Instant Classics

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 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:…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Of all the Roman Emperors, Augustus has the reputation of being the most… well… august. That is to say, competent, level-headed and judicious. Not to mention one of the few who died of natural causes. But, according to Mary and Charlotte, the main reason Augustus got anything done is because he had a secret weapon in the form of Marcus Agrippa. We don’t know much about Marcus Agrippa’s early life, because he didn’t come from the aristocracy, but by the time he was thirty Augustus couldn’t do much without him. There is evidence that Agrippa managed the battles for which Augustus is famous, including the Battle of Actium, while Augustus pulled another sickie. When not defeating Rome’s enemies, Agrippa put a great deal of energy into building works. He constructed baths, temples (including the original Pantheon) and aqueducts. There are even stories of him getting onto a boat and rowing amidst the faeces of the Cloaca Maxima - Rome’s sewage system - to oversee improvements. While Agrippa did not come from the…

A few months back we spoke to Emily Wilson on our subscriber series Exploring the Odyssey. Emily has been in the news recently, partly because her acclaimed 2017 translation of The Odyssey inspired Christopher Nolan, and partly because her criticisms of Nolan’s film have sparked debate. So we thought we would share the episode here on Instant Classics. In the episode, Emily tells Mary and Charlotte why translating from Ancient Greek to modern English is so difficult, the choices she had to make from the outset and the challenges she encountered once underway. In a surprise revelation, Emily confesses that she enjoyed the process so much she has decided to do it all over again and will ultimately publish a SECOND translation of The Odyssey - which is the equivalent of Odysseus spending ten years getting home only to decide he enjoyed the experience so much he’s going to repeat the whole trip. Further reading: One of Mary’s favourite ancient “reflections” on the story of Odysseus (inc the Laestrygonians) is…

Mary talks to Charlotte about her book Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War. For the last four years, Charlotte has returned repeatedly to Ukraine to report on the cultural life of the nation as it defends itself against Russia. Part of Putin’s attempts to legitimise the war lies in an age-old argument that Ukraine is simply an extension, or part of, Russia itself. Art and culture have always played a critical role in Ukraine’s identity and self-determinism –and never more so than now. Charlotte talks about what first took her to Ukraine in 2022, some of what she has learned over the last four years, and how reading the classics, especially Homer and Greek tragedy, have helped her make sense of the current situation. And Mary and Charlotte discuss Ukraine’s classical past: histories of Ukraine often start with Herodotus and his account of the Scythians of the steppe; and the Black Sea coast, and Crimea, are dotted with some of the earliest Greek “colonies” or trading emporia. Further reading Charlotte’s…

With the world gripped by Odyssey fever, Mary and Charlotte keep being asked the same question: which translation should I read? So here is a quick bonus episode to help you decide. Mary and Charlotte cover the waterfront of the modern translations (Emily Wilson and Daniel Mendelsohn), but also celebrate some past classics, like E.V. Rieu’s. In the end, the simple answer is don’t worry - work with what you’ve got most easily at hand. Any translation that has been printed by a major publisher has its merits. Further reading: The two recent translations we discuss at the start are: Emily Wilson (translator), The Odyssey (W. W. Norton and co) Daniel Mendelsohn (translator), The Odyssey (Chicago UP and Penguin Classics) Both are available in paperback. Earlier translations which you might enjoy, and trust, include:: Richmond Lattimore (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) Robert Fagles (Penguin Classics) Robert Fitzgerald (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Peter Green (University of California Press) E. V. Rieu (Penguin…

Summer is here (in the northern hemisphere at least) and with many listeners eyeing trips to the beach, Mary and Charlotte are here with some cracking beach read suggestions. Move over Carley Fortune, Ann Patchett, and Tana French and make way for Herodotus, Lucian and Longus. Charlotte does a hard sell for Herodotus’ Histories (all 700 pages) and Ovid’s (mercifully shorter) Heroides. Mary pushes the science-fiction humour of Lucian’s Selected Dialogues (while acknowledging it could do with a better title) and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe. Turning to modern books set in the ancient world, Charlotte champions Colm Tóibín’s House of Names, while Mary chooses Samuel Butler’s The Authoress of the Odyssey - which, published in 1897, pushes the definition of ‘modern’ a little, but we don’t expect anything less from a Cambridge don! Finally, something for the kids… Mary is a fan of Caroline Lawrence’s Roman Mysteries and Charlotte feels equally enthusiastic about Percy Jackson. Charlotte’s recommendations: Herodotus,…

In this Clacton byelection special, Count Binface takes a break from the campaign trail and zooms in from his spaceship to chat with Mary and Charlotte about his deep interest in Ancient Greece and Rome. While denying all connection with an earthling called Jon Harvey who studied Classics at Oxford, Binface reveals the lessons he has learned by studying classical writers, like the Greek satirist Lucian, the failings of Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism, and his views on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. All of which begs the question: will Count Binface make compulsory Latin in state primary schools a central pledge in his manifesto? Listen to find out! Further reading: If you are confused about who Count Binface is, there’s a piece in the Guardian that explains it all… Binface’s review of the Odyssey (paywalled) And a link to Jon Harvey’s broadcasting including his BBC Radio 4 series, Could an Ancient Athenian Fix Britain? For all the candidates in this byelection:…

Last week, actor Tom Hiddleston launched his new series - not the further adventures of Loki (at least, not yet), but Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston. Mary and Charlotte talk to Tom who reveals his life-long fascination with the ancient world, including a degree in Classics at Cambridge where he attended the lectures of one Professor Mary Beard. Tom talks about the impact Mary’s teaching had on him and how that fascination for the Classics has never gone away. His new series, available to watch on Disney+ and National Geographic, focuses on several real people and the decisions they made in the hours before the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. It draws on new research and technology to uncover the hidden lives of some of those who survived - and some who didn’t. Further reading Mary Beard’s book Pompeii is strongly recommended by Charlotte! And there is a recent book by Jess Venner, The Lost Voices of Pompeii (Harper Collins, 2026), which picks up and develops some of the same themes. In one of his…

Last week, Mary and Charlotte gave their instant verdict on Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey only hours after emerging from the premiere, dazzled somewhat by the proximity of so much A-list talent. A week later… they unleash their inner nerds to quibble with some of the decisions and omissions Nolan made in adapting Homer. Their biggest gripe is the treatment of the female characters. Nausicaa and the ghost of Odysseus’ mother didn’t make the edit. Helen of Troy is robbed of agency and becomes a victim. The Gods are mostly cut and there’s even the implication that some of the more magical elements of the story might simply be a figment of the imagination resulting from too much lotus eating. Odysseus himself has become a bit of a goody two-shoes, only lying when he really has to and wracked by guilt of all the things he did at Troy, unlike Homer’s Odysseus who doesn’t think twice about ransacking innocent people. It’s not all moan moan moan though. Who can disapprove of the enhanced role that Odysseus’ loyal dog…

Mary and Charlotte emerge from the premiere of The Odyssey, pausing only for a night’s rest, before regathering in the morning with strong coffees to give their instant verdict on Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster. Headlines Winners: Complicated, twisty-turny timelines; multiculturalism; Samantha Morton; Charlotte Higgins Losers: Feminism; humour; The Gods; Mary Beard To find out what all this means, listen to the episode! Further reading (and watching): The basic message here is “go watch the movie”. Mary is perhaps less keen overall, but still urges you to go see. It is also worth having a look at (and comparing) Ubert Pasolni’s The Return which is focussed on the second half of the poem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_(2024_film) Charlotte mentioned Colm Tóibín’s novel House of Names. @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…

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey - the most eagerly anticipated event since Odysseus spied the shores of Ithaca - is almost with us at last. Mary and Charlotte have been exploring Homer’s epic over the last year in the Instant Classics Book Club, but if you’re time poor or just want a little refresher, then you’ll find the basics in this pre-screening primer. In the first half, they run through what actually happens in The Odyssey, as Odysseus, a twisty-turny man, makes his twisty-turny way back home. In the second, they pull out some of the big themes from the book - the problems of homecoming, post-traumatic disorder, the cost of war, growing up, fidelity, colonisation, and the thin line between so-called civilisation and so-called barbarism. This poem really does have everything, yet manages to be poetic and hugely entertaining while about it. In theory, it’s the perfect material for Christopher Nolan, who has long been fascinated with non-linear story-telling, the effects of war, and…

Mary and Charlotte welcome Professor Maria Wyke back on the show to talk about two of the most famous words in cinema: “I’m Spartacus!” Hollywood has always had an obsession with Ancient Rome. So much so, the Roman Epic - or sword-and-sandal - is a cinematic genre in its own right. Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier and a host of other stars, is perhaps the towering achievement. But what is Spartacus really about? It was adapted by Dalton Trumbo from Howard Fast’s 1951 novel. Both men had fallen foul of the House Un-American Activities Committee and were blacklisted from Hollywood. Their names were proudly displayed at the start of the film, marking the decline of the Committee’s influence on American culture. In some ways, the refusal by Spartacus’ slave army to betray their leader to the Roman authorities is a message about free speech and solidarity. The character of black slave Draba who defies white supremacist authority is also a statement on the Civil Rights movement.…

Shortly after its formation, the United States of America initiated a building program for both state and federal governments, turning to Ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration. As Mary and Charlotte discover… In-between duties like writing the Declaration of Independence, acting as Minister to France and being President, Thomas Jefferson found time to make inspiration trips to study Roman architecture in France. Although he didn’t design the Capitol in Washington DC, he set the tone with his designs for Monticello (his Virginia home) as well as the University of Virginia and Virginia State Capitol. Over the decades, other influences gained greater prominence - whether nostalgic styles like the gothic or the modernity of Frank Lloyd Wright. But neo-classicism is on the rise once again. According to President Trump’s executive order Making Architecture Beautiful Again, ‘classical’ is the preferred style for federal buildings - in particular, the plan for a ‘United States Triumphal Arch’. Mary and Charlotte…

Last year, Mary spent nine months in Washington D.C. During this time, she became interested in visual iconography and real objects of Ancient Greece and Rome on display in the city’s museums and streets. In this episode, she tells Charlotte about her fascination with a sarcophagus in the Smithsonian collection, which was believed once to have held the remains of Emperor Alexander Severus. In the 1830s, a US navy commander based in the Mediterranean ‘acquired’ the sarcophagus in Lebanon and sent it back home with the suggestion it could be used as a tomb for President Andrew Jackson. This forced the question: was it appropriate for an American president to be buried in a Roman sarcophagus? On one hand, the USA liked to position itself as the inheritor of Roman values. On the other, Severus, who became Emperor after his cousin Elagabalus (a favourite of the show) was bumped off, was a despot, even if a comparatively benign one. The problem was heightened by the fact Jackson was frequently accused of acting…

In case you haven’t noticed… the USA is celebrating a special anniversary. Mary and Charlotte talk to one of America’s leading scholars of ancient Rome and its modern reception, Joy Connolly, about why so much of the struggle for independence deployed the words, images and sometimes actual clothing of the Ancient Romans. They discuss George Washington’s production of the tragedy of Cato in the revolutionary army and Joseph Warren’s donning of a toga to incite the rebels. They ask why the Declaration of Independence and Constitution drew so heavily on Roman writers like Cicero and Virgil, why Cincinnati was named after the authoritarian Cincinnatus, and to what extent the Republicans and Democrats resemble the classical ideologies they named themselves after. Most of all, the big question: did the Founders know that Virgil’s words e pluribus unum (out of many, one), which became a rallying cry for the merging of the colonies into one, actually came from a recipe for cheese spread? Mary and Charlotte recommend…

Nearly 2000 years before Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, a sage in Ephesus (now in Turkey) wrote a book whose title translates as… The Interpretation of Dreams. Armed with Artemidorus’ book, Mary and Charlotte dive into the surreal and revealing dreamscape of the Ancients. If you’ve ever had a dream about flying or losing teeth or sex with a stranger, well… Artemidorus has a view about what this really means. Today, we might find his interpretations a little too neat and prescriptive, but they provide a fascinating insight into life on the edge of the Roman empire, including what people chatted (or sang) about at the public baths, the prevalence of mice in the home, and the hopes, aspirations and fears of household slaves. As with our episodes on Roman joke and cook books, we discover that the Ancients were simultaneously more like us and more dissimilar than we might expect. Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading: The best translation of Artemidorus is by Martin Hammond in…

Mary and Charlotte talk to Professor Maria Wyke, classicist and film historian, about Cleopatra’s rebirth on the screen. By far the most famous Cleopatra film is the 1963 epic starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton - at the time the most expensive film ever made and with a steamy on-set love affair between the two stars to match that of the characters they were playing. Almost as brilliant, in its way, is the parody made the following year - Carry on Cleo - giving Kenneth Williams, as Julius Caesar, one of the greatest lines of all time: “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” This pair of films hog the limelight, but Maria shows how cinema’s fascination with Cleo goes right back to the early years of silent film through to the 21st Century. Why? On one hand, the Cleopatra story is an opportunity for spectacle and sex appeal - in other words, good business. On the other, the story is reinvented by each generation, playing on the anxieties and desires of the age. Looking at Cleopatra films tells…

Mary and Charlotte talk to Lucy Hughes-Hallett, acclaimed biographer and author of ‘Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions’, about Cleopatra’s afterlife on the page. Lucy begins by observing that “the people who write about her aren't interested in describing her as a real person. They use her as a kind of mirror onto which they can project their own prejudices and anxieties and often erotic fantasies.” In the 14th Century, Boccaccio mined the old evil temptress angle. Geoffrey Chaucer, however, went the other way: she was a martyr to love, choosing to kill herself rather than consider life without Antony. For Shakespeare, she provided the perfect character to study the effects of unbridled passion. After Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt, Cleopatra was orientalised - her skin and hair became darker in pictures and she indulged in decadent acts of cruelty. In recent decades, she has been framed as nationalist freedom fighter and feminist hero, but it feels like - even two thousand years on - there is more…

Another trailer for Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming adaptation of The Odyssey has just been released, giving more insights into the world the cast and crew have created. Mary and Charlotte give their quick-fire response. Have your say at… @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

For many years, Cleopatra and Mark Antony lived a life of extravagance and passion - or so we’re told. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte look at what happened next. Mark Antony, with Cleopatra, met their enemy Octavian in a sea battle off the coast of Greece - and lost. The Battle of Actium was a turning point for Rome. After this moment, Octavian rebranded himself as Emperor Augustus, bringing an official end to many centuries of republican rule. Rather than face capture and humiliation, both Antony and Cleopatra took their lives. The story of their final days survives through Plutarch, but how much of this official Roman version can we trust? Was Cleopatra really an exotic temptress who seduced Mark Antony into treason? And did she really kill herself with a poisonous snake? Accounts of her death are so tied up in the wider propaganda legitimising Augustus’ rise to Emperor that it’s impossible to know what really happened. Soon after her death, she began to haunt the imagination of writers and artists.…

If it hadn’t been for Rome, Cleopatra’s sole claim to fame may have been that she married two of her brothers. But then Julius Caesar arrived in Alexandria… In this episode, Mary and Charlotte recount what happened next. Caesar came to Egypt in pursuit of his great enemy, Pompey the Great, and became Cleopatra’s lover. They embarked on a cruise of the Nile, during which Caesar created the modern calendar system. After Caesar returned to Rome, Cleopatra bore a son, who she named Caesarion. She followed Caesar to Rome and was there at the time of his assassination. Afterwards, Caesar’s ally Mark Antony and great-nephew Octavian defeated Caesar’s assassins, then turned on one another. Mark Antony formed an alliance with Cleopatra and became her second Roman lover. Together, they embarked on one of the most famous romances in history. Passionate, extravagant, and - spoiler alert - doomed. Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading: Plutarch’s Life of Mark Antony (the main ancient source for his…

In the first episode of a five-part series, Mary and Charlotte tell the story of Queen Cleopatra’s early years. Forget, for the time being, Elizabeth Taylor rolling out of a rug, poisonous asps and baths of asses’ milk. Focus instead on inbreeding and incest, because Cleopatra, child of Ptolemy the Flute-Player, married her brother, Ptolemy 13th. When he died in suspicious circumstances, she married another brother, Ptolemy 14th. Mary and Charlotte discuss why the Ptolemy dynasty of Egypt was so fixed on keeping it in the family. In the second half of the episode, they explore the controversial issue of race in Cleopatra studies. On one hand, she was born into a dynasty from Greece which prided itself on inbreeding. On the other, it seems likely that beneath the official accounts, a great deal of cavorting went on beyond the royal household. The main reason it is so hard to reach any definitive conclusion is that ancient writers were uninterested in race as we understand it. They seemed not to fixate or even…

Mary and Charlotte talk to artist Grayson Perry about why he hates classical civilisation. Grayson is one of Britain’s most famous artists - he won the Turner Prize in 2003, has been exhibited in major exhibitions across the globe, published books and presented television programmes. Earlier this year, Grayson delivered the Rumble Fund Lecture 2026 at King’s College London, entitled ‘Why I hate classical civilisation’. Needless to say, Mary and Charlotte want to know why - and also see if they can encourage him to think more positively about his relationship with the ancient world. Grayson talks about the tedium of learning Latin at school, his irritation at the endless classical imitations in British architecture and asks why bad people - names are mentioned - hold up the classics as the peak of civilisation. Mary and Charlotte hit back. Just as many radicals and revolutionaries have been inspired by the classics as dictators or would-be dictators. Mary wishes she’d had the chance to teach Latin to Grayson.…

In this episode, Mary and Charlotte’s special guest is… Mary Beard! On the day of publication of her new book, Talking Classics, Mary does just that - talks classics with Charlotte. Talking Classics is a summation of Mary’s 50 years study of the ancient world. In this intimate conversation, Mary talks about discovering a fascination with history as a child and her teenage delight in joining the local dig (and, more importantly, apres-dig) in Shropshire. She also discusses the value she finds in studying the classical world - the way we’re forced to acknowledge kinship and difference with other cultures, develop empathy, tolerate difference and reflect upon our own values. In the second half, Mary and Charlotte look at how the classical world has been adopted by different causes throughout history. Some we might approve of - like resistance to tyranny and gay rights - others which are more uncomfortable, like fascism and imperialism. And we hear the fascinating story of Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, a…

Mary and Charlotte explore the story of Perpetua, a young Christian woman tortured and murdered in the Roman arena in Carthage (modern day Tunisia) for her faith in the 3rd Century CE. Astonishingly, Perpetua kept a diary during her last days - right up until the point she was led into the arena - recording her life, dreams and fearless conviction that death was better than renouncing God. Even more astonishingly, this diary survives, incorporated into a longer account of her martyrdom narrated by another hand.. Perpetua describes the attempts by both her father and the presiding Roman official to convince her to just say the words that will save her life. She describes her inability to do this, even though it means depriving her baby of its mother. She also describes several of her dreams in the days before her death. The narrator takes over to recount what happened next. Perpetua was mauled by animals and finally despatched by a gladiator. Perpetua’s account is so remarkable, many have questioned its…

Antigone is one of the most regularly staged Greek tragedies with great actors lining up to play the part. Juliette Binoche, Juliet Stevenson and Gillian Anderson have all had a crack in recent years. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte look at why Antigone is such an enduringly interesting role. She is sometimes framed as a female Hamlet caught between family loyalties and the needs of the state. Antigone was written by Sophocles in the mid-5th Century BCE. It tells the story of King Creon’s attempts to restore order to the city of Thebes following a civil war. He orders that the body of the defeated rebel Polynices should lie unburied as punishment. Antigone, sister of Polynices, disobeys this order and gives her brother proper burial rites (as the gods demand). Creon sentences her to death for betrayal. Antigone is often portrayed as a proto-feminist icon - the brave woman standing up to the patriarchy. But is this really what Sophocles intended? King Creon has far more lines and is, like Antigone, caught…

Expressions of love, bawdy jokes, political satire or even just saying so-and-so was here - few things bring us as close to the Romans as their graffiti. In large part, thanks to Vesuvius preserving the streets of Pompeii and Herculaneum under rock and ash. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte look at what graffiti tells us about Roman society - both the relatable aspects and the unfathomable. Perhaps the biggest difference is the enhanced role graffiti played in a society which did not have forms of mass communication. Roman graffiti is like graffiti today, but also like social media. In both cases, nobody thought anyone would be looking at it 2000 years later. Roman graffiti goes beyond the official documents. It’s a rare glimpse of daily life and opinions that we today weren’t intended to see. Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading: A searchable database of graffiti in Pompeii and Herculaneum: https://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/ Charlotte’s article on the Spanish amphora scratched with a…

In 430 BCE, Athens was hit by a terrible plague that ultimately claimed around a third of the population. All the social niceties we associate with Ancient Athens collapsed. Citizens turned on one another. The dead were left unburied. Mary and Charlotte both recount and question the ‘facts’ of the epidemic as told by historian, eyewitness and plague survivor Thucydides. Thucydides’ account is remarkable in that it aligns with the emerging science of medicine in ancient Athens by focusing on the symptoms and natural causes rather than framing it as divine retribution from the gods. Yet, for all this, the truth is hard to pin down. We still don’t know what exactly the plague was. And Thucydides’ claims to be an objective historian are undermined by the way he presents the plague as a possible response to Athenian arrogance and hubris. Yet for all the gaps, we see many of the social characteristics of epidemics that have recurred throughout history. Social collapse, finger pointing, moralising, and arguments…

Think Roman food and we imagine extravagant banquets involving rare delicacies. There’s some truth in this, but only for the few. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte ask: what did your average Roman eat? Cooking at home was only for the very rich - you had to have not only a kitchen, but the staff to manage it. For this reason, most Romans ate on the hoof or at fast food outlets. In Pompeii, for instance, there is surviving evidence of many such establishments: places where citizens could access a pre-cooked meal straight away. While we know that most Romans ate out, and the sorts of places where they ate, until recently there was very little evidence showing what such establishments served. Modern archaeological techniques are starting to provide answers through the analysis of excrement in Roman lavatories. Comparing the evidence from lavatories in Herculaneum and modern day Scotland, a faeces - sorry, thesis - emerges of people surviving on whatever the local countryside could provide - varying…

When we think about Roman food, most of us imagine wealthy citizens stuffing their faces with rare delicacies while reclining on their sides and taking occasional breaks to use the vomitorium (urban myth alert). In this two-part special, Mary and Charlotte cut through the fermented fish sauce to look at what the Romans really ate. And no, the vomitorium was not a place where they made themselves vomit. In this first episode, Mary and Charlotte look at posh food, beginning right at the top - in the imperial palace. Happily, there are some stories of jaw-dropping extravagance, including Elagabalus (a fave of the show) hiding pearls in the rice as a surprise for his guests. And the favourite dish of the Emperor Vitellius involved pike liver, peacock brain, flamingo tongue and lamprey sperm - all mixed together. But just as many emperors favoured a martial diet and household economy. Augustus - a snack guy - boasted about his ascetic preference for with cheese, figs and bread. Tiberius was criticised by the…

Mary and Charlotte talk to Tom Holland, co-host of the Rest is History. As well as being a podcasting megastar, Tom is a brilliant historian of Ancient Rome. His books include Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age and his recent translation of Suetonius’ The Lives of the Caesars. In the first half of this episode, Tom talks about why Suetonius, with his interest in court gossip and trivia, is the historian for the current age. In the second half, he talks about his lifelong fascination with the Romans - from discovering the Asterix books as a boy, the poetry of Catullus as a teenager, and how writing a series of novels about vampires led him to write Rubicon. @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

If you were to go back in time to 15 February in Ancient Rome, you might see marauding packs of naked men surging through the streets. If you were particularly unlucky one of them might whip you with a piece of goat skin. This was the Roman festival of Lupercalia. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte ask: what on earth was all this about? What did Lupercalia mean to the Romans? And what was the real purpose of any festival to the Romans? Despite its mind-boggling oddness, Lupercalia is better documented than many other Roman festivals. This is partly because the Romans themselves didn’t know really what it was about. Lupercalia was something that seemed to have always been celebrated, but opinions varied - then as now - as to what it meant. The wolfiness of lupercalia, and the suggestion the ritual began in the cave where Romulus and Remus were believed to have been suckled, implies it may have been a way for the Romans to connect with their murky origins - an example of the city performing its own past. But…

Greece gave way to Rome and the Roman Empire too declined, but Helen of Troy survived. Forever young and relevant, she has been reimagined by generation after generation. In the last episode of this mini-series, Mary and Charlotte look at Helen’s enduring appeal in the modern age. They show how she appeared in the poetry of medieval bards, inspired playwright Christopher Marlowe to create one of the most famous lines in English literature (the face that launched a thousand ships) - and how Shakespeare, not wanting to be outdone by Marlowe, said her face launched ‘over’ a thousand ships. Mary describes some of her favourite 19th century paintings of Helen - and discusses the problem of how you paint a face that, by definition, is more beautiful than the face of any artist model. Charlotte talks about how that problem continues in cinema (with a side anecdote about asking Brad Pitt the wrong question at the launch of the film Troy). Finally, Charlotte and Mary compare some of their favourite Helens in modern…

What happened to Helen after the Trojan War? Mary and Charlotte pick up the trail of mythology’s most famous femme fatale as she makes the long journey home from Troy. The big question at the end of the previous episode was whether her husband Menelaus would kill her as revenge for betraying him with Paris. Needless to say, her charms win out and, after a long stop in Egypt, where she acquires some amazing accessories, they return home to Sparta. Just in time for Telemachus, son of Odysseus, to arrive and ask them if he knows where his father is? The Helen of The Odyssey Book 4 takes us by surprise. She and Menelaus have settled into a rather humdrum domestic companionship. And it raises the question: was all that fighting and bloodshed worth it? For this? Just as fascinating as Homer’s surprise depiction is a theory embedded in Greek texts that Helen never actually went to Troy, but sat out the whole affair in relative safety in Egypt. The Helen people saw on the ramparts of Troy was simply an eidolon - an…

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey is set to be the blockbuster event of the summer. With the first trailers now coming online, Mary and Charlotte take a look to get a sense if the hype is worth it. Have your say at… @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

When Paris, a Trojan prince, abducted Helen of Sparta, the Greeks came in hot pursuit and besieged Troy for ten years. But what was Helen’s role in all this? Was she really kidnapped, or did she elope? And whose side was she really on during the ensuing war? Mary and Charlotte turn to a variety of ancient texts to explore these questions. In Homer’s The Iliad - the longest and greatest account of the war - Helen isn’t even one of the main characters. She watches Paris and Menelaus fight a duel in her name, draws the admiration of old men, and spends some sexy time with Paris. In The Odyssey, we find out about her role in the final episode of the war - the Trojan Horse. Here she appears more of a double agent: secretly communicating with Odysseus, but also tormenting his soldiers. In Virgil’s Aeneid, she is a hate figure and a focus of murderous fantasies for the hero Aeneas. Finally, Mary and Charlotte look at The Trojan Women by Euripides, where Helen defends herself as a victim of the gods and her own…

Sex goddess. Whore. Temptress. Adulteress. Victim. Helen of Troy has been called many things. In the run-up to Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey later this year, amidst swirling rumours about who is playing Helen, Mary and Charlotte look beyond the labels and ask: who was Helen really and what role does she play in myth? This isn’t an easy question to answer. Accounts of Helen’s character and life come from myriad sources - many of which contradict one another. In the first episode of our four-part series, Mary and Charlotte look at Helen’s early years. She was born of a rape, when Zeus, disguised as a swan, forced himself upon Leda, Queen of Sparta. The young Helen was married to Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon, and became queen of Sparta. The trouble began hundreds of miles away and the so-called Judgement of Paris. Paris was the son of King Priam of Troy. In a high-stakes wedding game (think opening scene of The Godfather), he was asked to choose which of the goddesses Hera, Athena and…

We may think of Ancient Greek warfare as scantily dressed musclemen thrashing it out on the desert plain (and there may have been an element of that), but there was a whole other side of spy work too. Much of this was the result of its fraught relationship with the vast Persian empire to the east - a centuries long rivalry which makes the Cold War look like a hot skirmish. Mary and Charlotte share some of the surviving stories of Ancient Greek espionage, including secret messages concealed in women’s earrings and even tattooed onto an enslaved person’s head. Most of these stories focus on writing and it’s a reminder that in the Ancient World, writing was as innovative and inherently suspicious as drones are to us today. Societies with advanced written culture had the technological upperhand on their rivals, so it’s little surprise that the surviving stories about spies reveal an anxiety about this new form of communication. @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email:…

Naomi Alderman is an author and games designer. Her books include Disobedience (adapted into a film starring Rachel Weisz), The Power (also an Amazon Prime series) and most recently The Future. She’s also an emerging classicist and reached out to Instant Classics after our episode on the toga came happily close to her MA thesis on the same subject. In this episode, Naomi sets the record straight about when and why women in Ancient Rome may have worn the toga, talks about her interest in the classical world and why studying it gives her solace. Finally, she asks the big question - which Mary and Charlotte answer too - if you could rescue one lost work of literature from the past, what would it be? This episode was recorded in a moment of immense jeopardy as Naomi waited to discover if she had passed her Classics MA or not. The next day we had our answer. Yes - and with distinction. Which is not surprising based on the evidence of her conversation in this episode. Content warning: this episode contains mildly…

Since Instant Classics launched, we’ve loved getting your questions and ideas for topics. So for our New Year’s Day episode, Mary and Charlotte respond to some of those which have tickled their curiosity too. Where did the Romans stash their cash? What was a trip to the doctor like for women? Why do some people still try to speak (rather than just read) Latin? Was there a Jewish community in Roman Britain? And are there any feminist role models in the pantheon of ancient gods? While it is easier to answer some of these questions than others, each gives an insight to an area of the classical world we haven’t yet examined - and reminds us that however close we think we are to the ancient Romans or Greeks, huge parts of their lives and the way they thought about the world are lost to us. Just when we think we have a handle on them, they elude our grasp once again. Charlotte and Mary’s reading suggestions Jean Andreau, Banking and Business in the Roman World (Cambridge UP, 1999) is a short guide to what Roman…

Every December, the Ancient Romans took part in a festival of feasting, drinking, gift-giving and awkward office parties. So far, so Christmas. But, in this episode, Mary and Charlotte ask what really went on during the Roman festival of Saturnalia and whether the comparisons to Christmas really hold? As is so often the case, we discover a people and culture similar to us in some ways, yet also completely alien. The records show that socks were sometimes Saturnalia presents – but, disturbingly, so too were enslaved people. Jokes about the boss were acceptable at Christmas parties, unless - as we discover in one macabre story - the boss happens to be the emperor Nero. The brutal side of Saturnalia becomes really apparent when you consider the differences between Santa and Saturn. One likes to spoil children, the other has a horrid habit of eating them. So if you do decide to celebrate Saturnalia, no laughing at the boss, and keep those chimneys blocked! Charlotte and Mary’s reading suggestions The best guides…

The Ancient Greeks, it’s often said, invented theatre - and the plays they wrote are still big box office today, particularly when you have a Hollywood star in the main part. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte wonder what a day at the theatre in Ancient Athens was actually like. Did it bear any resemblance to theatre-going experience in the West End or Broadway today? The more one gets into the nitty-gritty of Greek theatre festivals - the military parades, hymn singing, displays of war booty, processions of unmarried girls, orphans, and large phalluses - the more alien it seems. The fact that it took place in the open air and the actors wore masks is the least of it. So what was really going on when the Athenians got together to watch a play? Why was the state so involved? And would Mary and Charlotte, as women, have even been allowed in? @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com On Greek theatre, the context and the practicalities… Good…