Prof. Mary Beard: "What's the Point of Ancient Rome?"

In connection with the Holberg Committee meeting in Rome on 8 January, 2019, Committee member Mary Beard held a lecture at the Royal Norwegian Embassy on 7 January. The title of the lecture was: "What's the Point of Ancient Rome?"
Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Newnham College, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature. She is the Classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement, where she also writes a regular blog, "A Don's Life".
The Holberg Prize is awarded annually to scholars who have made outstanding contributions to research in the humanities, social sciences, law or theology. The recipient of the 2019 Holberg Prize will be announced on 14 March, at holbergprize.com.

[@GGritsun]

Mary Beard is fantastic. Her lectures and documentaries are excellent. She is inspirational, and I’m sure many are studying Classics at university, having been inspired by her. Thank you. More, more, more please.

[@dorisarzola8068]

Absolutely fantastic documentaries. Bringing us the lives of regular folk through the reading of tombstones is brilliant.

[@AliBaba-ke5jn]

I love archaeology, her books and documentaries. She makes ancient history interesting.

[@nikkibruhn9959]

I’m training to become a classicist in school and so thankful to Mary Beard for reminding me why this field is still revealent with so much to teach us 2,000 years later when peers ask me bewilderingly why I chose to specialize in Hellenistic studies.

[@louiekolbe2776]

Hi Professor Beard, I love Roman history and I love your insight into the subject. I’m from America and just visited Rome for the first time over Christmas(2018). Seeing all of the monuments was like visiting old friends. Thank you for all of your work on the subject.

[@joanneallam8262]

Love Mary Beard she us smart and attractive lady, love listening to her so much I am definitely a fan.

[@workingboat]

She is an excellent professor

[@joanneallam8262]

Wonderful Lady

[@dominamiawallace3155]

Always a pleasant experience

[@kleinweichkleinweich]

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus aka Elagabal would have been my first choice too. Even the hairstyles match up.

[@Buttercup697]

yes, much like tRump, "...he was an incompetent, probably the least able emperor Rome had ever had." Adrian Goldsworthy

[@richardscanlan3167]

Why did I know Mary was going to bring up Elagabaluas ( in reference to Trump).

[@leavoda3791]

The story of a man exclaiming from the cross he is a Roman citizen is teaching us that we are the ones giving or taking away importance to words. We are the ones determining if words have any power at all. Now think about your everyday life and how you can use this to change the way you see the world around you.

[@sawahtb]

Slavery is relative. How enslaved are people to credit companies, loan shark educational loans, credit scores, minimum wage laws, private prisons, or rules about immigration? Servants in the days of the "Upstairs Downstairs" classes? And wives in marriage generally speaking.

[@lindiwengwevela524]

Aptly put 😍

[@kleinweichkleinweich]

what about Alexander Boris Epimetheus?

[@kleinweichkleinweich]

oh he doesn't count 'caus he only thought he was an emperor - so sorry

[@kleinweichkleinweich]

He's fully qualified hairstyle-wise. He too is a Elagabal lookalike.

[@joe9092410767]

I love her.

[@MurrayEstes]

All evolution of all species moves at a rate that bores a turtle.....

[@emiliodiaz3927]

Damn people watching this video don’t know what fascism is lol need to read more history lads God I hate the word toxic more self hating language to eradicate anything remotely offensive

[@cugir321]

Hillary and Bill are the most like Caligula.

[@markscott2908]

The English murdered our great Queen 👸🏽 and cut her people’s tongues out for speaking Gaelic. Shouldn’t you be focussing on that???!!!

[@gabe-po9yi]

Her saying she “hates” President Trump, wow. And to use this forum to express her apparent “hatred”. The respect I had for Dr. Beard just went down a notch.

[@epincion]

You mean that lying sack of shit called Trump? Guess what? The whole civilised world laughs at him and his enablers.

[@dianasitek3595]

@@epincion And you are not only showing your massive ignorance, but your intolerance and inhumanity.

[@epincion]

@@dianasitek3595 Really? Just the other day the Washington Post fact checker page ran an article on how Trump has passed the 20000 mark for verified lies.

[@joanbrate]

You have lost me with your hating The President of the United States...... we don't say we hate Boris Johnson.

[@dianasitek3595]

Absolutely correct!

[@crissy214]

Love your Roman Documentaries, Very disappointing you hate Trump

[@finnjones6912]

He's incontrovertibly stupid ...as well as being morally unfit ...a liar, a racist, a narcissist, a tax dodger, a draft dodger, a mysoginist, a mobster and the worst president ever. I can't think why she wouldn't like him!

[@jmitterii2]

@@finnjones6912 I'm stunned how there can be people so moronically stupid to like Trump. Only people I know who actually voted for the orange bloated blob was to give the establishment a big fuck you. Let it all crash with the biggest fastest ass hole that reveals oligarchy's own built in destruction: it's heirs.

[@mustplay7212]

@@finnjones6912 haha you just described trump and probably 80 % of the roman emperors. Including that idiot Augustus, who was so high on himself that he saw himself as a perfect leader. I like ancient history, but Trump definitely belongs to that period.

[@finnjones6912]

@@mustplay7212 Soon Trump will be a thing of the past and will go down as worst president ever. And the historians will be debating why incontrovertibly stupid gullible people believed his lethal bs....remind me again how many people have died to date because of your incompetent incoherent mobster ? Greetings from a country with ZERO cases a day

[@samdefore2692]

She does come off different when she’s in front of a bunch of academics, needed to self identify as a progressive. That she had to first mention “toxic Rome” or her poor younger colleagues would get offended, poor triggered babies. Her uncalled for attacks on Trump, which added nothing to the topic, she wouldn’t dare attack communist China, who are the closest to despot empire in the modern World. She was more interesting once she didn’t need to signal her virtue to progressives.. When she spoke about Britain, I thought she would discuss the Brits perpetuating the slave trade and their genocide policies against Aboriginal communities against Scots or Irish, nope Rome who side they should be on, since the English were invaded by the Anglo-Saxons and then the Normans after Rome, and did a lot of “empiring” of their own, less pretend rebel outage. Then her bit on learning Latin, so it isn’t about higher learning but about exclusion now. Culture Progressives are rot on society.

[@SimonOBrien-be8qt]

You think she is an agent of Communist China? And you endorse slavery, jew baiting, exposure of babies, hunting of heretics and other non progressive causes.

[@nondescript2892]

your rant identifies very precisely where you stand in the political spectrum as well..so basically you are no better than she is and I daresay quite a bit less eloquent ...oh well.nobody's perfect

[@dianasitek3595]

Her comment on President Trump was enough for me. I will listen to her no more. Unbelievably irresponsible!

[@767scarecrow]

waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[@samdefore2692]

@@767scarecrow sure she’s the one who had to go into five minutes blabbering on about toxic, you’re the moron who hasn’t realized how this self righteous generation of progresses destroying critical thought

[@ag48d]

You're an idiot. Trump is a racist lying sack of shit who tried to mount a fascist coup and you're ok with that which says everything about you and your lack of morality.

[@eugeniasyro7315]

I highly respect, admire and like Mary Beard, but I don't need to hear her be disrespectful of my President. She should stick to UK Politics and the Classics.

[@Gwynarra2]

Internationally lots of people hate Trump. Get used to it because that’s never going to change.

[@susanf.7737]

You mean Caesar Duplicitous? MB gets to have an opinion about him, and I happen to agree with her. So?

[@kiltallagh1]

@@susanf.7737 Et tu Susana?

[@jmitterii2]

Eugenia Syro, our president isn't royalty or absolute monarchy royalty or some dear leader above criticizing. We're a democratic republic. Without open discourse you have a dictatorship either by a family (usually a monarchy) or oligarchy. Either way, give me a fucking break. Trump is my president too. And I think he's among the most stupidest people alive. I only revel in that he's so damn dumb he's demonstrating the problem with plutocracy that turns oligarchy; it's own destruction is always its stupidity and disconnected from reality heirs. We're such a fucking backwards country compared to so many 1st world developed countries (not that these other countries don't have their faults, they do and many have been and continue to push the same backwards return to robber baron social-economic stupidity). Equally stupid, her point, people are becoming so mad about Trump being our president, they themselves have gone mad... insane. Irrational hatred at a person as if that's the problem. Trump is a symptom of a failed system. My opinion, a system that is the return to the instability that is the robber baron era. The one that caused two world wars in the 1900's. And constant civil wars and outright wars hand half the century in recession/depression/long depression of the 1800's rending 90% of it's citizens poor. Say this reminds me quite bit about Ancient Rome to the rise of Caesar and his dynasty, and the latter fall of Roma power the last emperors to Romulus Augustulus 460 500.

[@canyoubeserious]

Eugenia Syro Don’t make me laugh. You object to her mild commentary, all the while President Trump himself comments on anyone and everything in the most crude vulgar ways,practically daily. Do you have any concept of the crass absurd stuff that he says? Do you have any self awareness or any sense of irony?