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Among the Ancients

by London Review of Books
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Latest episodes

  • Ovid

    November 14, 2023 · 11 min

    Ovid was perhaps the most prolific poet of Ancient Rome, certainly in the amount of his poetry which has survived (around 30,000 lines). This episode focuses on his 15-book epic, the Metamorphoses, a patchwork of hundreds of stories of…

  • Horace

    October 14, 2023 · 9 min

    Emily and Tom follow Virgil with one of his contemporaries, Horace, whose poetry played an important political role in the early years of Augustan Rome and has had an enormous influence on subsequent European lyric verse. They consider the…

  • Virgil

    September 14, 2023 · 12 min

    In the ninth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom arrive at Virgil, focusing on his 12-book epic the Aeneid, which describes the wanderings of the Trojan prince Aeneas after the fall of Troy. They discuss the political background…

  • Lucretius

    August 14, 2023 · 10 min

    In their eighth episode Emily and Tom look at a contemporary of Catullus, Lucretius, and the only poem we have from him, De rerum natura (The Nature of Things), which sets out ideas about how to live one’s life based on the Epicurean…

  • Catullus

    July 14, 2023 · 11 min

    For the second half of their Among the Ancients series, Emily and Tom move to Ancient Rome, starting with the late Republican poet Catullus. Described by Tennyson, somewhat misleadingly, as ‘the tenderest of Roman poets’, Catullus combined…

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  • Aristophanes

    June 14, 2023 · 12 min

    In their sixth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom discuss the comedies of Aristophanes, in particular Clouds and Lysistrata. How did an Aristophanes comedy differ from a satyr play? Was he a conservative or a radical? And what…

  • Euripides

    May 14, 2023 · 11 min

    Euripides was the youngest of the fifth-century Athenian tragedians, and is often described as the most radical. But how daring was he? How far did he push the boundaries of dramatic form? Focusing on Medea and Hippolytus, Emily and Tom…

  • Sophocles

    April 14, 2023 · 13 min

    In the fourth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom ask: what was it like to go to the theatre in Athens in 468 BC? And how far do modern ideas about tragedy, derived from Aristotle, apply to Sophocles’ plays? They then look in more…

  • Sappho

    March 14, 2023 · 12 min

    In the third episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom move from epic to lyric, with the poems of Sappho, or what remains of them. They consider what we know, and don’t know, about her life, and how her poetry challenges the heroic…

  • The 'Odyssey'

    February 14, 2023 · 50 min

    In episode two of Among the Ancients, Tom and Emily turn to Homer’s Odyssey. They discuss the twisting, turning nature of both the narrative and its hero, the poem’s complex interrogation of the idea of ‘home’, and the violence Odysseus…

  • The 'Iliad'

    January 14, 2023 · 11 min

    In their first episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom begin with a beginning, Homer's Iliad: its depictions of anger and grief, of capricious gods and warriors’ bodies, and the sheer narrative force of Homer’s epic of the Trojan…

  • Introducing Among the Ancients

    November 17, 2022 · 6 min

    Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones introduce their series on the great works of Greek and Roman literature, from Homer to Horace, and discuss some of the themes and preoccupations running through the twelve episodes. The authors under…

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About the show

Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and translator of both the 'Odyssey' and the 'Iliad', joins Thomas Jones, an editor at the London Review of Books, for a tour through some of the greatest works of Ancient Greek and Roman literature, from Homer to Horace.  Among the Ancients is part of the Close Readings podcasts collection from the London Review of Books. To listen to the full series, and all our other Close Readings series (including a second series of Among the Ancients), subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcast, at the top of this feed or here: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings