#Mary Beard

[ravenkings]

obsessed with this letterboxd review of mary beard’s caligula documentary

#gonna start incorporating ‘so glad they invented therapy after this guy had every problem ever’ into my everyday lexicon #caligula #ancient rome #mary beard

[liesmyth]

...But the Odyssey is just as much the story of Telemachus, the son of Odysseus and Penelope. It is the story of his growing up and how over the course of the poem he matures from boy to man. That process starts in the first book of the poem when Penelope comes down from her private quarters into the great hall of the palace, to find a bard performing to throngs of her suitors; he is singing about the difficulties the Greek heroes are having in reaching home. She isn’t amused, and in front of everyone she asks him to choose another, happier number. At which point young Telemachus intervenes: ‘Mother,’ he says, ‘go back up into your quarters, and take up your own work, the loom and the distaff … speech will be the business of men, all men, and of me most of all; for mine is the power in this household.’ And off she goes, back upstairs. There is something faintly ridiculous about this wet-behind-the-ears lad shutting up the savvy, middle-aged Penelope. But it is a nice demonstration that right where written evidence for Western culture starts, women’s voices are not being heard in the public sphere. More than that, as Homer has it, an integral part of growing up, as a man, is learning to take control of public utterance and to silence the female of the species. The actual words Telemachus uses are significant too. When he says ‘speech’ is ‘men’s business’, the word is muthos – not in the sense that it has come down to us of ‘myth’. In Homeric Greek it signals authoritative public speech, not the kind of chatting, prattling or gossip that anyone – women included, or especially women – could do.

Mary Beard, Women and Power: A Manifesto

#ancient greek literature #mary beard #quotes #thinking thoughts #feminism #book talk #odyssey #tagamemnon #classical literature #classics

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

Thinkin' about her (the big black Slab that covered part of the forum and the Romans forgot why they put it there, so they made up spooky stories about it being the tomb of Romulus)

Thinkin' about him (the shrine discovered beneath the Slab containing our first hard evidence of a monarchy in early Rome)

(Mary Beard, SPQR)

#so come down to the lab #and see what's on the slab #spqr book #mary beard #archaeology #the Slab #jlrrt speaks

[freesidexjunkie]

hey so just fyi. idk if it's cool to post the PDF of it (idk why it wouldn't be but like. ???) but my husband, knowing how much I like Rome and how much I love and admire Mary Beard's books and docuseries.

emailed her office.

and she sent me a signed Christmas card by email WITH MY NAME AND A MESSAGE TO KEEP AT IT WITH ARCHAEOLOGY.

MARY BEARD KNOWS MY NAME AND SHE KNOWS MY HOPES AND DREAMS

and that's like. the coolest Christmas present I think I've gotten.

#mary beard #ancient rome #classics #history #you know that post of 'he liked your letter so much he ate it' bc that's me rn #eating this in my mind out of excitement

[domusplautii]

I'm down a rabbit hole around how Romans lived in their houses - Reading a heap of academic articles around the subject and reviewing a bunch of lectures on YouTube.

There's a really useful one by Mary Beard Pompeii: The Art of Reconstruction (also available on Jstor here).

I think about this a lot.

Were there really multiple, unrelated families living in those sprawling houses at Pompeii; or extended, multi-generational families, as was thought until more modern times?

Were the (probably) semi-public spaces of the urban villa used in an open, free-flowing way; or were they divided up using doors, wooden screens and (perhaps) curtains?

Did they really have no concept of personal privacy?

Did people sleep anywhere in the house, all thrown in together; or did they use some of the cubicula like modern bedrooms?

Where did they cook? Did they have braziers wherever needed so they could cook in any room, and if so, why have a culina at all?

#roman domus #ancient housing #ancient homes #Roman familia #ancient rome #pompeii #mary beard #pompeii: the art of reconstruction #youtube

[girlcatilina]

oh so you think about the roman empire every day? but you weren't at mary beard's talk? interesting…

#this is my personality now #queueusque tandem abutere catilina patientia nostra #just roman memes #ancient history #ancient rome #mary beard

[deadpresidents]

It has been a while since I last asked so what have you been reading recently?

Here is what I've been reading over the past couple months:

•Target Tehran: How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination -- and Secret Diplomacy -- to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ilan Evyatar

•The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Stuart A. Reid

•Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Mary Beard

•The Invention of Papal History: Onofrio Panvinio Between Renaissance and Catholic Reform (BOOK | KINDLE) Stefan Bauer

•Infallibility, Integrity and Obedience: The Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church, 1848-2023 (BOOK | KINDLE) John M. Rist

•Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Uri Kaufman

•Lincoln and California: The President, the War, and the Golden State (BOOK | KINDLE) Brian McGinty

•Who Believes Is Not Alone: My Life Beside Benedict XVI (BOOK | KINDLE) Archbishop Georg Gänswein with Saverio Gaeta

•White House Wild Child: How Alice Roosevelt Broke All the Rules and Won the Heart of America (BOOK | KINDLE) Shelley Fraser Mickle

•Madonna: A Rebel Life (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Mary Gabriel

#Books #Reading Suggestions #Reading List #Book Recommendations #Book Suggestions #Target Tehran #Simon & Schuster #The Lumumba Plot #Emperor of Rome #Mary Beard #Liveright #Eighteen Days In October #Lincoln and California #St. Martin's Press #Potomac Books #Who Believes Is Not Alone #Archbishop Georg Gänswein #Pope Benedict XVI #White House Wild Child #Alice Roosevelt #Madonna: A Rebel Life #Madonna #Little Brown #The Invention of Papal History #St. Augustine's Press #Madonna Biography

[lilacsupernova]

Women are ... much more than men, expected to look younger than they are. As Susan Sontag wrote, in an essay called 'The Double Standard of Ageing', '[For women], only one standard of female beauty is sanctioned: the girl. The great advantage men have is that out culture allows two standards of male beauty: the boy and the man. The beauty of a boy resembles the beauty of a girl. In both, sexes it is a fragile kind of beauty and flourishes naturally only in the early part of the life-cycle. Happily, men are able to accept themselves under another standard of good looks – heavier, rougher, more thickly built. A man does not grieve when he loses the smooth, unlined, hairless skin of a boy. For he has only exchanged one form of attractiveness for another: the darker skin of a man's face, roughened by daily shaving, showing marks of emotions and the normal lines of age.

'There is no equivalent of this second standard for women. The single standard of beauty for women dictates that they must go one having clear skin. Every wrinkle, every line, every grey hair, is a defeat. No wonder that no boy minds becoming a man, while even the passage from girlhood to early womanhood is experienced by many women as their downfall, for all women are trained to continue wanting to look like girls.'

This has implications for how seriously women are take. Girls are taken less seriously than middle-aged women, yet middle-aged women are expected to do all they can do to look more like girls. As Elaine Chao put it to me, "There is much more pressure on older women to look younger than they are than there is for men. Which is horrible. It's a paradox. On the one hand, as we get older, we actually get wiser, more assertive, and more able to occupy equal footing. On the other hand, our looks work against us.' Mary Beard echoes this in Women and Power: 'Craggy or wrinkled faces signal mature wisdom in the case of a bloke, but "past-my-use-by-date" in the case of a woman.' No wonder over 90 per cent of Botox users and 92 per cent of cosmetic surgery patients are female.

– Mary Ann Sieghart (2021) The Authority Gap: Why Women are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men and What We Can Do About It, pp. 250-1.

#mary ann sieghart #the authority gap #feminism #sexism #ageism #susan sontag #elaine chao #mary beard #beauty industry #lilac posts #another factor driving girls and young women towards transness

[pensarenmusaranyes]

“The poor could never rise to the top of Roman politics; the common people could never seize the political initiative; and it was axiomatic that the richer an individual citizen was, the more political weight he should have. But this form of disequilibrium is familiar in many modern so-called democracies: at Rome too the wealthy and privileged competed for political office and political power that could only be granted by popular election and by the favour of ordinary people who would never have the financial means to stand themselves.” ― Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

#democràcia #injustícia #spqr #ancient rome #mary beard

[midwesternartlovertraveler]

I, Claudius is one of the greatest shows I have ever seen on television. True it was filmed on a sound stage and it looks it today, but the writing and the acting are superb!

#i claudius #miniseries #television #1970s television #actor #actress #brian blessed #sian phillips #derek jacobi #bbc #historian #mary beard #rome #imperial rome #roman empire #Youtube

[ravenkings]

Unsurprisingly, several well-informed ancient observers decided that the enigma of Augustus was the whole point. Nearly 400 years later, in the mid fourth century CE, the emperor Julian wrote a clever skit on his predecessors, imagining them all turning up together for a grand party with the gods. They troop in, matching what had by then become their caricatures. Julius Caesar is so power crazy that he seems likely to unseat the king of the gods and party host; Tiberius looks terribly moody; Nero cannot bear to be parted from his lyre. Augustus enters like a chameleon who is impossible to sum up, a tricky old reptile continually changing colour, from yellow to red to black, one minute gloomy and sombre, the next parading all the charms of the goddess of love. The divine hosts have no option but to hand him over to a philosopher to make him wise and moderate.

Earlier writers hinted that Augustus relished this kind of tease. Why else did he choose for the design of his signet ring, with which he authenticated his correspondence – the ancient equivalent of a signature – the image of the most famous riddling creature in the whole of Greco-Roman mythology: the sphinx? Roman dissidents, who have been followed by a number of modern historians, pushed the point further, accusing the Augustan regime of being based on hypocrisy and pretense and of abusing traditional Republican forms and language to provide a cloak and disguise for a fairly hard-line tyranny.

There is certainly something to this. Hypocrisy is a common weapon of power. And on many occasions it may have suited Augustus to be just as Julian painted him, enigmatic, slippery and evasive, and to say one thing while meaning another. But that can hardly have been everything. There must have been firmer footings under the new regime than a series of riddles, doublespeak and pretense. So what were those footings? How did Augustus get away with it? That is the problem. 

–Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

#gaslighting gatekeeping girlbossing #ancient rome #mary beard #history #quote

[t0rschlusspan1k]

I'm currently watching this series of lectures Prof. Mary Beard gave at the University of Edinburgh four years ago about Roman Society (the title is The Ancient World and Us: from fear and loathing to enlightenment and ethics). I was very absorbed by it until I got to the episode called Lucretia and the Politics of S*xual Violence. It's extremely painful watch as a woman but it's a very interesting video, absolutely necessary - dare I say - to understand our history (I'm finding out so many things I had no idea of, even if I had already heard about certain events or celebrated historical figures), as much, if not a bit more than the previous ones...

But I couldn't help but notice how this particular episode has only half the likes compared to the ones I saw before it, even the one about whiteness, white etho-centrism and racism in classical history and settings, which is always such a controversial, inflammatory topic.

Here is the link anyway, for those who are interested. And here is the playlist for the entire series of lectures (believe me, it's totally worth your time!).

#text #history #Prof. Dame Mary Beard #Mary Beard #women's history #women in history #cw: suicide #cw: r*pe #Roman history #cw: misogyny #University of Edinburgh #The Ancient World and Us #cw: victim blaming #cw: forced consent

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

A very rough overview of Rome's place in the world up till the late republic:

1300-750 BCE: Rome is just another village.

750-500: Era of the kings (read: village chiefs).

500-400: Itty bitty baby republic that keeps getting into fights with neighboring villages. No one's entirely sure what a republic is, including the Romans.

400-300: Baby republic becomes moody teenage republic that beats up most of its classmates and realizes it needs, like, an actual government.

300-200: Bigger wars with Greece and Carthage! Rome becomes the dominant power in the western Mediterranean!

200-133: Rome pretty much Takes What It Wants and this causes problems for everyone...

133-30: ...Including for the Romans. High drama, civil wars and famous folks like Caesar, Pompey, Cleopatra and Cicero! Ends with the first emperor taking power, Augustus.

Based on Mary Beard's book SPQR. I'll post a more detailed timeline later.

#jlrrt reads #ancient rome #timeline #roman history #spqr book #mary beard #jlrrt essays

[uncleclaudius]

Mary Beard, on the daily life of a Roman emperor, ahead of the release of her new book Emperor of Rome

#which I've already ordered #ancient civilisation #roman empire #ancient rome #mary beard #roman emperor #Youtube

[femalethink]

In the future, things will be different from the long past as women come into their own: “The future is woman’s — as quickly as she realizes her present frustration, and her tremendously powerful potentialities ... The important thing is that a vast army of women has begun to move forward into male territory. Eventually they will conquer their own feelings of female inadequacy.” With woman’s feeling of inadequacy cast off and her potentialities released into full action, civilization will advance, for women have the qualities necessary for the triumph of civilization.

—Mary Beard, "Woman as a Force in History: A Study in Traditions and Realities."

#mary beard #feminism #radical feminism #radblr #radfem #the future is female #gynofuturism

[warningsine]

― Mary Beard, Women & Power: A Manifesto

#Women & Power #Mary Beard #books #quotes #q