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Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old
Not yet published
Expected 16 Apr 26FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF EMPEROR OF ROME AND SPQR
'The rock star scholar of Ancient Rome' FINANCIAL TIMES
'The reigning Queen of Classics' SPECTATOR
What's exciting about a piece of bread 4,000 years old? Or some pots of paint abandoned in the eruption at Pompeii? Why should we be bothered with the distant past anyway? What's the point?
The life, art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome have something to offer everyone. They are not the property of wealthy white men only. They make us wonder how to make sense of people who lived long ago (from angry landlords to giggling senators) - and to think harder about our own world, to look at it differently.
In Talking Classics, Mary Beard points to the surprising connections between antiquity and the present. From revolutionaries to dictators, Bob Dylan to Beyoncé, she joins forces with the varied modern characters who have been transfixed by the ancient world. It's not compulsory, she argues, to be excited by antiquity, but it's a shame not to be.
After half a century teaching and studying classics, she fills the book with lively stories, curious facts and some good gossip. Talking Classics explains why the deep past does really affect us all.
'The rock star scholar of Ancient Rome' FINANCIAL TIMES
'The reigning Queen of Classics' SPECTATOR
What's exciting about a piece of bread 4,000 years old? Or some pots of paint abandoned in the eruption at Pompeii? Why should we be bothered with the distant past anyway? What's the point?
The life, art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome have something to offer everyone. They are not the property of wealthy white men only. They make us wonder how to make sense of people who lived long ago (from angry landlords to giggling senators) - and to think harder about our own world, to look at it differently.
In Talking Classics, Mary Beard points to the surprising connections between antiquity and the present. From revolutionaries to dictators, Bob Dylan to Beyoncé, she joins forces with the varied modern characters who have been transfixed by the ancient world. It's not compulsory, she argues, to be excited by antiquity, but it's a shame not to be.
After half a century teaching and studying classics, she fills the book with lively stories, curious facts and some good gossip. Talking Classics explains why the deep past does really affect us all.
Kindle Edition
Expected publication April 16, 2026
3 people are currently reading
435 people want to read
About the author
Mary Beard
69 books4,247 followersWinifred Mary Beard (born 1 January 1955) is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and is a fellow of Newnham College. She is the Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, and author of the blog "A Don's Life", which appears on The Times as a regular column. Her frequent media appearances and sometimes controversial public statements have led to her being described as "Britain's best-known classicist".
Mary Beard, an only child, was born on 1 January 1955 in Much Wenlock, Shropshire. Her father, Roy Whitbread Beard, worked as an architect in Shrewsbury. She recalled him as "a raffish public-schoolboy type and a complete wastrel, but very engaging". Her mother Joyce Emily Beard was a headmistress and an enthusiastic reader.
Mary Beard attended an all-female direct grant school. During the summer she participated in archaeological excavations; this was initially to earn money for recreational spending, but she began to find the study of antiquity unexpectedly interesting. But it was not all that interested the young Beard. She had friends in many age groups, and a number of trangressions: "Playing around with other people's husbands when you were 17 was bad news. Yes, I was a very naughty girl."
At the age of 18 she was interviewed for a place at Newnham College, Cambridge and sat the then compulsory entrance exam. She had thought of going to King's, but rejected it when she discovered the college did not offer scholarships to women. Although studying at a single-sex college, she found in her first year that some men in the University held dismissive attitudes towards women's academic potential, and this strengthened her determination to succeed. She also developed feminist views that remained "hugely important" in her later life, although she later described "modern orthodox feminism" as partly "cant". Beard received an MA at Newnham and remained in Cambridge for her PhD.
From 1979 to 1983 she lectured in Classics at King's College London. She returned to Cambridge in 1984 as a fellow of Newnham College and the only female lecturer in the Classics faculty. Rome in the Late Republic, which she co-wrote with the Cambridge ancient historian Michael Crawford, was published the same year. In 1985 Beard married Robin Sinclair Cormack. She had a daughter in 1985 and a son in 1987. Beard became Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement in 1992.
Shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Beard was one of several authors invited to contribute articles on the topic to the London Review of Books. She opined that many people, once "the shock had faded", thought "the United States had it coming", and that "[w]orld bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price".[4] In a November 2007 interview, she stated that the hostility these comments provoked had still not subsided, although she believed it had become a standard viewpoint that terrorism was associated with American foreign policy.[1]
In 2004, Beard became the Professor of Classics at Cambridge.[3] She is also the Visiting Sather Professor of Classical Literature for 2008–2009 at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has delivered a series of lectures on "Roman Laughter".[5]
Mary Beard, an only child, was born on 1 January 1955 in Much Wenlock, Shropshire. Her father, Roy Whitbread Beard, worked as an architect in Shrewsbury. She recalled him as "a raffish public-schoolboy type and a complete wastrel, but very engaging". Her mother Joyce Emily Beard was a headmistress and an enthusiastic reader.
Mary Beard attended an all-female direct grant school. During the summer she participated in archaeological excavations; this was initially to earn money for recreational spending, but she began to find the study of antiquity unexpectedly interesting. But it was not all that interested the young Beard. She had friends in many age groups, and a number of trangressions: "Playing around with other people's husbands when you were 17 was bad news. Yes, I was a very naughty girl."
At the age of 18 she was interviewed for a place at Newnham College, Cambridge and sat the then compulsory entrance exam. She had thought of going to King's, but rejected it when she discovered the college did not offer scholarships to women. Although studying at a single-sex college, she found in her first year that some men in the University held dismissive attitudes towards women's academic potential, and this strengthened her determination to succeed. She also developed feminist views that remained "hugely important" in her later life, although she later described "modern orthodox feminism" as partly "cant". Beard received an MA at Newnham and remained in Cambridge for her PhD.
From 1979 to 1983 she lectured in Classics at King's College London. She returned to Cambridge in 1984 as a fellow of Newnham College and the only female lecturer in the Classics faculty. Rome in the Late Republic, which she co-wrote with the Cambridge ancient historian Michael Crawford, was published the same year. In 1985 Beard married Robin Sinclair Cormack. She had a daughter in 1985 and a son in 1987. Beard became Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement in 1992.
Shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Beard was one of several authors invited to contribute articles on the topic to the London Review of Books. She opined that many people, once "the shock had faded", thought "the United States had it coming", and that "[w]orld bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price".[4] In a November 2007 interview, she stated that the hostility these comments provoked had still not subsided, although she believed it had become a standard viewpoint that terrorism was associated with American foreign policy.[1]
In 2004, Beard became the Professor of Classics at Cambridge.[3] She is also the Visiting Sather Professor of Classical Literature for 2008–2009 at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has delivered a series of lectures on "Roman Laughter".[5]
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 1, 2026
This book was magnificent. This was the epitome of the blending of two traits which I find most admirable in any human I come across: Passion and Nuance.
There must always be passion tempered with nuance. Passion, because any sufficiently motivated human can make any subject interesting and deeply moving simply by imbuing it with their force of feeling, and secondly, being willing to be passionate about something while equally holding the truth that you have more questions than answers, and that there may not even be objective answers in the first place, is one of the most difficult places for a human mind to continually inhabit, yet it is imperative for a well functioning society.
I have always been interested in the ancients (not just the Romans and Greeks, I also include, as Ms. Beard does, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, and ancient cultures from every language family and corner of the globe). Primarily because I do believe as a general rule that things which are handed down pass some sort of filtration system and are worth respecting, simply due to their survival of that process. Now, that process has a metric ton of caveats on both ends, things which are of incalculable value are lost, and things akin to excrement are preserved for decades, centuries or millenia.
The author begins the first half of the book by displaying her personal reasons for loving the classics, and how she has found a 50 year rewarding career out of it. I found this infectious and very useful, the author very emphatically NOT revering the classics but interrogating them as we would anything else, seeing the humor, putrescence, glory, and evil in turn, and calling it out as such. Don't let your view of this history be spoiled by some faux need for reverence of these dusty old figures, see them as real people and it will be far more rewarding.
But the way the author frames the value of the Classics today was the real gem of this book. To paraphrase a few of my favorite passages from the author: "The focus should not be on 'what does classics teach you about', and should be 'What does it teach you to do?':
- First, 'Classics teaches you to argue responsibly on the basis of inadequate evdience' (ancient history is always demanding that we face the gaps in what we know and then make a good case) - a sentiment in scant supply in our day and age.
- Secondly, 'Classics teaches you to discuss constructively questions to which there are no right answers, or any answers at all in the usual sense of the word'. ... "Part of the unashamed mission of humanities education is to celebrate and face up to complexity, not trade in false simplicity. That is what we do."
I will leave with yet another quote from this book: "Classics teaches you to grapple with ideas you don't understand, from an alien world you have never visited; to see how words can be used to enlighten, please, confuse, and deceive; and to realise that you sometimes have to struggle very hard to get the meaning."
Thanks to NetGalley and University of Chicago Press for this eARC
There must always be passion tempered with nuance. Passion, because any sufficiently motivated human can make any subject interesting and deeply moving simply by imbuing it with their force of feeling, and secondly, being willing to be passionate about something while equally holding the truth that you have more questions than answers, and that there may not even be objective answers in the first place, is one of the most difficult places for a human mind to continually inhabit, yet it is imperative for a well functioning society.
I have always been interested in the ancients (not just the Romans and Greeks, I also include, as Ms. Beard does, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, and ancient cultures from every language family and corner of the globe). Primarily because I do believe as a general rule that things which are handed down pass some sort of filtration system and are worth respecting, simply due to their survival of that process. Now, that process has a metric ton of caveats on both ends, things which are of incalculable value are lost, and things akin to excrement are preserved for decades, centuries or millenia.
The author begins the first half of the book by displaying her personal reasons for loving the classics, and how she has found a 50 year rewarding career out of it. I found this infectious and very useful, the author very emphatically NOT revering the classics but interrogating them as we would anything else, seeing the humor, putrescence, glory, and evil in turn, and calling it out as such. Don't let your view of this history be spoiled by some faux need for reverence of these dusty old figures, see them as real people and it will be far more rewarding.
But the way the author frames the value of the Classics today was the real gem of this book. To paraphrase a few of my favorite passages from the author: "The focus should not be on 'what does classics teach you about', and should be 'What does it teach you to do?':
- First, 'Classics teaches you to argue responsibly on the basis of inadequate evdience' (ancient history is always demanding that we face the gaps in what we know and then make a good case) - a sentiment in scant supply in our day and age.
- Secondly, 'Classics teaches you to discuss constructively questions to which there are no right answers, or any answers at all in the usual sense of the word'. ... "Part of the unashamed mission of humanities education is to celebrate and face up to complexity, not trade in false simplicity. That is what we do."
I will leave with yet another quote from this book: "Classics teaches you to grapple with ideas you don't understand, from an alien world you have never visited; to see how words can be used to enlighten, please, confuse, and deceive; and to realise that you sometimes have to struggle very hard to get the meaning."
Thanks to NetGalley and University of Chicago Press for this eARC
February 3, 2026
I was permitted to read an advance copy of this book through Netgalley.
This book is going to surprise a lot of the people who pick it up and start it. I sat down and literally couldn’t stop reading.
Rather than attempting to explain why classic texts are important and relevant, this book instead takes a more remarkable approach. Author Mary Beard says, “Debate, disagreement, and questioning are what classics has to offer, not certainty, truth, beauty or relevance in the way that people often like to imagine. It's fruitless to pretend that the Greeks and Romans offer a useful guide to living now.”
As a lifelong explorer of the Greek and Roman worlds, the author possesses a deep and obvious expertise on this topic. Could she really be saying that the classics don’t matter? The answer, incredibly, is both yes and no.
Beard challenges many current assumptions about the ancient world. Was the burning of the library at Alexandria the worst disaster in human history? All that knowledge lost, all of the ancient voices and opinions and ancient accounts of everyday events snuffed out. Or was it? Beard reminds us that the sheer volume of material that we retain, compared to even more recent events, remains immense. Cataloguing the material that exists from Greece and Rome could occupy a lifetime.
Beard says, “Classical literature has forced me to think harder, face the uncomfortable, and to reread what I had thought I had understood.” This may be the ultimate value of classical literature, to force us to indulge in a life that asks us the hard, important questions. Are we capable of nuance? What do we expect from a friend? What is our responsibility to our parents?
Beard further argues that the meaning of those ancient words and symbols has been muddied by time or co-opted by men who scarcely understood their meaning. The original bits of the Ancient Greek temples that were exhibited in London were sneered at by academics as being undeserving of their glowing descriptions. “One or two critics concluded that some of them, at least, must be later Roman replacements, not classical Greek work of the 'finest age' at all. It was only gradually that they became widely acknowledged as the touchstone of ancient art.” John Kennedy’s ‘Ich Bin Ein Berliner’ speech borrowed from a Roman quote that had only a perverse attachment to the subject of human rights or to freedom. And bankers and dictators have been only too happy to grasp onto the rebuilt, militaristic and often fabricated history of Rome. The author offers that we might consider how more modern interpretations color our perceptions. “There is no way that we can now eradicate Mussolini's vision. The fabric of 'classical' Rome is in part a fascist creation. What we can do is look it in the eye and try to understand the politics that lie behind the way we now encounter the remains of the ancient city, and the choices that Mussolini made about what we should see (or not see), and how.”
I wish that some of my history professors had understood that we should view the classics through a variety of different lenses. The easy approach is to treat these works as the pinnacle of human civilization; reality is much more complex.
Beard again, says, about ancient history: “How do we build a picture of it from the vivid, but scattered, pieces of evidence we have? How do we make it make sense? How can we begin to imagine it? How can we not be startled by it?”
This book will challenge readers to re-imagine what history really looks like. If we were to walk into a restaurant in old Pompeii, where would we sit? Would women be welcome? Who would talk to us or take our orders? What would we be served? Beard walks us through many of these questions in novel and intriguing ways.
This book is going to surprise a lot of the people who pick it up and start it. I sat down and literally couldn’t stop reading.
Rather than attempting to explain why classic texts are important and relevant, this book instead takes a more remarkable approach. Author Mary Beard says, “Debate, disagreement, and questioning are what classics has to offer, not certainty, truth, beauty or relevance in the way that people often like to imagine. It's fruitless to pretend that the Greeks and Romans offer a useful guide to living now.”
As a lifelong explorer of the Greek and Roman worlds, the author possesses a deep and obvious expertise on this topic. Could she really be saying that the classics don’t matter? The answer, incredibly, is both yes and no.
Beard challenges many current assumptions about the ancient world. Was the burning of the library at Alexandria the worst disaster in human history? All that knowledge lost, all of the ancient voices and opinions and ancient accounts of everyday events snuffed out. Or was it? Beard reminds us that the sheer volume of material that we retain, compared to even more recent events, remains immense. Cataloguing the material that exists from Greece and Rome could occupy a lifetime.
Beard says, “Classical literature has forced me to think harder, face the uncomfortable, and to reread what I had thought I had understood.” This may be the ultimate value of classical literature, to force us to indulge in a life that asks us the hard, important questions. Are we capable of nuance? What do we expect from a friend? What is our responsibility to our parents?
Beard further argues that the meaning of those ancient words and symbols has been muddied by time or co-opted by men who scarcely understood their meaning. The original bits of the Ancient Greek temples that were exhibited in London were sneered at by academics as being undeserving of their glowing descriptions. “One or two critics concluded that some of them, at least, must be later Roman replacements, not classical Greek work of the 'finest age' at all. It was only gradually that they became widely acknowledged as the touchstone of ancient art.” John Kennedy’s ‘Ich Bin Ein Berliner’ speech borrowed from a Roman quote that had only a perverse attachment to the subject of human rights or to freedom. And bankers and dictators have been only too happy to grasp onto the rebuilt, militaristic and often fabricated history of Rome. The author offers that we might consider how more modern interpretations color our perceptions. “There is no way that we can now eradicate Mussolini's vision. The fabric of 'classical' Rome is in part a fascist creation. What we can do is look it in the eye and try to understand the politics that lie behind the way we now encounter the remains of the ancient city, and the choices that Mussolini made about what we should see (or not see), and how.”
I wish that some of my history professors had understood that we should view the classics through a variety of different lenses. The easy approach is to treat these works as the pinnacle of human civilization; reality is much more complex.
Beard again, says, about ancient history: “How do we build a picture of it from the vivid, but scattered, pieces of evidence we have? How do we make it make sense? How can we begin to imagine it? How can we not be startled by it?”
This book will challenge readers to re-imagine what history really looks like. If we were to walk into a restaurant in old Pompeii, where would we sit? Would women be welcome? Who would talk to us or take our orders? What would we be served? Beard walks us through many of these questions in novel and intriguing ways.
February 4, 2026
A search on Wikipedia and a conversation with a friend at Cambridge University inform me that Mary Beard is something of a legend in Cambridge circles. Beard recently retired as Professor of Classics there, holding that role from 2004-2022. I hadn’t read any of her other books before picking up Talking Classics, but my interests in the ancient world from the angle of New Testament studies, as well as a general interest in literature, attracted my attention.
Talking Classics is not an introduction to the field (Beard has done some of that in 2013’s Confronting the Classics, as well as in 1995’s Classics: A Very Short Introduction), but it still functions as something like an entry point. Her approach alternates between memoir-like reflections on a life spent with western classics, chatty dismantling of the myth of the “Greek miracle,” and brief but careful discussion of particular works. She aims to blow the dust off her readers’ ideas about the ancient world, encouraging us to expect to be surprised as we read or observe its works.
Beard’s book conveys the possibilities of immediate connection while warning against eliding the distance and difference between the ancient Greek and Roman world and our own. She tells a moving story about her own introduction to the classical world: a childhood visit to the British Museum, where a generous museum curator unlocked a glass case and allowed her to handle a 4000 year old piece of Egyptian bread. The shock of the reality of this otherwise vanished world allowed young Mary Beard to develop a love for that place and time. Yet throughout Talking Classics she is careful to caution us against trying to connect with past millennia by pretending its world was “just like ours.” The study of classics is finally possible and worthwhile because of the tension between these two poles. She writes:
“I have repeatedly returned to a question about the ancient world that was very nearly drummed out of me when I was a student: what on earth was it like to be there? That was, I was told, a sentimental and naïve line of enquiry, unanswerable and incompatible with proper historical rigour. Maybe it is naïve. Yet it is also a question that goes straight to the heart of our relationship with the past, to the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ as well as the similarities.” (Kindle location 242)
Throughout the book, Beard is working against the idea that the “classical world” is something above us which we should be in awe of. But she is also arguing for the idea that it is remote and different from us. Her desire to know what is was like recognizes that we do not know what it was like from our own vantage point. We live in a different world.
Classics, then, is a pathway to wisdom and discernment for moderns if taken a certain way: “I have learned that you get a lot more out of classics if you allow it to be a disruptive challenge to self-serving modern certainties, rather than turn it into an untouchable ancestor in whose shadow you should count yourself lucky to sit.” (Loc. 884)
I found Talking Classics to be an appealing argument for the value of at least exploring the world Mary Beard has devoted her life to studying. The title suggests a conversation, and that is the tone Beard adopts in the book. She is casual and confiding even as she makes her points strongly. She assumes that we will hear her out and be convinced to be allies in her cause. The fact that after finishing Talking Classics I started reading my copy of Herodotus is the proof that she has at least persuaded me to give it a try.
Talking Classics is not an introduction to the field (Beard has done some of that in 2013’s Confronting the Classics, as well as in 1995’s Classics: A Very Short Introduction), but it still functions as something like an entry point. Her approach alternates between memoir-like reflections on a life spent with western classics, chatty dismantling of the myth of the “Greek miracle,” and brief but careful discussion of particular works. She aims to blow the dust off her readers’ ideas about the ancient world, encouraging us to expect to be surprised as we read or observe its works.
Beard’s book conveys the possibilities of immediate connection while warning against eliding the distance and difference between the ancient Greek and Roman world and our own. She tells a moving story about her own introduction to the classical world: a childhood visit to the British Museum, where a generous museum curator unlocked a glass case and allowed her to handle a 4000 year old piece of Egyptian bread. The shock of the reality of this otherwise vanished world allowed young Mary Beard to develop a love for that place and time. Yet throughout Talking Classics she is careful to caution us against trying to connect with past millennia by pretending its world was “just like ours.” The study of classics is finally possible and worthwhile because of the tension between these two poles. She writes:
“I have repeatedly returned to a question about the ancient world that was very nearly drummed out of me when I was a student: what on earth was it like to be there? That was, I was told, a sentimental and naïve line of enquiry, unanswerable and incompatible with proper historical rigour. Maybe it is naïve. Yet it is also a question that goes straight to the heart of our relationship with the past, to the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ as well as the similarities.” (Kindle location 242)
Throughout the book, Beard is working against the idea that the “classical world” is something above us which we should be in awe of. But she is also arguing for the idea that it is remote and different from us. Her desire to know what is was like recognizes that we do not know what it was like from our own vantage point. We live in a different world.
Classics, then, is a pathway to wisdom and discernment for moderns if taken a certain way: “I have learned that you get a lot more out of classics if you allow it to be a disruptive challenge to self-serving modern certainties, rather than turn it into an untouchable ancestor in whose shadow you should count yourself lucky to sit.” (Loc. 884)
I found Talking Classics to be an appealing argument for the value of at least exploring the world Mary Beard has devoted her life to studying. The title suggests a conversation, and that is the tone Beard adopts in the book. She is casual and confiding even as she makes her points strongly. She assumes that we will hear her out and be convinced to be allies in her cause. The fact that after finishing Talking Classics I started reading my copy of Herodotus is the proof that she has at least persuaded me to give it a try.
March 24, 2026
Talking Classics by Mary Beard
Arguably the most recognizable classical scholar today, Mary Beard’s work in “Talking Classics” is fundamentally different from the other books she's written. “Talking Classics” proves to be a deeply personal work, exploring not only what Greek and Roman influence has on the rest of the world but also how these works have uniquely impacted her. Much of the book is dedicated to personal anecdotes mixed in with information from the classical world, with the first half focusing more on the author and the second half on how and why we engage with the classics today. Of the two halves, I found the second half more engaging, with Chapter 3 being my favorite. Discussions on the so-called “Greek Miracle” and its influence on American democracy led to the adoption of Greek and especially Roman symbols into far-right extremism, and ended with the gatekeeping of classics. Beard is able to blend her personal experiences with deep knowledge of the field, resulting in the strongest chapter of the four and a consistently strong narrative throughout.
I found Chapter 4 similarly strong with its discussion of avoiding hero worship over the discipline while making her case why classics deserve to be studied today. Beard manages to avoid common shortfalls that are often associated with defending the humanities and makes a compelling case without overstating her case. The only major weakness of the book is its length. The advanced copy was under 200 pages, many of which were taken up by pictures. Still, if you have both an interest in the subject matter and have enjoyed Beard’s books in the past, this is an easy recommendation. 4/5
Arguably the most recognizable classical scholar today, Mary Beard’s work in “Talking Classics” is fundamentally different from the other books she's written. “Talking Classics” proves to be a deeply personal work, exploring not only what Greek and Roman influence has on the rest of the world but also how these works have uniquely impacted her. Much of the book is dedicated to personal anecdotes mixed in with information from the classical world, with the first half focusing more on the author and the second half on how and why we engage with the classics today. Of the two halves, I found the second half more engaging, with Chapter 3 being my favorite. Discussions on the so-called “Greek Miracle” and its influence on American democracy led to the adoption of Greek and especially Roman symbols into far-right extremism, and ended with the gatekeeping of classics. Beard is able to blend her personal experiences with deep knowledge of the field, resulting in the strongest chapter of the four and a consistently strong narrative throughout.
I found Chapter 4 similarly strong with its discussion of avoiding hero worship over the discipline while making her case why classics deserve to be studied today. Beard manages to avoid common shortfalls that are often associated with defending the humanities and makes a compelling case without overstating her case. The only major weakness of the book is its length. The advanced copy was under 200 pages, many of which were taken up by pictures. Still, if you have both an interest in the subject matter and have enjoyed Beard’s books in the past, this is an easy recommendation. 4/5
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Talking Classics is exactly what you would hope for from Mary Beard: intelligent without being intimidating, deeply informed without feeling dry, and animated by genuine enthusiasm for the subject.
Rather than presenting the classics as a dusty, marble white relic of the past, Beard treats Greece and Rome as living conversations, arguments that are still unfolding. What makes this book especially engaging is its origin in lectures and public talks. The tone feels direct and conversational, as if Beard is speaking to you across a table rather than from behind a podium. She has a rare gift for conveying why ancient texts, myths, and political ideas continue to matter.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is how it interrogates the idea of “classics” itself, who owns it, who gets excluded from it, and how it has been used (and misused) over centuries. Beard doesn’t simply celebrate antiquity; she complicates it. She’s particularly sharp on the politics of reception, showing how Rome and Greece have been recruited into modern debates about empire, democracy, identity, and power.
This isn’t a textbook, nor is it a beginner’s guide. It’s more a thoughtful meditation on what it means to study and love the classical past in the 21st century. Accessible, provocative, and frequently delightful, it’s a reminder that classics aren’t static monuments, they’re ongoing debates. Highly recommend for anyone interested in ancient history, cultural politics, or simply listening to a brilliant scholar think out loud.
Rather than presenting the classics as a dusty, marble white relic of the past, Beard treats Greece and Rome as living conversations, arguments that are still unfolding. What makes this book especially engaging is its origin in lectures and public talks. The tone feels direct and conversational, as if Beard is speaking to you across a table rather than from behind a podium. She has a rare gift for conveying why ancient texts, myths, and political ideas continue to matter.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is how it interrogates the idea of “classics” itself, who owns it, who gets excluded from it, and how it has been used (and misused) over centuries. Beard doesn’t simply celebrate antiquity; she complicates it. She’s particularly sharp on the politics of reception, showing how Rome and Greece have been recruited into modern debates about empire, democracy, identity, and power.
This isn’t a textbook, nor is it a beginner’s guide. It’s more a thoughtful meditation on what it means to study and love the classical past in the 21st century. Accessible, provocative, and frequently delightful, it’s a reminder that classics aren’t static monuments, they’re ongoing debates. Highly recommend for anyone interested in ancient history, cultural politics, or simply listening to a brilliant scholar think out loud.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my review.
This book is brilliant. Imagine you are in a room where the esteemed classicist Mary Beard is holding court. Someone asks about the relevance of teaching the classics today and she answers. And when she answers, she cites specific ancient works, works inspired by ancient forms, a history of the study of the classics, and the importance of the classics today. And every sentence shows her vast knowledge of the subject at hand.
I was so engrossed in this book, I could not put it down. I wish Dr. Beard had written this treatise forty years ago when I was a classics major who was not sure of my path forward.
My only criticism was that the photos were not of the best quality. Perhaps that will be better in the print version.
I will be purchasing this one.
This book is brilliant. Imagine you are in a room where the esteemed classicist Mary Beard is holding court. Someone asks about the relevance of teaching the classics today and she answers. And when she answers, she cites specific ancient works, works inspired by ancient forms, a history of the study of the classics, and the importance of the classics today. And every sentence shows her vast knowledge of the subject at hand.
I was so engrossed in this book, I could not put it down. I wish Dr. Beard had written this treatise forty years ago when I was a classics major who was not sure of my path forward.
My only criticism was that the photos were not of the best quality. Perhaps that will be better in the print version.
I will be purchasing this one.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Mary Beard's knowledge of her subject is clearly vast, and she has many fascinating things to say about the history, the uses, the abuses, and the future of the study of Ancient Greece and Rome. However, reading this book sometimes felt like a chore: it started as a series of lectures, and it often felt like she wasn't coming to a point.
Overall, I do appreciate what Beard is saying, but I just don't think she said it very well here.
Received via NetGalley.
Overall, I do appreciate what Beard is saying, but I just don't think she said it very well here.
Received via NetGalley.
February 11, 2026
Mary Beard really knows what she's talking about, even for those of us who honestly never have talked Classics. I've read some of the Greek plays, I've read lots of myths (obsessed with Edith Hamilton back in the day) and retellings in modern lit- and I love literature. But Latin and Greek are... well, Greek to me. So this book is perfectly pitched for someone in my shoes. Curious, interested, but not terribly knowledgeable. And she makes a persuasive point that that is ok, and that the classics do in fact have something to offer all of us, not just those of us with the privileges she herself had. I love that she is open about that, and about the fortune she had in being gifted early exposure (in the coolest scene of the book, when she encountered an artifact as a child), and then gifted the opportunity to do everything with her passion that she wanted to. I'm not sure if a Classicist would love this book, as it's probably all a bit on the nose for them- but for those of us casual readers this is just perfect. Five stars, and I've been recommending it to many already!
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