Professor Mary Beard at The American University of Rome's event: 'Why Ancient Rome Matters'

yeah buona sera 10 vinothini welcome to the embassy of Italy and thank you for joining us tonight for this very program with world-renowned processes professor it is [Applause] English so this evening's program is in the wider framework of the twenty in the European year of cultural heritage the motto of this initiative is our heritage where the past meets the shooter the next conversation will focus exactly on the aspect showing why ancient alone matters today I think we all agree that that is still ancient below is still very magical person today our civilization of the Western civilization is based on the Roman culture and on the Greek culture with the basis our culture and I would say me political concept which we are Roman experience with the Republic and Empire importance of Roman law the Romanichal system which was the basis of Empire concepts which - very familiar to all of us like sovereignty like Authority like century all these the legal system the checks and balances which we always say this is the basis of every good democracy was based on the American Republic the two consuls the same the popular assemblies that was the core of the system which lasted as you know several centuries but the contribution of the Normans our time is not limited political thinking or to the load bloggers to the liberal system but think also for example about architecture city planning I have to say that for the in Italian work don't you see simply amazing to see how much inspired by if you see all the buildings which were built two centuries ago I mean inspiration from the atmosphere the same goes for general environment where the Roman sleep globalization today we speak a lot about globalization OB which is globalism but they live in a globalized pores it was an empire and they yet the problem social of which we are facing today robbery's ation for example migration because a lot of the Mediterranean was the center of the world we cannot say today that if the diamond is the center of international politics but I would say very much so at least is one of the epicenters you know you love metal mania Middle East they are very much front and center of international politics relax let me stop here I said too much this is the subject of course of the conversation and let me introduce our speakers we're very honored we're tonight with us dr. men bill she's professor of classical studies at universe is Cambridge and she's credited with making ancient Rome come alive to wider audiences with her numerous books and a popular BBC TV host in her latest book women in power a manifesto explores misogyny from its ancient roots up to contemporary divers living the conversation will be professor of Richard Curtis former president of the american university of law and currently serving on the board of the istituto pakka determine affiliate of the DD and Lucile Packard Foundation dr. Hodges is the author of many books including Islam Correa is focused on the Eternity of the later Roman world and the enemy religious in Western Europe he launched excavations in England in Italy and a scientific dialect of the woodland foundation from 1993 to 2012 you can sue nooks conditions and management of UNESCO World Heritage Site who drink the next program is the result of a long collaboration between the Italian embassy the Italian Cultural Institute and the American University of Law I would like to thank that well good evening ladies and gentlemen I'm Richard Hodges the president of the American University of Rome and I'm here as you've heard with my own friend Mary beard our friendship goes back many years more than three decades when we did some probably silly things back in the 1980s so ardent reverence that certainly would have these days got me into lots of trouble and probably no you marry into lots of trouble I'd like to thank the Italian embassy for hosting this event for the American University of Rome in particular console area Jacana tea and coastal area Mandela I'd like to thank Carl Colby and Tom duesterberg our board member for making this happen but most of all I'd like to thank Mary for squeezing us in you realize why when I explained a little bit about Mary in a moment before I do one minute on the American University of Rome we're a smaller University on the Jinnah column here or close to Paradise I'd say we always say it is paradise just down from the American Academy beautiful spot you can see the whole of Rome from where our 500 students are we've been there for 25 years next year were 50 years old we were originally founded by wonderful adventurous from the Second World War who allegedly founded us you'll be surprised to hear as a school for spies by these American spies coming to Rome I'm not sure how true that is Carla knows more about those things than I do though I'm just making that bit up but the long and the short of it is we have 500 students they come from half from America half from around the world and they studied basically in this wonderful place to an American accredited degree it's truly a special experience and as we as we develop this experience we're doing a couple of things first we're developing a signature program based around Empire so Rome spqr is not insignificant to that and the fact that next week we hire a new classics professor is rather important to us and secondly we're putting in an Honors Program based around social entrepreneurship and I can see the professor of town at the end who's responsible for that as we try to bring the best of the new world to one of the most fundamental places of the old world and in particular to a place that has new meaning Rome given his place in Europe today's place in the Mediterranean and his relationship to Africa so aur is a special place most of all because we have some wonderful honorary degree holders one of whom is Professor Mary beard now who is Mary my god she is she's professor at Cambridge as you've heard she's been there for more than three decades she's actually celebrated for her teaching I know she's best known from the television shows but actually if you go up and down the halls of classics departments in the United States or Europe they'll all say wow what a teacher she specializes in Roman religion cults I'll come back to that the late Republic the early Empire but most of all she's interested narrative human stories agency in the past and agency today she was responsible for wonderful introduction to the classics twenty more years ago a great book on Roman art and absolutely superb biography of really her role model I'd say we'll come back to this Jane Harrison from the early part of the 20th century studies of the Parthenon the Coliseum Pompeii the Roman trunk and then laughter in the ancient world in ancient Rome spqr and now women in power a manifesto which you heard mentioned earlier on which is an easy very engaging read which is coming before her new work which is on civilizations but having told you all of that and I suspect most of you are here because her first book was the good working mothers guide and I bet not many of you knew that I knew that because we shared a publisher in common and we shared his city where we drank too much whiskey and from the Hat from that experience in the old piano Factory in Camden we both got our careers so to speak and hers led to The Times Literary Supplement where she writes blogs and has done now for more than a decade and two Broke compilations of dance-like and all in a Domesday and that has led to the tweeting which has made her a figure of enormous status in Great Britain as I said to our board this week I bet you can name the Prime Minister of Great Britain but I bet you can remember which I'm afraid is the cases probably says more page our board priming our Prime Minister she's made many films and we'll come back to these Pompeii Caligula Julius Caesar just came out and she's just completed work on civilizations or rather she is completing because when she lands back on Sunday they are taking her off immediately to film the tenth episode so she squeezed us in and for all of that she was awarded the OBE that is the which is the Order of the British Empire and as she said she was ordered it she was given it for all the work she done on drama reconstruction and as I read from her blog why drama reconstruction why has her documentaries been so important because drama reconstruction Oh Marcus please pass the grapes while adjust that sheet is passing for my toga is deeply insulting to many audience sadly they don't get it a a list actors and they are always deeply misleading recasting the ancient world as a magnified version of the modern so the question is how can grab an audience for what you want to say without going down that a list active root so Mary is without doubt as many of you will have seen The Guardian recently the feature of the cult of Mary beard which is appropriate since she works on cults and it's around that I'm going to begin those questions tonight and then bring some of you in as you wish to try over the next era so to find out what Mary thinks and what she shouldn't think and so on Mary why ro why is it it's a big question nothing you know why there's not I mean I don't actually see this it's liable to sound terribly conservative I don't actually see that you could be a fully functional citizen or cultural citizen of the West without engaging in some way with ancient Rome in saying that I don't mean to be that's not meant to be as elitist as it sounds because I think you often meet people and you say and what do you know about ancient Rome and they say absolutely nothing you then say did you see the film Katti ater and they said oh yes you know do you know about Julius Caesar and Antony Cleopatra or Asterix the Gaul but everybody is brought up in some way in the West with bits of Rome in their head and I think it's terribly important that we should look at those and interrogate them and know them better and know why they're not quite like what we think they are you know and so for me it's also true thank heavens that Rome isn't the only culture we have in our heads you know thank heavens the West is not simply the inheritor of Greece and Rome it would be an appalling place to live in if it was you know we're better than the Romans and we have a diversity which way extends beyond that but and if you think I can think about something like the image Virgil's Aeneid a great at least in part in English really and I think open say to my students if you think of any work of literature that has there has never been a day in the last two thousand years when somebody hasn't been reading it then really it has to be the no brainer work of literature which that's the case so I think it's kind of it's not being able to do without Rome and also a desire to think harder so we're not taken in by Rome the last thing I'd ever want to do you know is to imagine even a day trip really horrible but somehow they they are inescapable they're absolute a people and therefore we have a duty to make sure that we know them well know that doesn't mean everybody learning much and then everybody becoming a classicist you know because that also would be very dull world but it means you know cultural knowledge is shared it's a Pullman operation but I do think the idea that there will be a world in which nobody knew about that nobody is I think a nightmare and I also think it won't happen you know because this you're always foretelling the death of their subject you know they've been foretelling that that's about 280 you know they're always saying oh we don't know Latin as well as we used to yeah it's a very very nostalgic subject in some ways and yet actually it thrives on its own you know it thrives on rescuing itself every generations I don't worry about it going to collapse I think it'll be fine and I think we need it you never thought you began married believe it or not began when she was a teenager like I did excavating on medieval science in rural England and if federal never attempted to become a medievalist or a Greek scholar like one of your heroines Jane heretic uh I think I'm I don't really much mind in a way which bit of the past I study I mean I've landed in Rome and I think there's very good reasons for landing in Rome but I could have landed in Greece I could have landed in the Middle Ages I was just explaining that you know how it was because I first actually got into history and it was with the ancient Egyptians right originally I went to the British Museum when I was five and my mother thought it was time the time and I went along because I lived in rural Shropshire and I wanted to see the Egyptian mummies and we went to the mummies and then we wanted to look around the other bits of Egypt they had in museums this was 1960 museums they were terribly untile friendly every taste was far too high if you're a five year old and the labels were great but there was in this case what was supposed to be a 3,000 year old or more carbonized piece of Egyptian cake absolutely desperate to see because it was right to the back and this taste is too high and my mum that was lifting me up to help me see it but I was quite heavy in it was quite difficult man walk fast who got no idea that he was but he must be the curator and he saw this little scene going on and he got some keys out of his pocket he opened the case and brought the cake out I don't ever after that you know that was a kind of moment thinking not only that history was really exciting but there were ways in which cases were open for you that people brought you into it so but the other thing that's worth that I want to insist here is that I don't think being into the city history means being buried in the past if you're interested in history what it means is they're interested in now and the past in history doesn't make sense without that other bit to it now than the past and I think it's particularly important in consciousness racing about the past about the present in helping you see yourself from the outside and I often say to my first-year students what do you think the Romans would be surprised at about us and they usually find this very hard question to answer if they think the Romans would admire us neatly but they're not very sure they find anything very surprising and you say do you know the Romans didn't have prisons I didn't no and you know somehow the idea of there being a penal system that doesn't have a prison I'm not sure that we would like to repeat the Roma basically it took round the ear exiled death or a fine with the options incarceration action to incarceration was not on the Romans punitive ages now suddenly you start to see how you start to see the audit is about your own culture yes and you see the others it's about your own culture by seeing it from the outside that can literally be the outside in geographical terms but it can also be the outside in historical terms Wow yes well that was my second question but do you think today as you look at the Roman world in particular especially in the light of the book that you've just published do you think that the Romans silencing of women was what do you think about that tell us a little bit big point truly of the but I just written about women and power is to say that like it or not and I don't mean that this is natural I mean it's culturally learned like it or not the culture of at least the West may well be more whitening of the 21st century is deeply embedded in a century the misogyny of antiquity and the book starts with which I hope and writing saying is the first example of a man shutting a woman up in Western history and it is from the beginning of Homer's Odyssey when Penelope waiting at home for the wandering Odysseus to come back from the Trojan War she goes downstairs and there's a bard singing and The Bard is singing songs about how awful it is for the heroes of Greece to get back home like it's yes from the Trojan War and Penelope not unreasonably says oh there was a kite you think something a bit more cheerful and thumb there rather weedy Telemachus turns his mother shut up speeches man's business back upstairs and back she goes and I've read The Odyssey I think probably 20 or 30 years before I even noticed that you know it's very easy to read it just to think you know you go from one line to the next and you're struggling a bit with the Greek and you don't entirely notice it another heavens that is the very beginning of tradition of guys shutting women up in our culture and also no not big powerful guys even Telemachus is a teenager yeah he is a teenager who is trying to grow up and he's shutting his mother up and shutting his mother up it's actually part of his maturation now in a sense I take it for merrily and I think look that that terribly culturally hardwired in our heads of things about the relationship between men and women and the silencing of women which goes back millennia it's always that's terribly depressing because you think that's gonna make it harder to change I think it opens up a new way of thinking about women's silence thinking about the innocence the UM the political discrimination that women suffer and it kind of shows his a history to it but I think if you kind of start to understand the history you start to have a better way better idea of what you might do about it and was that in your mind when you did SPQR because there's an awful lot of men in this PQR in history there are people in this room you've done something to try to rectify that in relation to Roman history but I mean I think that what I say to my graduate students is if you actually really really have your first priority in the research in history you want to do to work on a subject where you can analyze the feelings experience testimony and the writing of women then to choose either ancient Greece or ancient Roman weird and stupid subject because you're not going to find it on the other hand if you want to look at a culture that in many ways has established a whole load of our our conventions about how about gender relations then in recent Romans it's really good place to start it's taking you back to where you can see Elise horrible essentials and fascinating essentials the nature of how women and men have been categorized and deemed to relate to women and roams the Empire of shades very much a dialectical relationship between Augustus and his great wife Livia in some ways or my etc Roman men say yes I mean that all these men all and Robert great and we have been brought up with the idea that somehow behind every great Roman Emperor there was a manipulative supportive scheming and often woman right now I'd rather like the idea that but that's true I think it's much more to do with male fantasy how when you get to an imperial power with one man really taking charge how do you explain his actions well usually you say oh that's because the wife told you I remember this also but we're not in you tennis in the UK in when Tony Blair was Prime Minister the papers regularly imagined that it was Cherie Blair that was masterminding all this and I remember when I was much younger you know Nancy Reagan was supposed to control Ronnie listen to she was supposed to be they were supposed to be by the fire you know in their dressing gowns and Nancy would set the agenda we don't actually believe this is true but you know his idea of the woman there's the power behind the throne is usually a male fantasy explained we would we would be verified if a roman today but all of them it is a car ignore Augustus really is the first man that we can see in the West from a from direct testimony first man starts out life as a terrorist and reinvents himself as a senior citizen and father of his country elder statesman and a safe pair of hands all across the world today their leaders that stone to his life has something close to a terrorist and are now elder statesmen and Augustus was first did that brilliant completely baffling transformation you have a wonderful line in one of your TLS essays that Augustus if he'd looked at was Cellini would have been rather admiring of it a bit almost Cellini would have been yes I think Augustus is a really interesting first emperor of Rome gone down both in the ancient world and the modern world as you know we forget the original but you know they the civil war Augustus the man who would apparently tear out his enemy's eyes with his bare hands and we remember the the seniors senior statesman and Augustus is in all kinds of ways a dictator and they even the name Augustus he wasn't born Augustus he was born Octavius and after in a part of part of the reason that he's come managing to put his civil war past behind him and take control of Rome part of the tactic is to take a new name and it's reported that he had quite a lot of discussion about what name to take he rejected Romulus because Romulus have been had killed his brother and that wasn't very good oh man four Gospels and so they fixed on Augustus it's a name that means and absolutely nothing it's an invented name and in a sense revered one or Dear Leader is probably as close as we can get to it and it must have sound did I mean this well do humility about career must have sounded very North Korean when you did and South Korean and yet now 2,000 years later you know instead of thinking that Augustus means revered one dear leader in in a very aggressive way we think it's well it became the title of every Roman Emperor took and we now take it for granted and you love Cicero twos and other periods heroes the quintessential public intellectual do you ever fear I asked you this over lunch and she laughed do you ever fear you'll end up without a head and hands metaphorically speaking then after some Caesar wreaks revenge I I did my thesis my PhD thesis on Cicero it was one of the most boring phd's that anybody is entitled the state religion in the late Roman Republic as a study based on the works of Cicero and it was never published for good reason I think it's very done and for a long time my life I kind of thought that although this Rome his lectures actually Cicero is the only Roman that we can ever know in any detail actors acres of speeches of private letters treatises and so forth I thought that it wasn't extremely interesting collection of testimony about the ancient world but you know you'd took me a couple of drinks and asked me sincerely to say whether I thought Cicero's a bit dull I would have said it was it wasn't until I was doing my book on laughter that I came to see the other side of this room but I started reading much more about his famous habit of joking and lurid blue tux like that sister a rather more country and I didn't discovered that insist of being a kind of frightful pompous stuffed shirt you know kind of awful row man dressed in a toga being very serious Cicero's reputation in the ancient world was as the funniest man that had ever lived there are collections of his jokes and his big fault it was so that never knew when to stop joking the most inappropriate times this man is not quite as I quite as we we made Cicero to Quinn reinvented Cicero was boring so we could teach him to little boys for English private schools in the mid nineteenth century and later right so he had to be made boring like seasoned actually he looked differently at many of these characters you find that you know watch the Western educational system has done to some of them is made them down when they never were and I now think it's it's really Robert Harris's trilogy about sistera probably gets it better than most academic work really but roses Rose which he's awkward he's pushy I was very very funny and he's very public it's very public and you can't keep a good joke in which is good with not unlike you sometimes if I may say hey sometimes he says things it might have been better on yes we might come to that request please I am also very curious having read recently your biography of Jane Harrison how do you have you come to the point where they've done that your memorial she writes and they write each other out of those stories did you ever attempted to write people out of your histories as you write history are you ever tempted by trying to find a new way to avoid dangerous characters or characters you've had some emotional relationship with modern or ancient Santa my distaste ancient characters no I mean I'm much more concerned I mean you haven't got enough ancient characters that you can afford to kind of send some of them into oblivion you know you need them all because you need to write about them you need to think about them what I do resist in terms of a modern in terms of the ancient world is the standard ways that we have of talking about them but what the phrases we consistently use Alexander the greatest Conqueror of the ancient world anything well since when was being a conqueror great right and what I'm much more interested in doing is kind of unseating those sorts of clichés that come with these people and say alright let's try replacing conqueror with bloodthirsty massacre oh yes sometimes we'll get there are a lot of fans of Alexandra very continues and when you ride this you get a hell of a lot of emails telling you that you don't understand the virtues of Alexander but it's those kind of things it's sort of um I've just made this he said this this is a TV documentary on Julius Caesar and there the tendency is even for me just to slip into the old cliches Julius Caesar the most successful Conqueror that Roman II suddenly it's kind of boy's own paper stuff and a Caesar marching across and massacring this tribe you know so one of the things I want to do is to try to bring back yeah but start to read all these characters against the grain Caesar that there were people in Rome we wanted even in work wanted to accuse Caesar war crimes what the Romans tolerance for brutality in war you know it was pretty hard and actually the people said he's going too far you think what Caesar did in Gaul was Jennifer and other Emperor's you I mean you back to work on Empress's and the new book you were telling me but as you work on this I reflecting the fact that one of your films is about Caligula why can you gather what attracted you do because because of all the movies yeah if you if you go out and do some Vox Pop and you ask people for the names of Romans they've heard of you will have Julius Caesar you won't get a Costas actually in the street that Julius Caesar Nero and a close third to D Caligula thanks to the soft porn movies a year in the nineteen senses where you come but what he got up to in swimming pools it was made by penthouse was its Bob Guccione makers people with the Penthouse Pets and then a load of really great actors like Helen Mirren and in Helen I think and the story goes is that that these two casts were kept completely different so Helen Mirren claims she never knew that they were porn scenes being shot in the evening because she was only on set in the morning Wow I used to I used to be much more contrarian than I am and I used to think that I would rehabilitation ealer you know rehabilitation now I'm not so keen on doing that but I'm keen in taking figures from the from the ancient world that people have a kind of name recognition or a kind of sector you know such as stereotypes and we did all come up with and trying to pick those and to doing tequila I was most of all interested in sharing with people how you would go about finding out about them something that an awful lot of popular history trips the audience is a bit stupid or at least uninterested and what tell a story which doesn't allow it down to run acuity it doesn't say how would we get this story doesn't say what the evidence is with someone like Caligula you can actually in an hour's documentary pretty good idea of what the problems are about literally chasing I like the story right no you can point out very clearly that he never made his horse a consul you know it is not even you know nobody in the ancient world even says that he made this horse it's not right he says he threatened to make this one often people people now come much more often to say you know this looks like it was a joke at the Senate all the Romina needs to be so hopeless and so kind of self for basting but at some point at this rather young impetuous Empress's Oh for heaven's sake I might as well have my horse at once you know and then that's sort of gets picked up and then if you look at what appears in newspapers about Roman emperors that's the endless quotes which say never has been there more stupid political appointment from the take big you know made his horse a consul get on the Twitter and you say what's a connoisseur but it'll be a battle that I will not win in my lifetime do you enjoy I mean do you enjoy you're gonna get asked this question do you enjoy getting on the Twitter to ask to reply to people who have wrongly attributing Caligula yeah that's the best is it listen to the big BBC Radio 4 breakfast show in the morning just the flagship needs program of the day loads of interviews you can always be guaranteed that in one issue of the Today programme over three hours there'll be one appalling error about the classical world and there's great fun to know you know Nero did not sit in the Coliseum it hasn't been built yet because I wouldn't want to suggest that apart from all these other things I'm a frightful old peasant I'm sure I get some facts wrong it's terrible but I can't bear all the people getting packs for I mean Newell's is everything in what you do but I I found this one little phrase in one of your blog's suppose Hitler had written the best article ever on Lucien's today is Syria would I recommend it to my students it's a fantastic fantastic line at least so you if I may say would you well this is a real tricky one isn't it and probably yes that's why she's in a controversy in the moment in Great Britain but anyway go on I think I think it apart from the frightful pennant about facts about the classical world I also don't I don't much like what I perceive as modern now I suspect it's forever being with us it kind of armchair moral certainty we tend to have about the world about the past about what we would do if we were you know in situations where we deplore the behavior of other people and one of those one of the really really problematic areas which I did too which I do not think there's a right answer I mean I've got my own personal and everybody's got to make their own minds on is the awful fact that very bad people can write very clever things and I simply don't know how you deal with that they can also very very nasty vile people can make the most wondrous works of art they can erect the most glorious buildings and how do we get our heads around that you know I I would not actually like to go around Italy demolishing buildings put up under the sponsorship of Mussolini I would not like to get rid of 400 tanyka I think it's not and the question is how do you then face that dilemma and so I use the example of Hitler having written the best article on this year's day day of Syria you know just to point that out but it's not all that far from being the truth I mean one of the most controversial politicians of twentieth century Britain from the right was Enoch Powell who made the notorious and grossly racist speech which had the famous phrase indeed taken from Virgil rivers of blood was also one of the best commentators and editors of the Greek historian Herodotus and you had my answer to that is to face it and when I recommend that to my students I'm always going to make sure that they know what they're rooting sometimes it's very obvious as I think they are all aware with somebody like Powell I think they're much less aware about the politics of the academic politics of Europe in the mid 20th century so into Richard at lunchtime I once got a group of students together who were doing classics in the 19th century and 19th and 20th century course on reception and we were trying to sensitize them to the kind of a political background of works that they used and I went to the library and I got out Amedeo Miura's fantastic publication of the villa de nies tearing from Pompeii huge lavishly Illustrated Berlin cover and I passed around the students it was about twenty of them this book and I said just tell me tell about work I'm not interested today in the paintings of the villa daily staring I'm interested in what you think about this book and so oh it's wonderful isn't God so expensive oh it's binding it's gorgeous it took about quarter an hour before anyone saw the fastest on the spine and but they didn't know what era fascista meant they had they did not read this book as being a product in any way over Salinas regime they in its always of course they didn't lose but I think so I think I'm much more interested in dating them sensitized because talking about doing everything online is that it kind of hides that you know it really hides it you don't but I want to say that you have to you have to place where this comes from but doesn't mean you know having a bonfire I'm burning so you've just been filming and you're about to film the last episode of a new series civilizations where you must have confronted this issue over and over again but there would be not - yes I mean we're remaking it in a way that very loosely we're we're making a program in dialog with the very famous Kenneth Clark civilization series which in fact was most was particularly popular here before it was ever really in the UK and Clark had a program which was resolute in European he came to the state's I think twice or probably once he went to he went to Virginia and he went he had a quick look at the Statue of Liberty and that afraid this is far too got all wrestlers in Europe I didn't even get to Spain he didn't think that there was much worth seeing in Spain and we're trying to make this program in a way that does not that the transcends those balances and that's why it's called civilizations with an S on which is a rather crude way of indicating it is wider but of course I mean I think there's all sorts of problems I mean I hope I hope we've negotiated the problem successfully the thing I found about this program was not so much having to confront nastiness because if you've worked with the Romans all your life you're quite easy you know absolutely you know we don't we don't not read Virgil because of what you did you know - with a probably innocent slaves doing so wasn't the nastiest it was it was constants really of how you could ever get over the yet really get over yet there's centricity of clock because to start with you make the program and you see I know we can't we're not going to be as narrow as Clark we're going to know we can see them art of Mexico in Niram New Zealand we get spread widely far did you come to the New World my programs didn't well I went to Mexico but the other programs do but then you see that to be to make a program that is really culturally diverse and really taking point of view well it's starting other cultures seriously you know it means it needs more than just adding a bit of Japanese are on to ya go to India it's not being having a diverse cultural vision doesn't just mean having a kind of bigger travel budget you know it has to me a difference about the way you look and I for a long time it took about three years to make this program and you know once I felt very Guinea because I thought you know I spent a long time line busting to colleagues o'clock for being so ethnocentric go to Spain you know is my inocentes t really different from this you know Here I am elderly white middle class lady and at what I'm doing it comes a reverse o'clock I'm claiming competence it Here I am at Angkor Wat you know to tell you about this actually I think my eyes were opened in all kinds of locations and I hope that we've got I that hope we have managed it but just saying I'm going to talk about India doesn't make you more culturally diverse than Clark's limited knowledge of latias of it but it's a but cultural diversity is is what's going on in your head not just what country you decide to visit that's been a my hope and hope we solved I mean or at least yeah there is no solution but I hope we recognized the difficulties and this starts in one two weeks - in the UK it starts in unwatched first there's going to be a versatile here on PBS I think starting in April that's significantly altered its American Convention Party they don't like what's called presenter led documentaries so although you see me being you know talking about objects all the words I wrote are going to be spoken by an actor really even in the UK version I speak and then there's voiceover which I vote no something's been changed to be fair the PBS version has been adapted and there be new bits have been added but for me it's very odd looking at it because there's kind of what I'd say and that is Robin this Rob famous acting's member so Mary what are two more questions and then I'm gonna bring everyone else in because we've been going for nearly 40 minutes what's your next big challenge what's your next book what are you looking at apart from tweeting oh yes I'm just halfway through a book that writing book that came out of the Mellon lectures I did here at the National Gallery five years ago now which was images of Roman emperors in Renaissance and later art that's got something quite new for me it's been extremely exciting and it's I mean it's not many aims but what I mean it's quite an academic book but one of the aims Brigitte so it bridges the audience and I'm wanting to bring Roman Empress back from you know back from the dusty museum shelves you go to museum where they've got lineups of Renaissance twelve Caesars and watch what people do when they confronted by them I tell you they just walk past they don't stop I know that quite often I just walk past it you know they look done so the project of the book really has all kinds of different aspects but the main projects book I think is to hope it will encourage people not to all pass them and they see them in a museum to stop and to think and to wonder about why we still want no you can still buy Nero on a chocolate soup on Max's called Nero matches what a joke fire of Rome you know why some know some of the best modern artists still it's not we're not just stuck with Renaissance sculptors churning out the cultural wallpaper of for Caesars we've got big modern artists 19th century artists recreating Roman imperial power Roman emperors for ISM I wanted to make that seem exciting rather than slightly retro exciting one last question before I bring the audience in and it's this and it's slightly unfair question really but anyway nothing's I'm fair with you really said look go for it you've really changed British classics for the better I mean if you go up and down in Britain and you talk to people in the liberal arts they all say classics is prospering and then the next two words are Mary beard why do you think that is no what is it about what is the cult of Mary being because you of all people who began by studying cults have become one I am very flattered but I don't think it's entirely true this goes back to something that I said at the beginning of our discussion but in a sense professional classes it's always think that a better subject is about to go down the tubes but has just been just being rescued it's you know hanging on by the skin of its teeth and I've done quite a lot like worked hard and a lot of other people in the UK and in the US you know do huge amounts to interest young people old people school students in classical you know I've I've had in some ways the advantage of being on telly to do that but I'm basically do what my colleagues do I think also we forget when I was a school student there were a series of books by Michael Grant yeah that were biographies of them were they selling coffee table books and I remember must have been in the 70s sitting at home watching the BBC's adaptation of I Claudius which was here on her books or something you know and it was absolutely brilliant I mean if you look at it now you can tell he was made on a budget so low that they never went outside it was amazing it was really magical to me because they had to compensate going outside so it recreated brilliantly the Roman Imperial Palace as a place of deep dark deep proximity and they lingered for five minutes on the dying face of Augustus a wall of scenery wobbles fantastically well I'm afraid I actually saw the the telly program before I read the novel or in the novel I was surprised he suddenly went to Germany and so I think that there's always been this kind of as always you know managed to retain its popularity in different forms like a look at Spartacus you know I am supporting everybody in the street today I am Spartacus I have spot occurs I'll bend her at the blockbuster novels of the late 19th century ah were very much classic the early movements were classical and so I think that we're we built a bit of amnesia you know when we say that there's this new interest you have to you have to fan it the whole time right you know you stop Fanning it then it probably won't go away then you found it for a new age with a blog and a twist that's fine you do it in different I'd be no good making a film writing a novel but Robert Harris is Cicero novels is pompeya novels fantastic good have enormous audiences yes so I think that one's gonna be a bit humble you know I've done my bit lots of other people you know in the profession and outside the profession you know doing their bit and actually it's part the grand tradition now we've been talking for three quarters of an era believe it or not so honest and let me ask I can see one questions about short questions please and not too controversial just in case because I don't sure I can always control so I'll take the gentleman at the back if there are any famous radicals the time chrome for instance a corporation's title and if you will be that the preachers of Democritus perhaps or a teacher in house and also I'd like to have two thoughts also any Hellenic marbles just get my tape recorder I'm very well it's interesting about Romans it's full of radicals but with some exceptions and of course Lucretius it would be one of them particularly in the late Republic they're written out by Cicero and then I think we now think of the Tribune Publius Clodius polka you know some terribly wicked you know almost terrorists and certainly Cataline falls into that category we think that because we only have the view of the opposition so I think narrow there's a wonderful radical tradition in Rome and you see a little bit of that when you look at the stories they tell about the early republic the idea tributes fighting the power of the elite but lots of it is kind of white it over by the traditions of Cicero who's so dominant on the other marble to have a very simple answer I am on the fence I see many bad reasons for sending them back and many bad reasons for keeping them and can you see a solution I can't see a solution because I think we're not actually done and if there was an easy solution we defined it you know when when these controversies go on and on and on that is normally because there isn't an answer and I think that I think this is you know the question is to whom do the Elgin marbles on the path of the marbles do they belong we can't answer that question easily and if you haven't read it Mary's bid on the part of the visit that Mary's book on the parking is really superb in illustrating exactly that Newell's please okay I was interested in the fascination that you have mentioned by the Brits in general the audience as well about the Latin world their own any consider what fascinates me there was a fear of establish within the university system much before the would one of and also you know start recording what translate the entire so I say this because I also like to ask you first on its obviously and why were the Brits oh absolutely invading eunuch culture of Latin I think it's a strange mixture of cultural inferiority and superiority there's you know a sense that Britain had a part of some aspects some parts that British elite heard that they that they were johnny-come-lately but actually they needed the validation of the long tradition of particularly Latin early great was never so combined with the sense of superiority that they were the best guardians of it as usually most kind of superiority comes with it with a matching inferiority and I think there was a sense that Britain could be the heir to Rome and a sense I have to say embarrassing that they were better equipped to preserve that sport culture than the modern inhabitants of well all the time looking desperately for the validation factors which climb into that unity of cultural the cultural to spread within a pan-european culture I have to remember I'm always saying this it's it's only the posh you know it's not most most people this elite fits with your second question most people always read Latin in translation should not feel ashamed I think there is a that there is a direct feed off between you know gladiator and movies and that excitement and people getting curious about the world and they curious about the language in which Latin literature was written there are there is a kind of radical fringe in the UK that would say we want to go back to a school system a high school system in which everybody learns Latin I think that be completely godly and it was never the case anyway it was only the way we tend to look back to a culture of people knowing that in as if somehow everybody did it was and what's happening now I think is that people are coming into it not because they made to do it but because you know in all kinds of ways all sorts of different routes they they've become interested in learning I think you know I don't think you've died and so the heart of mr. Johnson's are foreign secretaries views of oh please as it costs my want to read one let me put it more generally maybe worse I think that every time you look at an encounter between the Romans and anybody else one of the things are you always say to the students to do now tell a story from the other side that is that to be Romans of the Jewish revolt Romans and Christians getting a load of undergraduates to write an essay explaining from them from the pagan Roman point of view why the persecution of the Christians was a very good idea is an excellent exercise it doesn't mean they have to believe it so I think that I mean I think one of the things although you raise an area where this let's see I think one of the things that ancient history is good for in within pedagogy is that it is a very long time ago and you can have debates about which great things which take the other side which is fairly unacceptable that we wouldn't want to have even about the 19th settle early about arguments now and so in in some ways there is a kind of there's a space in Rome and Greece and it's a there's dangers but there's a space for talking about but arguing the unacceptable and see what that sounds like because I think you know if you don't see what the unacceptable sounds like you'll never be able to contestant please thank you very much for your excellent presentation and when you really characters accurately when your ex a rock that seems to be ruling classes if you can use that turkey how do you would you or does it make sense to a word of caution that draws from a box that you're studying and apply to oh no it's a surprise um I think two things to that one I I really hesitate before ever saying that that there are direct lessons that the ancient world has to change or that you can make direct comparisons between antiquity and now despite the fact that that's what every journalist almost always what would you do I can't tell you since your new president how many times I've had an email for journalists asking me which Emperor and it's always very hard to know what to do either to explain that's a bloody stupid question or I what I tend to do is give them an emperor that they worked with hurdles but I think that what to be more positive than that and it's like a resist direct comparisons but I okay I think that what what these discussion is what knowing about antiquity and debating about that is it does help to open up the space in which people can look afresh at those problems for themselves and I think that it just you know a bit like what I was just saying I think it's particularly in teaching students you find that the kind of arguments it's been have about the ancient world can be particularly fierce gloves off or without anybody mostly getting hurt by them you know you can you can actually argue about Nero's persecution of the Christians in a way that I think exposes all kinds of issues which whose some of whose implications and these ways of thinking you can you can then use to look at your own politics or religious conflicts from a fresh standpoint so I would never want to say that I think history is really really useful for kind of turning you into an external view of yourself and so I think that's really bored I don't know what what I think about honesty oddly because the ancient Romans were never much interested in it but I think it it lets you look afresh at your own world and then you know if you have a it's it's hard and I think he gets harder in universities to have a direct fully frontal argument with students about modern politics they feel quite anxious they can feel a little bit exposed but if you came through it through something that happened 2,000 years ago you get something much more productive please were the ancient Romans writing standardized Latin not half the standardized as the versions of it that we now have in so far as ancient texts copied out to recopy it out and edited over the last say two thousand years has tended not entirely not entirely University but is intended to push the Latin that we now read into an increasingly kind of literary latin form as generations of the scholars have corrected the mistakes etc now you know even with Cicero I think quite well actually Cicero or his slaves wrote down on the papyrus in 63 BC maybe quite a long way from the Latin that we now read and certainly the spoken Latin in the street was much longer way and I think there is something quite difficult I'm gonna lots of this about is people often say Latinas a hard language I don't actually think that it is any harder than any other language in the world don't leave me like this kind of they can't be higher archives in terms of hardness what we've got is some what serve I don't think it's hard is that we have this extremely literary survival so that you know when students are made first of all you know to confront for example without a particular peculiar style that is not when we ask them in their second year of acting to read tacitus it is like asking you know a new learner of English to read Finnegan's Wake in the second year it's really really not so because there is a very strong liquor arenas and pop me in I mean well nothing's being intensified everything is wrong please that's fake to pee I didn't say that's pretty great to know globalization diversity is there something to be learned for me yes I think there is I think there's no direct lesson and I don't think any of us that's where any politician would be well advised to go back to Rome and find to find the answer to migration or any of those topics what Rome does do is again it's showing us a bit that you could think about it a different way I mean I think what is really really striking about Rome is both the incorporation of the level of the elite you know so that by the second century AD you've got Spanish Emperor's on the throne it's rose view of itself and if you go back to the two founding legends of room Aeneas and Romulus both of them are quite extraordinary you know because Aeneas ISM is a war refugee actually try finding found in the Roman racing engineer when Romulus spans the city first of all he kills his brother and then he looks around and says he hasn't got enough men so he says anybody can come to me anybody can come to Rome asylum-seekers thieves runaway slaves anybody can come now none of those things of course they're entirely fit constructions but what I find interesting is that you've got this this our policy eventually a massive Empire who imagines its origins as always fine Rome was always boring whether it's a nice whether it's a runaway slaves where there is the asylum seekers that are that Romulus welcomes and I think when we think about our that America is different but certainly in Britain you know although you know there are occasional self-congratulatory moments when the British say no we have always welcomed migrants you know given them usually bloody hard time we we don't somehow conceal ourselves as a nation that is always for now I think that it would be much closer to some versions of American self-representation than the British or of the European wonderful another question please okay there are efforts to try to introduce it almost as a licensed Pokemon prosperity faculties twelve-year-olds right I see the utility and I applaud all these different versions of how people try to get kids particularly interested in Latin and I'm quite certain that that's one way that's quite important to try personally i have to say it's the fact that you don't have to speak Latin there's always make me rather keen on it you know you don't have to say where's the station and how much does this Pizza cost I've always found very tedious when it comes to learning a modern language so I like Latin very much on the page not speaking it although I had to say is likely a flippant to you because I have seen hearing bit in the UK but not so much that you know this has got people into Latin through a different way and there's you know what used to be Reggie Foster's classes at the Vatican room where everything was conducted in Latin I believe leaves me actually horrified but isn't there is isn't there a team in the Vatican or working on new words yes I seem to remember many years ago sharing dinner with someone who was working on hydrofoil and he worked on Hydra for a year but he got a fellowship from the United States please there's a load of wonderful charming things who put out the news in Latin on some radio station every day I mean if you think you both bless this as an activity of you know of total innocence but you all something please we've got two or three more but America's economy this scarred by sleep continues in America is complain to races now I did learn some Latin class but I've since been told that there were lots and lots of slaves under during the Roman economy but you don't hear about their races this Rome was a slave economy I think that what is the differences are that the there was no link between ethnicity no necessary link between ethnicity and slavery slaves were a product of Roman expansion wherever and whenever road went but the other factor which has to be borne in mind is that in urban contexts and I don't think this would have applied to rural context but in urban context the Romans were absolutely extraordinary and unique in the ancient world and noticeably me this was commented on by other ancient cultures that they regularly freed their slaves but not only did they free the slaves but the slaves on receiving their freedom if freed by Roman citizen became a Roman citizen so if you compare Athens Athens classical Athens red occasionally did rarely freed slaves but sales didn't enter the polity the freed slaves didn't enter the polity they remain everything as it were stateless now in Rome you have this the second world actually unique since that the freed slaves become fully fully participate Ori citizens that has all sorts of consequences not so much in the ethnic diversity of the Roman population but in in the cultural diversity of the Roman population so it nobody knows quite the extent to which it the numbers which happened but it isn't inconceivable that by the time you get to the second century AD approaching 50 percent of the Roman population had slave ancestry and that I think that is an extraordinary total for a pre-modern community so it's it's we don't know how many slaves there were we have a tendency I think not slightly to to give a rosy picture of Roman slavery because we don't look at the industrial slaves don't look at the agricultural slaves largely because there's so little evidence so we can get them and we looked at the tend to look at the household urban slaves and so you know these are an appalling slave economy but it's a slave economy that really incorporates the slave it's commonly said that this as you can instantly see this is not because the Romans were nice in part it is a highly economic rational calculation but what you don't want is know this length because it's very expensive so in some ways it's a brutal bit of economics but it has a long-term effect on the composition of the Roman people we're gonna take one last question I'm afraid because time is going on how virtuous that was and what kind of politics not sure about the second one try the Pax Romana depends whose side you're on and the Pax Romana comes like most pieces at a cost I'm in fact if you were to say how would I best translate packs the Latin word packs in an ancient context it would be something much more closer to pacification than to peace it's it's actually it's peace one Bible pax is what you get after war and you know tell that to Boudicca and to the other rebel against the roman empire by enlarge the roman empire sustains its pacification by the collaboration of the local elite but it always run the risk of the local elite turning as brutaka did she was a wife of a local pin so it's I think I think our problem in the term is not whether it was the Pax Romana but how we would translate pax and when we say the Roman peace you know we tend to think of it as frightfully sort of cute and sweeten it up well really kind of UN version well it's a different side how it ended well it's about the biggest question of the whole of Roman history I mean which is I second only to how the hell they've managed to get an empire in the first place how they lost it and what the politics was of the decline of the Roman Empire is impossible to summarize in our family attorneys crude version they overstretched but he said that they overstretched while still lasting you know it wasn't a bad day what you wanted was an empire they did you know I wouldn't what you wanted was an empire they did quite well at it but with all the costs with all the difficulties with all the ways it eventually undermines itself yeah we are you know we didn't rehearse these from any Empire life the sultan class you know in the end quite understandably become a destabilizing not a stabilizing force I'm gonna Gnostic revenant was nasty one last word tomorrow can drive from Penn University Pennsylvania and I are talking about the end of the world end of the Roman world in the cosmos club at ten o'clock and we're talking about pandemics so we're talking about volcanoes and were also choking on Tesla's so we're talking about the kinds of things that Barry's been describing too what a wonderful evening isn't she wonderful I'd like to thank the Italian embassy I'd like to thank all of you but most of all professor beard she's wonderfully wickedly subversive but at the same time amazingly knowledgeable and a real treasure in Britain she's known as a treasure so thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The American University of Rome

Views: 13,382

Rating: 4.6385541 out of 5

Keywords: Mary Beard, The American University of Rome, AUR, Rome, Ancient Rome, Roman History, Classical history, SPQR, Richard Hodges, archaeology, Italian American, Italy, Embassy, historian

Id: 4G06QpMiFcM

Length: 91min 48sec (5508 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 01 2018