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#mary beard
ravenkings · 4 months
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obsessed with this letterboxd review of mary beard’s caligula documentary
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liesmyth · 3 months
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...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
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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)
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Thinkin' about him (the shrine discovered beneath the Slab containing our first hard evidence of a monarchy in early Rome)
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(Mary Beard, SPQR)
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freesidexjunkie · 3 months
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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.
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domusplautii · 10 months
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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?
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girlcatilina · 6 months
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oh so you think about the roman empire every day? but you weren't at mary beard's talk? interesting…
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deadpresidents · 5 months
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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
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pensarenmusaranyes · 3 months
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“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
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lesbianchemicalplant · 6 months
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this was the letter she signed along with so many other transmisogynists, about Silencing Of Feminists [read: TERFs] and “censorship” of fucking Germaine Greer 🤪
also:
In February 2018, in response to a report in The Times of Oxfam employees engaging in sexual exploitation in disaster zones, Beard tweeted "Of course one can't condone the (alleged) behaviour of Oxfam staff in Haiti and elsewhere. But I do wonder how hard it must be to sustain 'civilised' values in a disaster zone. And overall I still respect those who go in and help out, where most of us would not tread."[81] This led to widespread criticism, in which Mary Beard was accused of racism.[82] In response, Beard posted a picture of herself crying, explaining that she had been subjected to a "torrent of abuse" and that "I find it hard to imagine that anyone out there could possibly think that I am wanting to turn a blind eye to the abuse of women and children".[83]
celebrated academic expert in weaponizing her tears
EDIT:
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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!
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uncleclaudius · 6 months
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Mary Beard, on the daily life of a Roman emperor, ahead of the release of her new book Emperor of Rome
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ravenkings · 9 months
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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
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femalethink · 29 days
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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."
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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.
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warningsine · 9 months
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― Mary Beard, Women & Power: A Manifesto
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One of the downsides of working in antiquity is that you don't have many female voices, but you certainly have a lot of male terror about the potential of women's power. It shows you very clearly that the most oppressive cultures tend to be afraid of those whom they oppress.
- Mary Beard, Professor of Classics, University of Cambridge
**Atia from HBO’s Rome series
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