In Greek and Roman antiquity, women’s voices were proof of their wickedness. The pitch and prattle was considered harmful, even unsanitary. In literature, powerful women were emblems of usurpation and mortal danger. Women speaking in public could not only jeopardize the men close to them, but bring about the fall of a nation. And yet this antiquated way of thinking isn’t quite as antiquated as it seems. Mute women, brutal men, shame as a means of control, androgyny as a means of avoidance: we haven’t progressed as much as we might think we have. And if Mary Beard’s new book, ‘Women & Power’, is about female silence in Ancient Greece and Rome, it is also a rousing call to recognize a heritage of female muteness and, in doing so, to subvert it. In this fascinating Spotlight interview with Dan Snow, Mary Beard explores the many ways that women have inherited a legacy of silence, and what we can do about it.
In 1960, a man was laying a waterpipe underneath the quaint village of Fishbourne near Chichester, West Sussex, when he uncovered what looked like Roman remains. After he duly reported the discover, the archaeologists were called in and they quickly unearthed more and more prestigious finds. They...
Athens, Sparta and Corinth are arguably three of the most famous, and most significant, Greek city-states of antiquity. But there is one 'polis' that is often forgotten. A city that rose to prominence during the 4th century BC. That city was Thebes. From fighting with the Persians during the Pers...
Dr Janina Ramirez takes an exclusive tour of 'Imagining the Divine', the new exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. With the exhibition's co-curator, Jas Eslner, Janina discovers how the art of the 5 major world religions spread across the globe in the first Millennium AD, and takes a fasc...
