Prof Dame Mary Beard - Classical Civilisation?

[@PatrickLatini]

She is amazing!

[@weronikauminska5451]

"Past is a foreign country, They do things differently there" - The go-between L. P. Hartley

[@crlpxz]

Wish she was my classics teacher lol love her

[@bealtainecottage]

Brilliant woman!

[@fredrogers9026]

She's a one-woman justification for teaching Classics.

[@user-lu9hq6jv4v]

The coolest and smartest, Lady!!

[@Joy-do9vv]

I love her struggling over Latin verbs beneath Angela Davis! At the same time I was struggling with them beneath ancient Roman statues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, somehow thinking they would give me the answers I couldn't figure out myself. True story! (They didn't help me with my Latin, but I think the guards were amused.)

[@j0nnyism]

Our modern interpretation of the classical Mediterranean world has been overly sympathetic. We focus on the best and ignore the worst.

[@MrAwrsomeness]

*We demonise the best and appropriate the worst

[@urubear]

51:51 "culture isn't a race to the starting gate"

[@sharonjanethague7181]

Great!

[@younisfakhfakh3109]

I ve always thought of classical civilisation as a continuum with the civilisations of Asia Minor, and Western culture as Nordic ,Germanic or Atlantic fringe

[@albertlugosi]

Mrs Beard was excellent as she always is. But the chap at the end was so awfully unwilling. As if his tooth was being extracted.

[@younisfakhfakh3109]

I find it hilarious that people of Northern and Western European descent, traditionally antagonist to Romans and Greeks, and described as Barbarians by them, are now claiming descent from them.

[@naren-ig5mj]

@John John true it's important with what zeal and gratitude the so-called Northern and Western European peoples have adopted to the classical heritage and have been proud of it. Even classical mythology is a venerable heritage, though pagan, for the Christian Europe. To be civilized in West is to owe one's cultural origins to the classical period. The age of enemy-hunting and heresy-hunting was obscure through ignorance of this human ability to adopt what is great as a common heritage. We are into the age of mutual aid, at cultural and spiritual levels too.

[@radiofriendly]

She's trying to claim that the medusa image was an official campaign item?

[@MrEnrique223]

Is classical civilisation any like classical civilization?

[@SwissCheese112]

greek and roman, and the unofficial third...Egyptian

[@ArumesYT]

British vs American spelling. No idea what you're doing on a university channel, you need to start a bit lower.

[@robertalpy9422]

Students who reject the classics reveal themselves to be lazy. They don't want to compete against smart people so getting rid of the classics and the sciences and replacing them with fellgood classes gives them an unearned leg up. Failures wish to change the history and dumb it down to their level because they simply can't compete and don't deserve the chance to compete.

[@zsuzsannarednik1098]

Here we go: my farher's family were barred from secondary (and beyond) education under the Stalinist Hungarian régime in the '50s. So for him and his cousins the single chance of getting a matura was at the very few church secondary grammar schools which had not been closed down by the communists. Father's family lived in Tata, so the choice for the cousins was: the girl goes to be taught by nuns in Budapest, and the two boy cousins either to the Franciscans in Esztergom or the Benedictines to Pannonhalma. My father's cousin was sent off to Pannonhalma and my father followed two years later ('56 to '60). Boarding schol routine allowed a Christmas and a summer leave, and one parental visit a month for one hour. Students were expected to spend one hour daily in the monastery's botanic garden, regardless of weather conditions. No access to the village at the foot of the hill was allowed. My father's cousin emigrated to Austria in '56 (her grandmother's older sister was the wife of the last Minister of War appointed by Franz Joseph, so the 18-year-old girl eventually found her feet in Vienna). No wonder my father and his cousin got massive Latin from the Benedictines (my grandfather also had a rigorous education routine of ancient Greek). Cut. My father met my mother - yes, it does happen at times, doesn't it? My mother had become semi-orphaned at age 6 as a result of a horrible household accident her mother (pregnant with her fifth child) had suffered in 1950. They were so poor they could not afford firewood and used industrial fuel (alcohol?) to make fire in the stove. Some of it spilled on my grandmother's clothes and she died of her severe burns hours later. A middle-aged couple adopted her and eventually she landed in the group of a grammar school class specialised in Latin. It was a state-run school associated to the university of the city she lived in (a teacher-training school, in fact). So with parents of very different backgrounds - in Stalinist and early post-Stalinist times you may have said they were worlds apart - it eventually dawned on me that if I have questions about Latin, Greek, or Antiquitiy, we have common ground. I recall my exact route as a first-time voter, at the first free elections which took place after some 45 years in our country (I honestly couldn't count my blessings for that measure of freedom at the time). Every step of it. There's even a family photo taken of us in our Sunday best. I started reading Suetonius at age 15, and then Tacitus and Ammianus Marcellinus and Iosephus Flavius and still we spoke Latin on the way to the polling station.

[@naren-ig5mj]

Dead languages are not so dead after all, it's the quality of thought that sustains them. I am an Indian bent on learning Greek to experience Plotinos first hand! It's the Stalinist language of heresy-hunting and enemy-hunting that will be soon dead beyond hope. Human civilization is well into the enlightened age of mutual aid. Louis Mcniece is a different proposition though, and a great civilization cannot possibly be summed up based on its flip side. A.E. the Irish poet lamented, along with Whitman, the modernist penchant for the seamier side of things.

[@sonofzia7324]

Let's hope "they" dont do to classical studies what Disney did to Star Wars. You know what I mean?

[@andrewmcleod3659]

no

[@fingernecklace4817]

Uh, no, that's really vague. Just say to whom you're referring.

[@FromTheHeart2]

I understand now where wokeness comes from. With the difference that the brilliant teacher can afford the luxury.

[@Butlinsgvn6]

What do you mean?

[@jackbarbara]

There is a visual similarity with Weird Al.

[@zsuzsannarednik1098]

Sorry, Greek Catholics seceded from the Orthodox churches partly because they wanted to join the more developed (richer, more affluent) West.

[@lesilluminations1]

Bringing 21st century identity politics to the Classics. I study to learn not to impose my latter day morality.

[@rawhamburgerjoe]

It is impossible for anyone not to bring their own worldview to bear on their own study of anything. I suspect you only notice in this case because her lens is different from yours.

[@NaFran49]

And I'm sure you are failing at it. In effect you are not learning not to impose your latter day morality onto the past, you're just learning to pretend you are not doing it, which is a thousand times worse.

[@michaels4255]

That requires having the humility to put oneself in another's shoes, to empathize with people that you may often not agree with. Unfortunately, there seems to be a growing number of people in contemporary civilization who lack the humility and empathy to do this. It is an ideologically based version of hyper-ethnocentrism.

[@2msvalkyrie529]

Did you miss the " feminist 're - interpretation " of The Iliad...? Ranks alongside Black Athena in terms of intellectual content. No doubt it will be compulsory reading in our universities by Next year.

[@lesilluminations1]

@@2msvalkyrie529 Thankfully missed that! These people are insufferable.

[@pathetictroll7557]

I see Mary Beard but I don't see her beard!

[@yorgosmouzakitis7052]

As the nonsence of political correct deepens I wish that all you English leave us alone (the Greeks) and continue your trip to nowhere..Anyway you miss 2000 years of Greek history that you dont even know that exists. As for the Medussa MΕΙΔΕΙΩ means I faintly smile ...Thats exactly what the monster does listening the woman with the beard..

[@SimonOBrien-be8qt]

"woman with the beard" who is one of the world's greatest classicists, whereas you?

[@michaels4255]

Why is Mary Beard obsessed with bashing hierarchy? Inequality is the price we pay for civilization--not for "Western" civilization, but for any civilization. Hierarchy is not a bug, it is a feature, an essential component that makes the whole work.

[@janetennyson5455]

She has a personal axe to grind because she was never taken seriously by male academics.

[@andrewmcleod3659]

Because it is an unjustified hierarchy based on age, gender, wealth - no relevance to actual skill.

[@michaels4255]

@@andrewmcleod3659 Whether a given hierarchy is earned or not, it is still justified by necessity, Hierarchy is an unavoidable byproduct of civilization, and neither can survive without the other. People need to get over the misguided hippie idealism.

[@ruthmeb]

@@janetennyson5455 Funny how they made her a professor then.

[@christophernuzzi2780]

@@andrewmcleod3659 That's a load of bullshit.

[@DemetriosKongas]

A question mark to classical civilization? Did you not try to use logic in your reasoning in your lecture? Did you not try not to contradict yourself? Was it not Aristotle who formulated the laws of formal logic? Your presentation, actually, would have profited if you used Plato’s and Socrates’ dialectics and questioned your own assumptions. You referred to the great works of western literature: Iliad and Odyssey. Were not two women basically the central characters of those great epics? Beautiful Helen and faithful Penelope. The former “launched one thousand ships”! to get her back. The latter provided meaning to Odysseus’s longing to return home. Without those two women, no expedition and no voyages! Aristotle wrote his poetics and identified the major elements of tragedies and comedies that can still be used today to analyse plays, fiction, films, like plot, characters, thought, diction, melody and spectacle. If you used those, you would realise the importance of powerful female characters like Antigony, Andromache, Klytaimnystra, Medea. Did you not ponder over the fact that the six goddesses of the Greeks represented what was best in human life: from wisdom and beauty to agriculture. The greatest poetess in the ancient world was considered to be Sappho! Yes, democracy in Athens excluded women and slaves. But it was only in the late 19th century and much of the 20th centuries that slaves were liberated in the US and women obtained political and social rights, for goodness sake! In Switzerland, women obtained the right to vote in 1974! Was not politics developed in ancient Athens and is it not used to obtain equality for blacks and women? Democracy, philosophical reasoning (logic, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, methodology, ethics, aesthetics), theatre, politics, belong to the core of western civilization and yes they were developed by the Greeks. Without this core, even if women and blacks attain full equality, life will be miserable.

[@juusohamalainen7507]

This grandma is interesting though she was a progressive rebel when young.

[@SimonOBrien-be8qt]

And being progressive is a problem?

[@juusohamalainen7507]

@@SimonOBrien-be8qt Yes it is. Progressives destroy good values and the stability of society. They cause mental problems to children and young people.

[@SimonOBrien-be8qt]

@@juusohamalainen7507 Ah you mean like giving women the vote? Allowing jews to worship without being attacked, abolishing slavery and letting gay people live without harassment. All things which caused stress and violence throughout the world.

[@juusohamalainen7507]

@@SimonOBrien-be8qt These freedoms were not fruits of progressive idiots.

[@ravenkamali]

I used to admire and respect Mary Beard, but after listening to this "woke" claptrap, I am so over her. And I am not even European. I am Persian.

[@SimonOBrien-be8qt]

Which makes your silly bigotry less acceptable

[@yorgosmouzakitis7052]

dead languages.. Maybe you are dead..

[@janetennyson5455]

Someone should tell Mary Beard that Greek is not a dead language! Anyone who reads Modern Greek katharevousa can easily understand most of the writing of Koine Greek and Byzantine Greek. We can also argue that Latin is not exactly a dead language since it is still used by the Catholic Church, although Greek has a much more legitimate claim to continuity into the present. Of course, claiming that Greek is a dead language suits her Marxist/feminist agenda better than pointing out the facts.

[@ruthmeb]

Oh for God's sake she's not a Marxist. Why can't you right wing nut jobs understand nuance? Plus whether or not classical Greek is a dead language has squat to do with politics.

[@jameswebb4593]

I switched off with the Trump demonization. They say a day is a long time in politics and two years a very long time. The Democrats under Biden are proving to be inept at best , with many regretting ever voting for the geriatric.

[@Oxillious]

So you're saying the Trump administration was superior to the current government which is at best inadequate? I would argue however that this far exceeds the previous administration's incapability to govern. Not that I think Biden is a great or even good president either. He was the poorest (realistic) choice of a list that was already lacking on the Democrat side. While I agree it's important not to demonize the choice of the people, there wasn't a less suitable candidate to be found for the US election of 2016.

[@MWhaleK]

@@Oxillious Very well put!

[@pwmiles56]

My parents were on the Greats course at Oxford which is how they met. Even back then (early 50s) classics was in retreat. My mother (first of her family to university, got there on a scholarship, convent educated in Lancashire) said she thought she got in because it was becoming harder to find students. Subtract one bad classicist from politics and how much of the famed influence is left? The self-flagellation Prof Beard talks about sounds like the flip side of wishful thinking. I can see where the name might be a problem though. Why not just have "Latin and Greek" departments? (They'd have a ready-made nickname, Laughing and Grief, from 'Alice')

[@yorgosmouzakitis7052]

As I continue to watch the lady I cant stop laughing.. For sour if she teaches Greek someone must stop her imidiatetly..