Mary Beard on the Classics

Mary Beard on the Classics

From The World in Time / Lapham’s Quarterly by Lapham’s Quarterly

May 22, 2026 · 1h 6m

About this episode

Mary Beard discusses the significance of ancient classics and democracy in contemporary society.

“Fifth-century Athens still lingers even for us, and it’s a mythical golden age,” says Mary Beard on this week’s episode of The World in Time. “And we imagine that all we can do is count ourselves lucky to be the inheritors of the Greek Miracle, all of the things that the Greeks invented: democracy, philosophy, and theater, among much else. I struggled with that when I was at university because it was almost cliché to say that the fifth- and sixth-century Athenians invented democracy, which is simply not true. It doesn’t take much to say, ‘Look, democracy isn’t like the iPhone or the steam engine.’ It isn’t invented in that way. Democracy is a process and people have been experimenting with that process all over the world–not just in Western Europe–for thousands of years.”    This week on the podcast, Donovan Hohn speaks with Mary Beard, best-selling historian and professor emerita of classics at the University of Cambridge, about her new book, Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old . “What is the point of the ancient classics?” Beard asks in the book’s introduction. “Why should we bother about what people did two thousand years ago or more: what they made, wrote, and…

People in this episode

Host: Donovan Hohn

Guest: Mary Beard

Topics covered

  • Classics
  • Democracy
  • Ancient Greece
  • History
  • Philosophy
  • Theater

Keywords

  • Mary Beard
  • Classics
  • Democracy
  • Ancient Greece
  • Talking Classics
  • History
  • Philosophy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Cambridge

Books & works: Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old

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