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" I don't think that we are completely dominated by what we have inherited from the past, but it is the case that as far back as you can go - just to Homer, but also to the literature of Rome, the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance - what you will find is that women's voices are not taken seriously. "

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" For whatever reason, some sorts of women's silence were broken by MeToo. This is the optimistic bit. And that will lead to a much more careful attention to women's voices. "

Mary Beard

Attention

Broken

Silence

" Gender is a key marker of power and powerlessness. Most of the structures of how our world works are biased in terms of men. "

" Fate has it in for me to be an exhibit: that funny old lady from the telly. "

Mary Beard

Old Lady

Old

" No women in ancient Rome ever had the vote. "

" The building blocks of discrimination tend to be similar wherever you find them. "

" A lot of people will always say, 'I really know nothing about the ancient world.' But there's lots and lots of things people know. Partly, they've been encouraged to think they're ignorant about it. In some ways, the job to do is show people that they know much more than they'd like to admit. "

" Thinking through how you look to your enemies is helpful. That doesn't mean that your ideology is wrong and theirs is right, but maybe you have to recognise that they have one - and that it may be logically coherent. Which may be uncomfortable. "

" There is no argument that I won't take seriously. "

" I have always thought the women's movement traded too much on outrage and not enough on ridicule. "

" We are sold the idea of a refugee as a tiny child sitting crying, as a way of raising money, but elderly ladies and kids largely can't move. The demographic is mostly young men. "

" If being a decent soul is being maternal, then fine. "

" One of the downsides of working in antiquity is that you don't have many female voices, but you certainly have a lot of male terror about the potential of women's power. It shows you very clearly that the most oppressive cultures tend to be afraid of those whom they oppress. "

" One of the great things about history is that it sort of isn't a done deal - ever. The historical texts and the historical evidence that you use is always somehow giving you different answers because you're asking it different questions. "

" The thing about being a university teacher is that you're fairly tolerant about young people saying things they shouldn't have said. "

" What politicians do is they never get the rhetoric wrong, and the price they pay is they don't speak the truth as they see it. Now, I will speak truth as I see it, and sometimes I don't get the rhetoric right. I think that's a fair trade-off. "

" I'd quite like to be in Caligula's court - living in the back room somewhere and just being able to observe. "

Mary Beard

Somewhere

Room

" When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice. "

" English country towns are often seen as a cultural wasteland, but the more cut off you are, the more the need to create things, to make your own culture. "

" It wasn't until I got to Cambridge that I discovered active discrimination against women. "

" There's plenty of firm evidence for ethnic diversity in Roman Britain. "

" It's great fun being an academic because you have a certain licence to be a bit of a joker. "

" We lived in the schoolhouse of the village school in Church Preen, in deepest Shropshire, and my mum was the schoolmistress. She taught the juniors, and one other teacher taught the infants. I went there from the age of three, no doubt as a form of childcare. "

" I'm not in the slightest wanting to attack the women's movement here. But I think that in popular, broadly left-wing, broadly feminist discourse, there is a tendency to just label discrimination against women - and embedded assumptions about them - as misogyny and think 'job done.' "

" You cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded as male; you have to change the structure. "

" What I find very interesting is, we're not enthralled by the ancient world, and we've escaped all kinds of ancient preconceptions and assumptions and prejudices. But, nevertheless, we still make that connection between authoritative speech and male speech. "

" Classics isn't about the ancient world. It's partly about the ancient world, but it's about our conversation. It's how we try to talk to antiquity. "

" Greek myths, early Roman history, is configured around violence against women. And I think we need to get in there, get our hands dirty, face it, and see why and how it was. "

" My day job is working on Roman history and ancient Roman history. "

" The reason why the British theatrical tradition is world-leading in Greek drama is because there is a flourishing tradition of people rethinking Greek tragedy. "

" Democracy requires information. Plato knew that informed decision-making requires knowledge. "