying cry for the merging of the colonies into one, actually came from a recipe for cheese spread?
Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:
Joy has written about the use of classics in the revolutionary period and later in: “Classical Education and the Early American Democratic Style” in S. Stephens and P. Vasunia (eds), Classics and National Cultures (Oxford UP, 2010) and “Past Sovereignty: Roman Freedom for Modern Revolutionaries” in Basil Duffalo (ed), Roman Error (Oxford UP, 2017). You can read more about her work at ACLS.
There are many useful introductions to different aspects of the Romanness of the American Revolution. We have enjoyed:
C. J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics (Harvard UP, pb, 1995)
M. Malamud, Ancient Rome and Modern America (Wiley Blackwell, pb, 2008)
M. N. S. Sellars, “The Roman Republic and the French and American Revolutions", in H. Flower (ed), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic (Cambridge UP, pb, 2004)
More focussed on cultural influence than any directly political impact is W. L. Vance, America’s Rome (Yale UP, 1990)
An article on Joseph Warren’s toga.
A 1903 letter to the New York Times discussing the tracing of “e pluribus unum” to “Moretum”, the poem once attributed to Virgil that offers a recipe for herby, garlicky cheese spread.
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Theme music: Casey Gibson
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What did the Romans dream about?
Nearly 2000 years before Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, a sage in Ephesus (now in Turkey) wrote a book whose title translates as… The Interpretation of Dreams. Armed with Artemidorus’ …
Notes de l’épisode
Nearly 2000 years before Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, a sage in Ephesus (now in Turkey) wrote a book whose title translates as… The Interpretation of Dreams. Armed with Artemidorus’ book, Mary and Charlotte dive into the surreal and revealing dreamscape of the Ancients.
If you’ve ever had a dream about flying or losing teeth or sex with a stranger, well… Artemidorus has a view about what this really means. Today, we might find his interpretations a little too neat and prescriptive, but they provide a fascinating insight into life on the edge of the Roman empire, including what people chatted (or sang) about at the public baths, the prevalence of mice in the home, and the hopes, aspirations and fears of household slaves.
As with our episodes on Roman joke and cook books, we discover that the Ancients were simultaneously more like us and more dissimilar than we might expect.
Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:
The best translation of Artemidorus is by Martin Hammond in the Oxford World’s Classics series (OUP,pb, 2020) with an introduction by Peter Thonemann.
Thonemann discusses the text and its context in his An Ancient Dream Manual: Artemidorus’ The Interpretation of Dreams (OUP, 2020)
A classic article is by Simon Price, “The future of dreams: from Freud to Artemidorus”, originally published in Past and Present for 1986, reprinted in R Osborne (ed), Studies in Greek and Roman Society (Cambridge UP, pb, 2012)
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Theme music: Casey Gibson
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Cleopatra 5: Cleopatra on Screen
Mary and Charlotte talk to Professor Maria Wyke, classicist and film historian, about Cleopatra’s rebirth on the screen. By far the most famous Cleopatra film is the 1963 epic starring Elizabeth Taylor and …
Notes de l’épisode
Mary and Charlotte talk to Professor Maria Wyke, classicist and film historian, about Cleopatra’s rebirth on the screen. By far the most famous Cleopatra film is the 1963 epic starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton - at the time the most expensive film ever made and with a steamy on-set love affair between the two stars to match that of the characters they were playing. Almost as brilliant, in its way, is the parody made the following year - Carry on Cleo - giving Kenneth Williams, as Julius Caesar, one of the greatest lines of all time: “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.”
This pair of films hog the limelight, but Maria shows how cinema’s fascination with Cleo goes right back to the early years of silent film through to the 21st Century. Why? On one hand, the Cleopatra story is an opportunity for spectacle and sex appeal - in other words, good business. On the other, the story is reinvented by each generation, playing on the anxieties and desires of the age. Looking at Cleopatra films tells us a lot about changing attitudes to sex, race and politics over the last 100+ years.
Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:
Maria has written about Cleopatra on film in her books Projecting the Past (Routledge, pb, 1997) and The Roman Mistress (OUP, 2002).
Films also figure in Lucy Hughes Hallett’s, Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions (Fourth Estate, pb, 2026)
A discussion of the Taylor-Burton film on its 60th anniversary: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jun/12/cleopatra-60th-anniversary-elizabeth-taylor-richard-burton
And for the fashion aspect: https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1963-mankiewicz-cleopatra/
@instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube
@insta_classics for X
email: [email protected]
Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci
Producer: Jonty Claypole
Video Editor: Jak Ford
Theme music: Casey Gibson
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Cleopatra 4: Cleopatra on the Page
Mary and Charlotte talk to Lucy Hughes-Hallett, acclaimed biographer and author of ‘Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions’, about Cleopatra’s afterlife on the page. Lucy begins by observing that “the …
Notes de l’épisode
Mary and Charlotte talk to Lucy Hughes-Hallett, acclaimed biographer and author of ‘Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions’, about Cleopatra’s afterlife on the page. Lucy begins by observing that “the people who write about her aren't interested in describing her as a real person. They use her as a kind of mirror onto which they can project their own prejudices and anxieties and often erotic fantasies.”
In the 14th Century, Boccaccio mined the old evil temptress angle. Geoffrey Chaucer, however, went the other way: she was a martyr to love, choosing to kill herself rather than consider life without Antony. For Shakespeare, she provided the perfect character to study the effects of unbridled passion. After Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt, Cleopatra was orientalised - her skin and hair became darker in pictures and she indulged in decadent acts of cruelty.
In recent decades, she has been framed as nationalist freedom fighter and feminist hero, but it feels like - even two thousand years on - there is more to explore in this most elusive of historical queens.
Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:
The new edition of Lucy’s book is just out: Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions (Fourth Estate, pb, 2026). It has discussion of all the texts we mentioned, and more (plus further bibliography).
In the modern Egyptian tradition, the best known representation of Cleopatra, the freedom fighter is Ahmed Shawqi’s play, The Death of Cleopatra (there is a recent English translation by Jeanette Wahba Sourial Atiya, though not easy to get hold of).
Cleopatra in modern painting and sculpture is the subject of a useful illustrated essay online”
https://artuk.org/discover/stories/cleopatras-legacy-in-art-famous-pharaoh-and-femme-fatale
@instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube
@insta_classics for X
email: [email protected]
Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci
Producer: Jonty Claypole
Video Editor: Jak Ford
Theme music: Casey Gibson
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