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" There is nothing inherently conservative in the ancient world. "
Mary Beard
World
Conservative
Ancient
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" 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. "
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" Fate has it in for me to be an exhibit: that funny old lady from the telly. "
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" Grey is my hair colour. I really can't see why I should change it. "
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" I would summarise my politics very simply as the maverick left and proud. "
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" I was nearly struck by lightning on an excavation in Turkey. "
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" My mother took me to the British Museum aged five. I had thought people from the past weren't as good as we were, and then I saw the Elgin marbles. Suddenly, the world seemed more complicated. "
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" You can't always worry about offending people. "
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" 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. "
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Interesting
Connection
World
" There is no way, absolutely no way, that I would want people to stop reading the 'Odyssey.' But I want them to read it with their eyes open. To notice it and then to think what it says about us. "
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Reading
People
Eyes
" If you ask me what is civilisation, it's little more than an act of faith. "
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Me
You
Ask
" 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. "
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Potential
Women
Power
" I'm an academic. I argue; I engage with people. "
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Academic
Argue
Engage
" It wasn't until I got to Cambridge that I discovered active discrimination against women. "
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Discrimination
Active
Against
" The web is democratising and also the voice of people who don't think they have another outlet. And that voice can be punitive. "
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Web
Voice
Think
" One person's barbarity is another person's civilisation. "
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Civilisation
Another
Person
" What interests me is the idea that classics is actually quite democratic. It isn't only the toff, upper-class subject it's often thought to be. Every generation enjoys rediscovering it. "
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Only
Idea
Generation
" I knew that Trump was ghastly. I knew I'd vote for Hillary if I had a vote. "
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Trump
Knew
Hillary
" 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. "
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Own
Create
Need
" When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice. "
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Years
Culture
Women
" You don't overturn x-thousand years of patriarchy in a generation. "
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Patriarchy
Generation
Years
" 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. "
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Doubt
School
She
" I loved 'Gladiator,' and I thought its depiction of gladiatorial combat, although it was an aggrandizing picture, was cleverly and expertly done. "
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Combat
Done
Thought
" People who exploit others come to spend an enormous amount of energy wondering about and justifying that exploitation. "
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Energy
People
Others
" 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. "
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Attention
Broken
Silence
" A lot of sexism is just very silly... and the best response is laughter and ridicule. "
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Laughter
Lot
Sexism
" History is how we have learnt to think about ourselves. It's not as though the Greeks and Romans are static entities out there to be discovered and translated. We make them speak, we talk to them, and they inform what we say. "
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Speak
Say
Out
" In real life, Oxford and Cambridge are two excellent universities, like many others in the country. They are full of highly intelligent, hard-working, and quite ordinary students and teachers. "
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Teachers
Life
Intelligent
" It's great fun being an academic because you have a certain licence to be a bit of a joker. "
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Great
Joker
You
" If women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women? "
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" I'd quite like to be in Caligula's court - living in the back room somewhere and just being able to observe. "
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Like
Somewhere
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