Mary Beard on Women and Power
Ancient
•
18m
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.
Up Next in Ancient
-
The Wall: Rome's Great Northern Frontier
Hadrian’s Wall is celebrating its 1900th birthday… the perfect time for History Hit to investigate this potent embodiment of Roman dominance.
Dan Snow explores the physical remains of Hadrian’s vast project of 122AD - over 80 Roman miles of wall, turrets and forts, stretching from coast to coast...
-
🎧 Chinese Philosophy
Michael Puett is Professor of Chinese History at Harvard and has lectured widely at the world's leading universities. His course in Chinese philosophy is among the most popular at Harvard and in 2013 he was awarded a Harvard College Professorship for excellence in undergraduate teaching.
-
The Rollright Stones: Mind, Myre and ...
The Rollright Stones are some of Britain’s most remarkable and mysterious ancient monuments. They consist of three separate sites - a looming funerary monument built to contain dismembered corpses, a venerated stone circle, and a single monolith with an innominate purpose. Alice Loxton traces six...
