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" What is the role of an academic - no matter what they're teaching - within political debate? It has to be that they make issues more complicated. The role of the academic is to make everything less simple. "

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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. "

Mary Beard

Good

Mother

Past

" I think that what will help women get into positions of power - well, day nurseries, equal pay, family-friendly working hours. And I think all that's important. I used to think it was the solution. I now think it's enabling, and it's important, but still we have got head work to do about this. "

" You have to do what you feel comfortable with. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I've chosen to be this way because that's how I feel comfortable with myself. That's how I am. It's about joining up the dots between how you look and how you feel inside, and I think that's what I've done, and I think people do it differently. "

" I'm actually in a tradition of classicists with a big public face who like sounding off. "

Mary Beard

Big

Face

" 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

" If you ask me what is civilisation, it's little more than an act of faith. "

Mary Beard

You

Ask

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

" I was 11 when I started Latin - not like boys, who start early at prep school. At 14, you had to choose whether to start Greek and drop German, but my mum made a fuss, and I took Latin, Greek, French, and German at O-level, which meant I didn't do much science. "

Mary Beard

Early

School

" 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. "

" You always regret upsetting people needlessly. "

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

" When I am making a TV show, I am looking for engagement, not admiration. "

" Nobody but an idiot would pretend that they had an error-proof way of choosing the 'best' out of hundreds of perfectly qualified applicants - not for university or for anything. "

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

" I have lots of heroes and heroines, mostly unsung and including my husband. "

" You can't always worry about offending people. "

" The history of art is not just the history of artists; it is also the history of the people who viewed art. And that wider perspective can help us see some of the reasons why the art of the ancient world should still matter to us. "

" Whatever you say about popular culture, people like people who know things, who are experts, and it doesn't particularly matter what they look like. "

" When you look at me on the telly and say, 'She should be on 'The Undateables,'' you are looking at a 59-year-old woman. That is what 59-year-old women who have not had work done look like. Get it? "

Mary Beard

Women

Woman

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

" 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. "

" People who exploit others come to spend an enormous amount of energy wondering about and justifying that exploitation. "

" In 1984, I returned to Newnham College at Cambridge University to teach after completing my Ph.D. there a couple of years earlier. Almost all of my colleagues in the university's classics department were men, and my office at the all-women's college was in the dorm. "

" My mom was born before women had the vote in general elections in England. "

" 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. "

" You can hardly be a classicist and not be interested in theatre. "