#421 - Beauty and the gods: A Dialogue with Hugo Shakeshaft

Converging Dialogues

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Hugo Shakeshaft about ancient greeks ideas about beauty and the gods. They discuss beauty in ancient Greece and its impact on modern times, architecture and beauty, beauty and aesthetics, and the gods and beauty. They talk about the relationship between humans and the gods, superficial and deeper beauty, beauty and nature, beauty as power, role of religion, and many more topics.

Hugo Shakeshaft is a classicist, art historian, and artist. He is a specialist in the cultural history of ancient Greece and its legacy. His research ranges across ancient literature, history, philosophy, art, and archaeology. At the heart of his work is a fascination with aesthetics, with how people in antiquity perceived the world. The place of beauty in ancient Greek culture has been a focus of his research to date.

He has a degree in Classics from Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. After a year at Harvard as a Herchel Smith Scholar, he completed a Masters in Classical Archaeology and then a doctorate in Ancient History at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. Since 2018 he has held research fellowships at Christ Church College, Oxford, and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. He is currently A.W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. He is the author of the book, Beauty and the Gods: A History from Homer to Plato.

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