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Instant Classics

Instant Classics

Auteur(s): Vespucci
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Join world-renowned classicist Mary Beard and Guardian chief culture writer Charlotte Higgins for Instant Classics — the weekly podcast that proves ancient history is still relevant. Ancient stories, modern twists… and no degree in Classics required. Discover The Odyssey and join the book club at: https://www.exploringtheodyssey.com Monde
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  • Exploring Anne Carson

    Exploring Anne Carson
    Oct 22 2026
    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 @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 h et 2 min
  • Roman Cancel Culture

    Roman Cancel Culture
    Oct 15 2026
    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 @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    52 min
  • What did Roman emperors really look like?

    What did Roman emperors really look like?
    Oct 8 2026
    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 @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    59 min
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