“Fifth-century Athens still lingers even for us, and it’s a mythical golden age,” says Mary Beard on this week’s episode of The World in Time. “And we imagine that all we can do is count ourselves lucky to be the inheritors of the Greek Miracle, all of the things that the Greeks invented: democracy, philosophy, and theater, among much else. I struggled with that when I was at university because it was almost cliché to say that the fifth- and sixth-century Athenians invented democracy, which is simply not true. It doesn’t take much to say, ‘Look, democracy isn’t like the iPhone or the steam engine.’ It isn’t invented in that way. Democracy is a process and people have been experimenting with that process all over the world–not just in Western Europe–for thousands of years.” 

 

This week on the podcast, Donovan Hohn speaks with Mary Beard, best-selling historian and professor emerita of classics at the University of Cambridge, about her new book, Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old. “What is the point of the ancient classics?” Beard asks in the book’s introduction. “Why should we bother about what people did two thousand years ago or more: what they made, wrote, and thought? What can it all mean to us now?” In the chapters that follow, and in this episode of The World in Time, she shares her best answers, drawing from her own lifelong, wonder-struck study of the ancient world.

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WORKS CITED

(In order of mention.) 

 

Mary Beard. Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2026.

 

Mary Beard. Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient World. New York: Liveright, 2024.

 

Mary Beard. Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2024. 

 

Mary Beard. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. New York: Liveright, 2016.

 

Mary Beard. The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010. 

 

Mary Beard. Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations. New York: Liveright, 2014. 

 

Mary Beard. “Which Side of Roman Britain Are You On?” The New York Review of Books, August 18, 2016. 

 

Mary Beard. “Women in Power: From Medusa to Merkel,” London Review of Books, March 16, 2017. 

 

Plato. Symposium, Phaedrus. Translated by A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff. In Plato: Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. 

 

Cicero. On the Orator: Books 1–2. Translated by E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942. 

 

Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Anthony Verity. Introduced by Barbara Graziosi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 

 

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles. Introduced by Bernard Knox. New York: Penguin Classics, 1997. 

 

Virgil. The Aeneid. Translated by Scott McGill and Susannah Wright. Introduced by Emily Wilson. New York: Liveright, 2025. 

 

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated and introduced by Stephanie McCarter. New York: Penguin Books, 2023. 

 

Aeschylus. The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides. Translated and introduced by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Classics, 1984. 

 

Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus. Translated by Robert Fagles. Introduced by Bernard Knox. New York: Penguin Classics, 1984. 

 

Euripides. The Bacchae and Other Plays. Translated and introduced by John Davie. New York: Penguin Classics, 2006. 

 

Sappho. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. Translated by Anne Carson. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. 

 

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. Revised by John M. Marincola. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. 

 

Tacitus. The Histories. Translated by W.H. Fyfe. Edited by D.S. Levene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 

 

“The Odyssey #19: Odysseus and the Underworld,” Instant Classics, May 11, 2026. 

 

“Antigone: Girl vs. Tyrant,” Instant Classics, April 2, 2026. 

 

“Cleopatra 1: Last Egyptian Pharaoh,” Instant Classics, April 30, 2026. 

 

Virginia Woolf. The Common Reader. Boston: Mariner Books, 2002.

 

Christopher Logue. War Music: An Account of Homer’s Iliad. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017. 

 

Stanley Kubrick, director. Spartacus. Bryna Productions, 1960. 

 

William Wyler, director. Ben-Hur. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1959. 

 

Herbert Wise, Robert Graves, and Jack Pulman, creators. I, Claudius. British Broadcasting Corporation, 1976. 

 

Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Last Days of Pompeii. New York: International Book Company, 1834. 

 

John Keats. “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” In The Major Works: including Endymion and selected letters. Edited by Elizabeth Cook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 

 

Donovan Hohn, host. “Episode 18: Stephen Greenblatt on Christopher Marlowe.” The World in Time from Lapham’s Quarterly, Friday, November 21, 2025. 

 

Edward O. Wilson. Biophilia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. 

 

Plato. Republic. Translated by G.M.A. Grube and revised by C.D.C. Reeve. In Plato: Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.

 

Terence. The Self-Tormentor. Translated and edited by Anthony J. Brothers. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988. 

 

Hierocles and Philagrius. Philogelos. Edited by Roger D. Dawe. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2000. 

 

Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture. Translated by Elfriede Heyer and Roger C. Norton. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1987. 

 

Gabriella Meade, director. When Mary Beard Met Clive James. British Broadcasting Corporation, 2018. 

 

Statue of the Aphrodite of Knidos. ca. 101 CE–200 CE. Marble. The Art Institute of Chicago.