Episode 812: Mary Beard on the Classics

Why are we so fascinated by the ancient world? What can we find in the distant past that is recognizably human — and how do we grapple with the complicated and controversial issues that the past forces us to address? 

In Episode 812, Jacke talks to distinguished classicist Mary Beard about her new book Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old.

This book begins with Mary Beard recalling a childhood encounter with a four-thousand-year-old piece of bread at a museum. As she explains: 

It is a story that raises much bigger issues about the modern encounter with the ancient world and its rewards: both its simple pleasures, and its alluring complexities. It opens up the unexpected delights that antiquity has to offer, and also the exquisite, if occasionally head-splitting, puzzles that have lasted me a lifetime.

As Beard explains, "Classics is a subject that is not simply concerned with the ancient world itself. It also inhabits the gap that separates antiquity from the present, turning the spotlight back onto us and helping us to see how important those long
conversations with the deep past are."

An excerpt of the book can be heard on the UChicago Press website here.

Interested in reading more about the ancient world? Check out these other amazing works by Mary Beard!