Instant Classics

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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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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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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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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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 

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/unravelling-the-bayeux-tapestry-ep1-when-where-and/id256580326?i=1000513237032

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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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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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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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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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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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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Producer: Jonty Claypole 

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