Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins on how antiquity shapes the modern world (Part One)

Intelligence Squared

How does the classical world shape our politics, culture, language and lives today?

On today’s episode, we’re joined by two of the greatest names making classics accessible for the modern day.

Dame Mary Beard is a classicist who taught at Cambridge for almost 40 years. She has close to 20 books to her name, including Pompeii, which won the Wolfson History Prize, SPQR and Emperor of Rome, both of which were bestsellers in the UK and US.

Charlotte Higgins is the chief culture writer of the Guardian. She studied Classics at university , and has since written many books on this topic, including Greek Myths: A New Retelling.

Charlotte and Mary sat down with classicist and author Honor Cargill-Martin to explore taking a ‘post-truth’ approach to antiquity, how the idea of the Romans have been used as a political tool throughout history, and what the Greeks got right and wrong about human nature.

You can find more of Mary and Charlotte discussing antiquity and the present day on their new podcast, Instant Classics, available to watch or listen weekly from Thursday August 28.

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