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Ancient Greece History: Debunking Myths On Race and Culture | Prof. Tony Spawforth · The Smart Cookies podcast

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Tony Spawforth is Emeritus Professor of Ancient
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History at Newcastle University UK and has been
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Visiting Fellow at the British School at Athens
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and Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study,
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Princeton. He's the author of The Story of Greece
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and Rome, as well as the more recent What the
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Greeks Did for Us, an absolutely outstanding
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read, which we'll be discussing today. Professor
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Spalforth, Tony, welcome to the program. Welcome
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to you as well, Zaza. Good to meet you. So it
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turns out that the Greeks have, in fact, done
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quite a lot for us. But reading your book, I
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quickly realized that sometimes it's even more
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relevant to talk about what they haven't actually
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done or how their achievements get misrepresented
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by modern agendas. In any case, there's lots
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to discuss here. And I was thinking we could
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start maybe with something light and non -controversial,
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which is race and ethnicity. No, but seriously,
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based on the features and the color of many of
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their famous marble statues, nowadays it's kind
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of assumed that the ancient Greeks were almost
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like Anglo -Saxon white or something. But would
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that be accurate? No, it wouldn't be accurate
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to assume that they were Anglo -Saxon white.
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And the kind of whiting of the ancient Greeks,
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it has quite a history going back at least to
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the 1700s. And it's become politicized in the
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contemporary culture wars, which... are especially
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marked, I guess it has to be said, in North America
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and the USA, or at least they were when the book
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was commissioned. So by way of context for the
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book, I knew that because the publisher, Yale
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University Press, is a transatlantic base in
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the States, that there was going to be an American
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readership. at the time of the commission, which
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was 2020, the culture wars under President Biden
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and the Democrats in the States were kind of
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going full tilt. And so I had to kind of take
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that into account that the readership was going
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to be, was going to embrace people coming to
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the idea of ancient Greece from quite diverse
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angles and somehow to Factor that in. I mean,
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talk about walking on eggshells. Did you get
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like an angry letter from Elon Musk or something
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saying the Greeks were white? You're wrong, professor.
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Well, I mean, the book did. I have had rude emails,
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which I think are from North America. There's
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a view in North America that ancient Greece is
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foundational. for Western civilization. I mean,
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all these really quite controversial terms. I
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mean, even Western civilization is now not a
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straightforward thing to come up with. And, you
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know, if you upset someone's worldview of ancient
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Greece, nowadays they can find you on the internet
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and tell you what they think of your book. Even
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if you're a professor. Emeritus. Yes. Yes, as
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you know, no one respects. Well, at least in
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England, there's not so much respect for academics,
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as you might think. That's why we're so anxious
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about our titles often. Well, if there's no respect
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in England, how is it in the US? I can only imagine.
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Probably not a pretty sight. Well... Under the
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current regime in the States, I think it's quite
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well known how academics are at the receiving
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end, or can be. Not all of them can be. Okay,
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let me ask like this then. Do we know anything
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about what the Greeks looked like? So, yes, sorry,
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going back to your question. We do know because,
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especially with modern technology, you can identify
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the... traces of original paintwork on Greek
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statues. There's also the vocabulary of ancient
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Greek writings used to describe skin tone. So,
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I mean, for instance, we know that in classical
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Athens, the adjective leucos, which means white
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in ancient Greek, was typically the ideal for
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Athenian women. We also know from the technology
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of the study of the traces of paint on statuary
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in museums and also from actual paintings which
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rarely but occasionally survive war paintings
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say in ancient Greek tombs that Greek males were
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characteristically given a darker skin tone but
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we also know enough about what the Greeks thought
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about gender roles to get that these colours
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are kind of ideological as well, because what
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they are doing is they're conveying ideas. They're
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conveying an idea that a woman's place is in
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the home, a citizen wife's place is in the home,
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and that the ideal space for an adult Greek male
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citizen is out in the open air, either fighting
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for his city or debating in the open air. political
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assemblies, that kind of thing. So the colors
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have to be taken, to mix the metaphors maybe,
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with a pinch of salt. It's a tricky thing, but
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it is very controversial. And for instance, in
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the States, where there's more of a kind of white
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supremacist movement than... Well, I mean, one
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has to be terribly careful what one says about
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all this, because these things can, as is well
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known, be found in Western Europe nowadays as
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well. The idea that the Greeks are white is also
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ideologically very important. And when I was
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writing the book, you could find blogs and websites
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based in the States where all this was being
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fiercely debated and argued over. I can totally
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imagine. I was just thinking about, like, you
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know, I was raised Catholic. although I'm not
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religious anymore. And yeah, the Jesus we grew
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up with was like this very pale looking blue
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eyed man with almost like blonde hair. Seems
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totally different than what people in the Middle
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East would actually look like 2000 years ago.
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So I can imagine it can be tricky if you suddenly
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say, oh, you know, like Jesus was actually darker
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skinned and didn't look like your grandma's painting.
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Of Jared Leto. So I can imagine that people have
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similar attachments and sentiments to ancient
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Greeks then. Yes, the history of the modern or
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early modern debates about the colour of the
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ancient Greeks has always been sort of tied into
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more recent racisms is really... you know, to
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be blunt. And I mean, for instance, as European
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states began to acquire overseas empires in the
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1700s and 1800s, the question of a hierarchy
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of races began to emerge. And naturally, in Western
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Europe, the imperial powers put their own race,
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as they saw it, at the top. And they drew on
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ancient Greek. I mean, scholars, argue about
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whether the ancient Greeks and Romans were racist.
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And it partly depends on how you define racism.
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But the ancient Greeks and the Romans undoubtedly
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had a strong sense of a hierarchy of races. And
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the Greeks gave us our word barbarian from the
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distinction which they made between themselves
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and pretty well everyone else, the rest of whom
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were barbaroi and this was a kind of it was it
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was a moral inferiority which the ancient Greeks
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ended up ascribing to pretty well everyone apart
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from so not a physical thing but like a moral
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failing almost well it was a moral failing but
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it was I mean they had these kind of pseudo scientific
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rationalizations for this distinction they felt
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that it was part geographical, that people who
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lived in Asia, where it was kind of the climate
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was hotter and where the political regimes were
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autocratic, were by definition inferior to free
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Greeks living in independent city states. So
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they put all their... hostility and negativity
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about, in particular, the Persian Empire, which
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was this huge autocratic Asiatic neighbour which
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tried every now and then to conquer Greece. They
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put all their negativity about that into this
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polarity, Greek barbarian, which we have kind
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of invented, sorry, inherited, we've inherited
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this in Western civilization and i mean barbarian
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is still a kind of colloquialism for non -civilized
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behavior so it was that simple was it like uh
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either you're greek or you're a barbarian there
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was no in between but let's say we yeah sorry
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go ahead well no i was only going to say that
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um of course these things are never really simple
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and the reconstruction of sort of ancient greek
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ethics and morality is sort of based on what
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we have and we know for instance that Aristotle
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who is infamous these days for having come up
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with a pseudoscience to justify the alleged inferiority
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of the barbarian. And this was crucial for the
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ancient Greeks because they were a slave society
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or slave -owning society. The economy of ancient
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Greek city -states crucially depended on slavery
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in order to release the adult male citizens for
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a life of political activity. claimed that slaves,
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that some peoples by whom he was mainly thinking
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of Asiatics, were by nature suited to slavery.
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That is to say, their nature was defective and
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this made them suitable to become enslaved persons.
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But Aristotle himself is at least honest enough
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to admit that there were other Greeks. in his
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day, who did not subscribe to that view of natural
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servile inferiority and saw that it was really
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just a matter of force, that the Greeks were
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stronger when they enslaved these Asiatics and
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people actually from the northern Balkans, Bulgaria,
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as it now is today. The ancient Thracians, you
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know, a lot of the slaves in Athens came from
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ancient Thrace, Bulgaria today. I'm going to
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make it a bit more tricky for you. Let's say
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we had a hypothetical scenario. A person was
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born to Thracian parents who were living in,
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I don't know, classical Athens, let's say. So
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this guy, let's say he was a guy, was born and
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raised in Greece and obviously spoke Greek, was
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culturally Greek and wasn't a slave, was a free
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person, if that's even possible. In this instance,
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would the Greeks consider him a fellow Greek
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or not? Did they have a concept of ethnicity
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or... Not really, not in the way that we do.
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They had a strong concept of ethnicity. And of
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course, the word ethnicity comes from the ancient
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Greek word for race. So the Greeks looked at
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humanity, the sea of humanity all around them.
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And everyone belonged to a race, an ethnos. And
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the Greek city -states, Greece in its heyday,
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in the... 500s, 400s, 300s before the Common
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Era, was a patchwork of these independent or
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aspirationally independent city -states, each
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ruled by a citizen body. And these citizen bodies
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were highly exclusive. I mean, in Athens, there
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were very strict rules about your ancestry being
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sufficiently Athenian before, say, your son could
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be admitted to the citizen body when he came
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of age. And the Spartans were the same. And in
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fact, the ancient Greeks believed that the decline
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of Sparta was partly to do with the extreme exclusivity
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of the way in which they admitted new citizens.
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So the ancient Greeks were perfectly capable
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of arming slaves in a crisis and kind of putting
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them in the front line. And they would do that.
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And occasionally they would then admit new citizens.
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But by and large, they had a strong sense of
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the need for your ethnicity to be right. Yeah,
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I knew it was a bit too simple. When you were
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explaining about the barbarians and ethnicity
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just now, I couldn't help but start thinking,
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you also mentioned Spartans, start thinking of
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the film 300, which as a 17 -year -old... I thoroughly
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enjoyed, but upon further viewing, found pretty
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ridiculous now. I mean, the hordes from the east
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fighting the Greeks aren't even human anymore.
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They're literal monsters now. But there's something
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else that I found intriguing, a bit funny even.
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In the movie, King Leonidas and his Spartans
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are presented as these super straight lads who
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just can't wait to return back home to their
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faithful wives. However, I read that... The Spartans
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in particular, living in training with other
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men since they were little kids, practiced homosexuality.
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In fact, so much so that when they got married,
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their brides had to be dressed up as soldiers
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so that these fellows would be able to consummate
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the marriage on their wedding nights. So up until
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that point, homosexuality was the default for
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them, not the other way around. Is that true?
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Well, what is true is that the whole ancient
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Greek... attitude to sex between, to erotic relations
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between males was wildly different from that
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of the Christianising West until pretty recently.
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And I mean, since the 1970s, scholars have really
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turned their attention to studying what we call
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homosexuality, which is a kind of made up late
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19th century pseudo medicalization of a state
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of being which for the ancient Greeks had nothing
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to do with it wasn't a defect it was a kind of
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normal state of being there's so much evidence
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for this from ancient Greece but of course it
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doesn't mean that there weren't that the ancient
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Greeks didn't have rules around the practice.
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It wasn't a kind of free -for -all, as I think
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some Victorian idealists of what was then becoming
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known as homosexuality would have liked to think.
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Famously, Oscar Wilde idealised the ancient Greek
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attitude to these things in a way which slightly
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distorted what we understand to be you know,
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the facts of the matter. But yes, so the ancient
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Spartans, I mean, the evidence, the best evidence,
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which isn't very good, comes from the Romans.
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And a Roman writer says that, you know, they
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would sort of get up to things at night, but
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they would kind of keep a blanket or something
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between them. It was because the Romans were
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great admirers of the Spartans because they...
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saw in the Spartans a kind of military success
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like that of the Romans themselves. But the Romans
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also, you know, these attitudes are so complicated.
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I mean, the Roman society was essentially similar
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in its attitude to sex between males. But it
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also, the Romans chose to see it as a kind of
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Greek pollution of ancestral roman ways they
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saw it as both you know they both practiced it
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but also when they wanted to they saw it as a
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default which they would blame on foreign influence
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i mean plus archange i mean the french in the
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18th in the 17th century they thought it came
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from italy they called it the ultra montane vice
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the vice from the other side of the mountains
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meaning the outs so these attitudes are complicated.
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But yes, the ancient Greeks were boy lovers.
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That's the truth of it. I just find it kind of
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funny. I think the line that Leonidas says in
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the movie is referring to the Athenians as philosophers
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and boy lovers. As if Spartans were kind of exempt
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from that. You know, you have to be very careful
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how you put these things on film because Oliver
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Stone's fingers were slightly burnt. The director
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of the Brad Pitt. Troy. Yeah. I think that was
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Wolfgang Peterson that directed Troy. Yes. Sorry.
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I'm thinking of Oliver Stone's Alexander. Ah,
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right. Yes, yes, with Colin Farrell. And modern
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Greece objected strongly to Stone's depiction
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of Alexander's sexuality, which played up to
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the ancient evidence that, you know, he slept
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with boys as well as with his wives. I think
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it was the American Association of Greek Lawyers.
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They tried to bring a case at law against Oliver
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Stone. So, I mean, these things, I mean, it's
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all to do with masculinity and all this kind
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of stuff, which isn't especially my specialism,
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but you can't get away from it when looking at
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what the ancient Greeks did for us. I mean, but
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I did go to a couple of museums and some of the
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vases, We're very explicit. So it's, I don't
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know, the Greek American lawyers haven't gone
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to museums or they think this is not an established
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fact or, I mean, it's kind of odd to hear this.
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Well, don't you think people see what they want
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to see? I mean, you see it at the highest level
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in politics. How very naive of me. Yeah, so I
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think that's how it goes. And it turns out that
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far fewer of us than we always used to think.
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really want to know the factual basis for a claim,
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whether in history or in politics or whatever.
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I mean, it's just how human nature turns out
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to be. And we're being powerfully reminded, I
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think, these days of that side to human nature,
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which had got rather lost, I think, since the
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Enlightenment and this emphasis on rational thinking.
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I was thinking about the movie Troy with Brad
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Pitt and how they had to make Patroclus and...
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Achilles' cousins instead of best friends and
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potential lovers. Yes. I mean, whether the ancient
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Greeks themselves understood Homer's depiction
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of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus
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to be kind of fully pederastic, boy -loving,
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is kind of, you know, the scholars debate that
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as well because ancient writing over time put
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the emphasis... And in Homer's text itself, it's
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not 100 % clear that the relationship was, there's
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this distinction made in modern vocabulary between
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homosocial, which is kind of, you know, bro -type
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relationships between blokes, and homosexual,
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meaning fully... eroticized relationships with
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the presumption of actual sexual acts. So Achilles
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and Patroclus is there to be debated. But yes,
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I mean, it plants right at the very beginning
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of the ancient Greek tradition, because, you
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know, Homer's were foundational for ancient Greeks,
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for teaching them all sorts of kind of moral
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and ethical and religious issues. The relationship
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between Achilles and Patroclus, however you pitch
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it, certainly justified and idealized an intense
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kind of male -on -male relationship. Maybe they
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put a blanket between them at night. I mean,
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I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself. But I think
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the thing is, I mean, anything to do with this
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is my own personal view, but it's sort of based
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on thinking about and having to sort of teach
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about the ancient Greeks over a long period.
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I mean, anything to do with with human sexuality
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is kind of tricky. It can be. it can be spun
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in all sorts of different ways and there are
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all sorts of reasons sociologists tell us why
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historically societies have always had to try
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to contain and order human sexuality because
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otherwise it's potentially a source of great
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social chaos and you know really all the different
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attitudes to what we call homosexuality kind
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of come under that broad umbrella from the way
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it's depicted in the old testament or not to
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the new testament to ancient greek texts etc
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as tricky as it might be though the greeks this
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is this much is certain the greeks had a lot
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to say about male beauty didn't they much more
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than about female I mean, this was partly because
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there was a culture of intense female modesty,
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which was part of a culture, at least in Athens,
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where the artistic output on which the view that
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the ancient Greeks made so much of male beauty
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is partly based. The ancient Athenians had an
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ideal of, I've already mentioned this, of a citizen
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woman's beauty. place being in the home. A book
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has recently been written arguing from the ancient
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evidence that respectable Athenian women, when
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they were outside the family home, would have
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been veiled, which is very controversial, of
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course, because it sort of elides what today
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is thought to be one of the big differences between
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West and East. So you're on kind of you're on
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back on the ice again and the eggshells. That's
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a sort of practical thing, which is that when
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the ancient Greeks started to do sculpture in
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the later 700s before the Christian era in stone,
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they needed to. They needed to study the techniques
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of doing so, and they turned to ancient Egypt,
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where there was a long tradition of representing
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males almost naked, but with loincloths. But
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the very significant thing that the ancient Greeks
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did was to drop the loincloth, and they celebrated
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the full masculinity of an idealized, youthful
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Greek male. And there's endless discussion as
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to how you explain. this very distinctive feature
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of ancient Greek culture which was very much
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the opposite of the attitudes, in art at least,
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of all the neighbours of the ancient. and especially
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these much older civilizations further east and
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above all the ancient Egyptians. And there undoubtedly
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was a curiosity about, there was an idealization,
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first of all, of the naked, youthful Greek male,
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which had, I think, probably something to do
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with the dependence of these early communities
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on really fit young men to protect them in war.
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but it went beyond that there was a kind of curiosity
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about how the male form worked which was available
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to be inspected in gymnasia where for instance
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young greeks would train naked for reasons which
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the greeks also debated you know the origins
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of nakedness in athletics the male form was there
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to be studied the ancient Greeks undoubtedly
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had a very strong aesthetic sense which we can
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see in the early development of art in all sorts
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of media you've mentioned pottery there were
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textiles there were all sorts of things which
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show that the ancient Greeks from early on for
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reasons which we can't really explain had a highly
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developed sense of the decorative they were very
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curious about the human form and The end result
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of that curiosity was what makes ancient Greek
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art so famous still today, which was that they
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were able to realise, say in stone and also in
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paint, the illusion of a living human being,
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you know, all the musculature and the appearance
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of a regular human being. They had mastered how
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to execute. such an illusion in hard marble I
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mean an extraordinary feat but they had the will
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to do this and it must have been because ordinary
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Greeks wanted to see this. I mean, they must
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have been egging on the sculptors and so on,
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you know, go and try a bit harder. And so, you
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know, by about 490, you do get this kind of complete
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success really in rendering the human form. Now,
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women do come in, but it takes much longer for
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sculptors and artists. but especially sculptors
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who are commissioned to do public art, which
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the whole community will see. It took much longer
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to break the taboo on divesting the female form
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of its clothing. So, for instance, I mean, famously,
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the Parthenon sculptures, which are controversially
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in the British Museum, they are a halfway house
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because the artist just brilliantly used... um
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clinging drapery to reveal the form beneath and
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then about 50 years well about 100 years later
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or 70 years later you get the first fully naked
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depiction of the goddess of beauty and desire
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excuse me aphrodite in a temple of aphrodite
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so on full public view but completely naked and
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that was say in the middle decades of the 300s
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before the Christian era. And then you get, you
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know, then all the sculptures that you see in
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modern museums from ancient Greece and Rome of
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naked females were triggered really by that very
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famous sculpture. I mean, I mentioned in the
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book that, you know, The attitudes of the ancient
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Greeks to these lifelike statues are very interesting.
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But what you don't get in ancient Greek literature
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that I'm aware of are stories of males accosting
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naked male statues of beautiful ewes. The only
28:32
kind of stories that we hear of that sort of
28:35
eroticized behavior towards these statues. Older
28:39
men, right? is of a man accosting a female statue.
28:44
Yes, yes. So it's kind of interesting. It would
28:48
be completely wrong to, you know, to sort of
28:51
shut the depiction of female beauty out of one's
28:55
idea of what the ancient Greeks found beautiful.
28:59
And, you know, in the later Greek literature,
29:03
there are endless stories, endless stories of
29:05
male -on -female love and rape. I mean, a lot
29:09
of rape, I'm afraid to say. Even in the myths,
29:14
right? Zeus is a horrific god. Yeah, I mean,
29:22
sexual violence is there from the very beginning.
29:24
And, of course... I mean, it's there famously
29:28
in Homer. Once the Greek women are made captive,
29:33
they are subject to all the sort of awful things
29:38
which happen to the weak when the strong are
29:42
able to have their way with them. You mentioned
29:46
that the Greek men were naked in the gymnasium
29:49
when they were training. What about the Olympic
29:52
Games? They weren't naked when competing, right?
29:56
Kind of lend themselves to a lot of nasty accidents.
29:59
They were naked. They were naked even when competing
30:02
in all of the sports. Yeah, they were. Wow. They
30:05
were fully naked. The modern explanation for
30:10
that, well, it's not a modern explanation, it's
30:12
partly based on ancient evidence, written evidence,
30:15
is that in the early days of Greek athletics,
30:18
when Greek society was more aristocratic and
30:21
less democratic, distinctions of class were expressed
30:25
through dress, among other things. And having
30:29
everyone compete naked was a kind of equaliser
30:33
between rich and poor athletes. That's... a possible
30:38
explanation. There was a classicist, a scholar,
30:42
he was aged 49, whom I knew slightly in England,
30:47
who wanted to, he was an expert on ancient Greek
30:52
athletics and wanted to test what it was like
30:56
to run completely naked. And he did this somewhere
31:00
up in the north of England. It was quite cold.
31:03
And his conclusion was that it was fine. It wasn't
31:07
an impediment to movement, which you might think,
31:10
especially in, say, sprints or, I don't know,
31:13
whatever. His view was that it worked fine being
31:17
naked. Pancration must have been brutal then.
31:20
Yes, yeah, I mean, absolutely. Yikes. Yeah, absolutely.
31:27
Spartans, back to Spartans just for a bit more.
31:31
They had many fans across history. You mentioned
31:33
the Romans, but probably the most notorious ones
31:36
were the Nazis, right? Who I believe had this
31:39
math theory that the ancient Greeks were basically
31:41
some sort of proto -German ancestors who descended
31:43
from the north or something to form this civilization.
31:46
I read that... Yeah, please go ahead. No, no.
31:49
Well, I was going to say, yes, I mean, the ancient
31:52
Greek evidence, I mean, the way the ancient Greeks
31:55
wrote about their own origins, they believed
31:57
that some Greek communities in their day originated
32:03
with invaders from outside Greece coming from
32:07
the north. And the Spartans, the ancestors of
32:12
the Spartans were thought to be among these.
32:15
invaders from the north. So it wasn't so hard
32:18
for ideologues in the 19th century, and then
32:22
specifically the Nazi ideology that you're referencing,
32:28
to make these invaders from the North Nordic
32:31
and give them kinship with Aryan Germans. So
32:35
that's how the ideology worked. And, you know,
32:39
like many myths, you could say there was a kind
32:42
of kernel. truth in this Nazi line on the ancient
32:47
Greeks. Yeah, so they assimilated the ancient
32:50
Greeks to the Germans. There you go. Yeah, I
32:53
was wondering about one very specific thing that's
32:57
often talked about. I read that Hitler especially
33:01
lauded the Spartan practice of exposing quote
33:04
-unquote unfit babies, which he would model his
33:07
action tifia, the horrific involuntary euthanasia
33:12
of disabled and mentally ill people on. It's
33:14
crazy what they chose to take from Greek history.
33:16
But I was just wondering, was this Spartan custom
33:19
real or is it another modern invention? It's
33:24
well attested in written evidence. And of course,
33:28
exposure of children is a universal practice
33:31
at different times and in different places almost.
33:34
And there's a lot of academic study of the practice.
33:41
which I don't really know about. So although
33:44
the Spartan practice was highlighted, it strikes
33:47
me that it would be unusual if the Spartans were
33:52
unique among ancient world communities in exposing
33:57
unwanted children. I mean, the other thing you
34:00
could do is sell them. Two great options. Another
34:07
point of Nazi admiration was Greek art and architecture,
34:10
which we already talked about a little bit. They
34:13
deemed famously everything else was degenerate.
34:15
But actually, if you look for Albert Speer's
34:18
Hitler's Architects Designs for Germania, the
34:21
new capital of the Third Reich, there's a lot
34:22
of really cheap copying going on in there. But
34:25
I wanted to ask... How did the Greeks estimate
34:28
and understand their own art? Were they as blown
34:31
away by it as we are, or did they take it for
34:35
granted? They were blown away, insofar as we
34:39
have evidence for contemporary Greek responses
34:42
to things which we consider to be real high points
34:47
of ancient Greek art. So, for instance, the Parthenon,
34:50
we have almost no evidence for how the ancient
34:54
Greeks... viewed the Parthenon except for one
34:57
statement in a contemporary Athenian writer saying
35:03
that in war if the Athenians ran out of money
35:06
they could take all the gold from the statue
35:09
in the Parthenon melt it down and you know add
35:12
it to the war chest but we do have snippets of
35:15
evidence for ancient Greeks looking at the sculpture
35:20
that decorated, for instance, temples and commenting
35:24
on it. And we also do have evidence for ancient
35:28
Greeks marvelling at the realism of artworks.
35:32
And the big thing with the ancient Greeks were
35:35
stories about how something was so lifelike in
35:40
art that it fooled people. So, for instance,
35:44
there are stories about... the scenery, the painted
35:48
scenery in ancient Greek theaters of, say, bowls
35:52
of fruit, the fruit looking so lifelike that
35:55
birds would come down and peck at the canvas
35:57
thinking that the fruit was real. So, of course,
36:02
this was an amazing achievement to create. this
36:07
illusion of realism. And the Greeks never got
36:09
over it, really. And the Romans inherited it
36:13
as well. I mean, this was a pre -photography
36:15
age. I mean, art really excited that same kind
36:20
of reaction right down until photography took
36:24
over. No, I mean, the sculptures are just, I
36:27
mean, amazing still. And it was a bit of a downer
36:31
for me when I realized that they were painted.
36:33
in really bright colors. They weren't this elegant,
36:37
timeless, white marble type of sculptures. The
36:41
colors were apparently very vivid and almost
36:45
a bit, this is scandalous to say, but almost
36:48
a bit tacky compared to the ones we see in the
36:53
museum now. That's what I meant. No, it's true.
36:57
But it's not clear that the pigments that are
37:00
used in these modern reconstructions are exactly,
37:04
exactly right. And you can fall back on that
37:07
if you're too alarmed by the brightness of some
37:10
of the paintwork. I was getting worried that
37:12
the American Greek Lawyer Association is going
37:14
to come after me. Well, you can also turn it
37:17
another way because the paintwork is often reconstructing
37:21
the embroidery. and decoration of the textiles
37:25
worn by the statues. And this, of course, does
37:29
bring women's work into ancient Greek sculpture,
37:33
which otherwise, as far as we know, was very
37:35
much a man's world. I mean, all the names of
37:37
sculptors are male, not female. But the textiles,
37:41
of course, were always the work of those women,
37:45
citizen women, secluded at home. And there are
37:49
infinite representations on painted... pots of
37:54
precisely that domestic activity. So most men
37:58
would have worn homespun fabrics produced by
38:03
their wives and daughters and the rest of it.
38:07
Was it really that bad that the women spent most
38:11
of their lives at home? Well, it was a status
38:14
symbol. If you could afford to keep your women
38:17
folk at home, you would. Seems to have been the
38:19
ethos. And there's some evidence in Athens for
38:24
the spatial division of males and females within
38:28
the home. It's very much argued over because
38:32
the actual remains of Greek houses are very few
38:35
and far between. But there's some suggestion
38:38
that the women's quarters might have been on
38:40
an upper story. where they would have been out
38:44
of sight of the master of the houses, male visitors
38:49
coming and going on the ground floor, this sort
38:52
of thing. But of course, there were poor families
38:56
in Athens, citizen families, where the women
39:00
folk would be out in the fields, quite possibly,
39:05
and might be also, you know, selling family made.
39:09
products in the market. So obviously there was
39:13
a kind of spectrum based on sort of the degree
39:17
of household affluence. But there is some suggestion
39:21
that it was a status symbol for your womenfolk
39:25
to be as secluded as possible, at least in Athens.
39:29
I mean, it was different in Sparta. In Sparta,
39:31
they had female... athletic training, for instance,
39:35
which we are told by ancient writers was essentially
39:38
eugenic in purpose. It was to turn girls into
39:44
healthy breeders. No, just my reference point
39:48
here was Socrates' wife. We say Xanthippa in
39:52
Slovenian. I don't know how is it in English.
39:54
Xanthippa. And she's this famously strong -willed,
39:57
sharp -tongued woman in the dialogues and always
40:01
chastising Socrates and stuff and doing her own
40:04
thing. So I was kind of like, wasn't sure which
40:08
of the two is more accurate. As ever, these things
40:10
coexist, you know, and there is, as you're suggesting,
40:15
there is a lot of evidence from ancient Greece
40:19
for the depiction of strong women. I mean, this
40:25
is especially true in Athenian theatre, where
40:29
you get these terrifying women like Medea, who
40:31
kills her children and so on. The question is
40:34
whether this is a displacement into, say, drama
40:39
of sort of male Athenian fears of women, whether
40:44
it reflects some kind of reality. You get vase
40:48
painting scenes of drunken husbands coming back
40:50
and knocking on the doors if they've been locked
40:53
out of the home by the wife who's on the other
40:55
side of the door. You have a famous comedy called
41:01
the Lysistrata. in which the women of Athens
41:05
go on a sex strike in order to try to bring the
41:09
menfolk to end a war. Now, I mean, much of how
41:15
you imagine this kind of... depiction going down
41:19
in ancient Greek society depends on a question
41:23
to which we don't know the answer which is whether
41:25
women were in the audience for the theatre in
41:31
Athens and we just don't know and there's a huge
41:33
debate and on it really hinges how you you kind
41:38
of take these representations of women you know
41:41
was it all kind of bawdy stuff for an audience
41:43
of males who just found it hilarious we find
41:46
it a rather sympathetic depiction of women, but
41:51
perhaps, you know, but we don't know for sure.
41:53
I mean, this is one of the reasons why antiquity
41:56
and history in general are fun, because there
41:59
are always these debated questions. All right.
42:05
What about religion? The classics and the poems
42:07
and the plays are always referencing the Olympians,
42:10
the famous 12 gods, as if they are kind of constantly
42:13
present or interfering. And yet every Greek...
42:16
could, again naively put, could simply climb
42:20
Mount Olympus and see with their own eyes that
42:22
there's no gods living there, which begs the
42:25
question whether they actually believed in them
42:26
the same way as, for example, a contemporary
42:29
Christian or Muslim would believe in God today,
42:32
or was there a different relation to the divine
42:35
back then? The ancient world was God -fearing,
42:38
generally speaking. Some ancient societies seem
42:42
to have been more so than others. parts of the
42:46
ancient greek world were more questioning which
42:50
was why you have this i mean ancient greek religion
42:54
there were no sacred books the sort of ethical
42:58
guidance as to how you should behave which is
43:03
which is central to, say, Christianity and Islam
43:06
and Buddhism, modern world religions, just wasn't
43:10
there in ancient Greek religion, which is why
43:13
you had this space for what we call philosophers,
43:16
because it was the philosophers who filled that
43:20
gap by developing systems of guidance for how
43:24
best to live, like the Stoics who were enjoying
43:28
a kind of modern moment. Yeah, usually by some...
43:32
TikTok CEOs and other ultra -capitalists just
43:38
like cherry -picking some... I'm not even going
43:41
to go down that road because I'm just going to
43:43
start ranting. I apologize. No, no, no. I'm sort
43:47
of partly with you there, but we won't go there.
43:50
But I mean, as with religion, world religions
43:52
today, and I think not least with, say, Christianity
43:55
today, you can go to parts of the Christian -speaking
43:59
world today where... the degree of faith is more
44:04
like superstition to a more rational mind than
44:08
anything else. So you have a whole spectrum of
44:11
attitudes to Christianity in countries which
44:15
identify as Christian -originated. I mean, there's
44:20
quite a lot of discussion these days. for the
44:24
UK, for the United Kingdom, as to whether our
44:28
core values and so on, which identify us as Brits,
44:33
are essentially Christian -derived or not. And
44:36
you can see why these debates are happening now,
44:39
because there are social changes underway. The
44:43
ancient Greeks never lost their core belief in...
44:49
the gods including the Olympians and we kind
44:52
of see aspects of that in the evidence for what
44:57
went on inside their temples you know where I
45:01
mean there's evidence that you they would pray
45:03
to the statues they would decorate the statues
45:06
with offerings and so on and this went on right
45:11
to the end of antiquity. I mean, the Christians
45:14
really had it in for these statues precisely
45:18
because they were so potent. And so the Christians
45:21
said, these aren't gods, they're demons, and
45:24
smashed the statues up. You know, there are famous
45:26
or infamous episodes of... States were, they
45:31
looked to the gods for political guidance. You
45:35
have these oracles like the Oracle of Apollo
45:38
at Delphi and major decisions about I mean, it's
45:44
not so... I remember reading about Ronald Reagan's...
45:47
I think Nancy Reagan would encourage him to consult
45:52
first a clairvoyant, I think, whom she patronised
45:57
somewhere on the West Coast. So these things...
46:01
It's when you really don't know what to do as
46:04
a state that you might turn to religion or the
46:07
supernatural for guidance. And it's obviously
46:09
a human instinct, but... It developed remarkably
46:14
in ancient Greece with Delphi. The ancient Greek
46:18
state was a religious state. Every Greek city
46:23
-state had its own pantheon of gods and a whole
46:27
state calendar of festivals and processions and
46:31
sacrifices. And the ancient Greeks, their core
46:36
belief was that if you gave... the god something
46:41
you put credit into a sort of favor bank and
46:45
that meant that when you were in real need yourself
46:49
of help um the god would repay you um and uh
46:55
that it was a tran funny enough in a rather topical
46:58
way it was a transactional religion it wasn't
47:02
really what we would call very spiritual and
47:04
again it was the philosophers who um supplied
47:07
for those who wanted it um advice on how to live
47:12
a good life. Which could sometimes be deadly,
47:14
right? Wasn't Socrates condemned to death because
47:18
of impiety? Yes, he was condemned at a time when
47:22
his city, Athens, was kind of shaken to the core
47:26
by defeat in a major war. great war the so -called
47:31
Peloponnesian war which the Spartans won and
47:34
the Athenians who had been top dog really in
47:39
the Greek world in the previous two generations
47:42
have been brought right down to earth crushingly
47:47
the very walls of the city had been demolished
47:51
and it was in that sort of paranoid atmosphere
47:54
that the accusations against Socrates were made
47:58
and in particular what the Athenians worried
48:01
about and all ancient societies worried about
48:04
and modern ones do as well was what kind of influence
48:08
is being brought to bear on the young and on
48:10
their formation as future citizens and Socrates
48:14
was falling under suspicion, partly because he
48:19
seemed to be opening the minds of the young a
48:23
bit too broadly and encouraging too much questioning
48:28
of the status quo, especially the religious status
48:33
quo. And of course, any disaster like loss in
48:36
war was attributed by a state to loss of divine
48:40
favour. And you had to get back to work on putting...
48:45
credit into the favor bank. So having a philosopher
48:48
feeding too much free thinking into your future
48:53
citizen body, not good. When you were talking
48:56
about the consultations at Delphi, it made me
48:59
think about the Eleusinian mysteries, this nine
49:04
-day secret ritual that a lot of famous historical
49:07
people kind of attended, but nobody really knows.
49:12
what what what was going on there i was just
49:14
recently reading about cicero who apparently
49:16
went as well later on do we know anything more
49:19
about about what actually happened there or is
49:23
it still shrouded in mystery i mean the interesting
49:25
thing is that um the initiates of whom as you
49:29
say, Cicero was one, were sworn to secrecy. And
49:33
the remarkable thing is that they kept the secret.
49:35
And that's why there's mystery. That's not fun.
49:38
I want to know. So there was a reveal at the
49:40
end. I mean, there was all the initiates were,
49:44
you know, they'd been prepared with preliminary
49:47
rituals and you were in this great hall. And
49:50
from what we know, the lights went out and then
49:54
something became visible and was shown to them.
49:57
which had been brought down to Eleusis in these
50:00
special chests and the modern speculation excuse
50:05
me is about what it was that was shown and and
50:08
we don't know I mean it was most likely something
50:11
to do with what we call the myth of the Eleusinian
50:16
goddesses Demeter the goddess of grain and her
50:20
daughter but we don't we don't know but you know
50:23
I mean the whole point about religion is faith,
50:28
you know, is believing the improbable. I remember
50:31
someone saying to me once when I was being rude
50:33
about Christianity, a highly educated man, he
50:36
said, improbable, Tony, but not impossible. And
50:40
I mean, I think that's the core of faith, improbable,
50:43
not impossible. Yeah, and I just heard a lot
50:47
of murmurs about possible psychedelic use now,
50:51
which is the thing. A book was written about
50:54
sacred mushrooms and so on. And, you know, every
50:56
age really transfers its preoccupations back
51:01
to antiquity sooner or later in one form or another.
51:04
And I think that book was written during, you
51:06
know, at the height of the previous sort of psychedelic
51:11
drug craze in the West, say, 60s, 70s, that kind
51:16
of thing. I think his name was Allegro or something
51:19
like that, the author. But it's not, I mean,
51:23
respectable academics don't really believe it.
51:26
You don't need to believe, you don't really need
51:28
to imagine mushrooms and going on trips to understand
51:34
how Eleusis might have worked. Because, I mean,
51:38
the real selling point of Eleusis was that it
51:41
held out the promise of a better afterlife. And
51:45
if... You were brought up on Greek visions of
51:49
Hades, the underworld, you know, this unremittingly
51:52
awful domain where the dead went. The thought
51:58
of a religious cult which offered you a respectable
52:03
route to a better afterlife was very, very powerful.
52:08
And of course, you know, it's what Christianity
52:09
eventually built on with a better offer than
52:13
even Eleusis. So how did that work in Greek cosmology?
52:17
Everybody just went to Hades. That's it. It didn't
52:21
matter what you did in this life. This was a
52:24
one -way ticket. The trip was irreversible. And
52:28
that was it. And it was this kind of like shadowy
52:31
world that was much crappier than this one. Yes.
52:36
I mean, you've summed up Hades as it gets represented
52:39
in ancient Greek. thought pretty pretty well
52:43
i mean there were these things the weighing of
52:45
souls and there were judges um so it sort of
52:49
slightly blurred really um exactly what the steps
52:51
were when um you died i mean there was a notion
52:55
um of of judging of you know past um conduct
53:00
but it was no match for um the uh the kind of
53:04
vision of a better life offered by these so -called
53:07
mystery cults of which um Eleusis was one of
53:11
the most famous. I mean, there were others as
53:13
well. And I mean, from very early on, the ancient
53:15
Greeks seem to have dabbled in cults, which kind
53:18
of improved on the Hades offer for, you know,
53:21
for obvious... I can see why. Yeah, exactly.
53:25
And you can see why in the end this could lead,
53:27
you know, to something very, very big indeed,
53:30
which was Christianity. One of the things that's
53:33
totally abhorrent to us today, obviously, is
53:34
slavery. How did the Greek... the greeks justify
53:39
this institution you talked about at the beginning
53:42
about how aristotle was saying that some nations
53:47
or ethnicities are more predisposed supposedly
53:50
predisposed to being slaves but did the greek
53:53
was that a like a debate did did they ever have
53:56
any qualms about it no in short um That's a bummer.
54:02
The ultimate answer to that question is that
54:04
Christianity took over ancient slavery when,
54:09
you know, the Roman Empire, which half of which
54:11
was Greek speaking, when it became slowly Christianized
54:15
from whenever, the early 300s of the common era.
54:19
Slavery, which you might think was an obvious
54:22
and immediate target for Christian love, it just
54:26
trundled on. So there's no record of a serious
54:32
debate about the ethics of slavery in antiquity,
54:38
to sum it up. I mean, there is some evidence
54:41
that there were people, more thoughtful people
54:43
around who questioned it. But it was part of
54:47
an ethos of might is right, really, which...
54:51
was pervasive in antiquity. Okay, so you pretty
54:55
much answered my next question, I suppose. I
54:57
wanted to ask, if we look at modern everyday
55:00
values, values that we at least claim we hold
55:03
dear, such as, I don't know, kindness, the golden
55:06
rule, respect for human rights, would these be
55:09
recognized as valuable in ancient Greece as well?
55:11
Or did they have their own ideas about what constitutes
55:14
morality? And it was more like you said, might
55:17
constitutes right. I think the... Values which
55:21
you've just listed are more likely, to my mind,
55:25
to come from, at least in Western civilization
55:27
traditionally, from a Christianizing perspective
55:30
than from a pagan one. I mean, when you listen
55:34
now to apologists for ancient Greece. spelling
55:40
out where they think our debt lies i mean they
55:43
talk about art and architecture and ideas of
55:45
beauty but again and again they come back to
55:47
democracy and i mean that is the or at least
55:51
it has been i'm not maybe so much um under the
55:54
kind of current dispensation in the states but
55:57
um that has been uh traditionally um at the highest
56:01
level in the states where the debt to Greece
56:04
is acknowledged. And I mean, when I researched
56:08
the book, I was surprised to find that Congress,
56:13
until very recently, it would mark Greek Independence
56:17
Day, you know, the day when modern Greece won
56:20
its independence from the Ottoman Empire, with
56:23
speeches. And Nancy Pelosi, for instance, you
56:26
know, gave a speech not so long ago at one of
56:29
these events. where again, you know, America
56:32
acknowledged the debt to Greece in terms of the
56:36
debt to democracy. So that also tends to be what
56:41
you hear about most in this country, the UK as
56:45
well, when there are apologists for and defenders
56:49
of the debt. It's normally to do with democracy.
56:52
Okay, I see, I see. Because the values were so
56:56
different that... That's what they have to hinge
56:59
everything on. There's been an evolution because,
57:03
I mean, for instance, you can go back to the
57:05
19th century and a lot more of what we would
57:08
now consider the less savoury aspects of ancient
57:11
Greek ethics found more favour then. And I've
57:15
already mentioned racism and eugenics and so
57:17
on, and indeed slavery. I mean, American apologists
57:21
for deep south slavery, they knew their Aristotle.
57:26
They drew on it. And because Greek antiquity
57:30
had almost as much moral authority as Christianity
57:34
back then, this was, you know, it was potentially
57:38
quite a powerful prop for proponents of. uh slavery
57:43
um and indeed uh for proponents of racism um
57:47
but i you know all that's gonna go out the window
57:50
now and even greek beauty is you know has been
57:53
under challenge for a long time as the ideal
57:56
i mean it's an ideal but it's one of a number
57:58
now it's not the it's not the best and the greatest
58:03
There was a really interesting article published
58:05
in the New Yorker recently. The title was How
58:07
China Learned to Love the Greek Classics. And
58:10
apparently there's a bit of a craze about studying
58:12
the classics in the country now. And that craze
58:15
is encouraged from the very top sort of as a
58:19
way to engage the West without also engaging
58:22
with what they feel are ideological. That's what
58:27
they say. In the article, the author writes that
58:28
the Chinese explicitly reject modern Western
58:32
reinterpretations of these texts, like viewed
58:35
from the prison of either identity politics or
58:37
race or colonialism, in favor of what they feel
58:41
are more authentic, quote unquote, and grounded
58:44
readings. Really fascinating stuff. Who would
58:48
have thought that modern China would consider
58:50
itself as the real... guardian or custodian of
58:53
ancient greek philosophy in 2026 yes why you
58:57
think they are doing it is open to debate and
59:01
i think the west has long had this illusion that
59:05
china is keen to seek ways to connect with us
59:09
which i think you can argue are delusions I mean,
59:17
I think the Chinese are very good at hoovering
59:20
up wisdom. They're a great civilization and they've
59:25
not got there any more than Western civilization
59:29
got to where it got without hoovering up the
59:34
best from abroad. And from the little I know
59:37
about this, I mean, they think of ancient Greece
59:41
as in some ways... counterpart to ancient China,
59:46
that they're in ancient Greece and they're in
59:49
ancient China. These are really the kind of matrices
59:52
of world. civilization. Yeah, that's articulated
59:56
in the article as well. Parallel ancient society.
59:59
Parallel ancient society. So the Chinese are
1:00:01
naturally curious because they're highly intelligent
1:00:03
society in finding out what made ancient Greeks
1:00:09
tick. And I think particularly, as you say, they're
1:00:11
not interested in the political legacy and they
1:00:14
may not be that interested in the cultural legacy.
1:00:19
broadly speaking, apart from the philosophy.
1:00:21
They do seem to be very interested in the philosophy,
1:00:24
and that's natural for the civilization which
1:00:27
gave us Confucius. And I mean, I was reading
1:00:30
only just now about how difficult it is. despite
1:00:35
Mao's and Chinese communism's rejection, formal
1:00:41
rejection, I believe, of Confucianism, it is
1:00:45
so ingrained in the Chinese mind, things like
1:00:49
respect for family, respect for your elders and
1:00:52
so on, that it's still around everywhere in China.
1:00:58
So the philosophy seems to be... thing which
1:01:02
the Chinese have latched onto. And, you know,
1:01:04
I mean, I read about this Chinese professor who
1:01:08
knew Greek and ancient Greek, taught it to his
1:01:12
select band of pretty smart pupils, and they've
1:01:16
now translated all Aristotle's works into Chinese,
1:01:20
which is an extraordinary thing. You know, now
1:01:22
you can make a direct comparison between what
1:01:26
Confucius says about X and maybe, you know, that
1:01:30
sort of thing. But I think it's actually a building
1:01:34
block to making China greater, really, this squeezing
1:01:39
the lemon of ancient Greek wisdom. Which begs
1:01:45
the question, is it ever possible to study the
1:01:47
Greeks or their texts without an obvious agenda?
1:01:51
It's like saying, really, why study the past?
1:01:55
You know, you'll choose the past that you...
1:01:57
most like to study if you study the past at all
1:01:59
which many people don't even in the highest places
1:02:02
we're told books are never open which might shed
1:02:06
light on well yeah twitter is open though you
1:02:11
can't read books if you're if you're no and tweeting
1:02:14
all the time i mean one of the things that you
1:02:17
know i i kind of thought about for for the book
1:02:20
was this question of how popular culture relates
1:02:25
to the past and there are many many routes by
1:02:29
which ordinary folk even if they're not particularly
1:02:33
interested in the past nonetheless pick up something
1:02:37
about what ancient Greece was like and I mentioned
1:02:40
the Olympic Games which is the most obvious thing
1:02:42
but that you know and if you dig down a little
1:02:46
bit deeper there's a lot of kind of popular literature
1:02:48
there's film there are video games and and and
1:02:52
so on well christopher nolan is uh gonna make
1:02:56
iliad now so let's see what happens with that
1:02:59
yes that's right yes you see if we get some action
1:03:02
figures from it or something there is more to
1:03:05
say i i guess which is that people find a certain
1:03:08
universality in some aspects of ancient greek
1:03:11
civilization which means that um you can replay
1:03:14
it um to suit the modern mood music. And I mean,
1:03:19
you get that in recent retellings of say, you
1:03:23
know, Madeline Miller's novel, which has been
1:03:25
a bestseller. I've read it. It was really good.
1:03:29
Exactly. And that's what, that's Achilles and
1:03:31
Patroclus, but with the kind of... Oh no, I read
1:03:34
the other one. Circe. Oh, okay. Yes, I've not
1:03:39
read that. And Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker.
1:03:46
So these contemporary concerns, you can find
1:03:49
reflections of them in ancient Greek art, but
1:03:53
the reflections are also at an elevated sort
1:03:56
of level, which gives them this kind of power.
1:04:00
The language, for instance, when you're talking
1:04:02
about some of these ancient Greek plays or ancient
1:04:05
Greek poems, it puts all this stuff into an elevated
1:04:09
register, which many people find both attractive
1:04:14
and thought -provoking. And they find that, you
1:04:17
know, the ancient Greeks weren't so different
1:04:18
from us after all, which is a big debate. Were
1:04:21
they very different or were they rather like
1:04:23
us? Well, it got me interested. This is going
1:04:26
to be slightly embarrassing, but, you know, what
1:04:28
the hell? This is my podcast. I got to be honest
1:04:31
here, if nowhere else, it was two particular
1:04:34
American TV shows when I was a teenager, Hercules
1:04:39
and Xena, the warrior princess. I don't know
1:04:41
if you had those in the UK. They were sort of
1:04:43
like B quality, almost like fantasy type of TV
1:04:52
shows where Xena and Hercules were just like.
1:04:56
kicking ass all the time and it didn't kind of
1:04:59
matter one day they were in ancient Greece and
1:05:01
the other in another episode they were like in
1:05:04
the times of the Old Testament and then they
1:05:07
were kind of like hanging out with the Romans
1:05:09
it was a bit bizarre but but yeah couldn't stop
1:05:14
watching well I think especially when you're
1:05:17
younger that these are the roots which the media
1:05:24
in your culture open, which allow you to enter
1:05:29
the world of ancient Greece. And it's up to the
1:05:34
individual whether they want to go further. I
1:05:38
mean, the Romans did the same thing. I mean,
1:05:40
they used to kind of restage these as popular
1:05:43
entertainment in Rome. They'd restage these ancient
1:05:46
Greeks. and they would distort the facts for
1:05:49
popular entertainment. And, you know, you can
1:05:51
be very pious about this. I know, I remember
1:05:54
that the first Gladiator movie, which had a world
1:06:01
expert on roaming gladiatorial shows, I think
1:06:07
this is right, asked for their name to be removed
1:06:10
from the credits from they were so appalled by...
1:06:14
you know how gladiatorial the gladiatorial life
1:06:19
had been skewed by the film I mean now I think
1:06:22
probably that sort of attitude prevails less
1:06:26
i mean you know there's part resignation but
1:06:29
also on the part of academics in universities
1:06:32
where say recruitment numbers are always an issue
1:06:35
you know anything that um when you ask them in
1:06:38
interview you know what turned you on and they'll
1:06:40
say they'll describe something you know hercules
1:06:42
and xena and you know whereas before you might
1:06:45
have felt obliged to wrinkle your nose you you
1:06:47
don't now you say oh great you know here you
1:06:50
will learn about you know the origins of the
1:06:52
Heracles myth and all that so I don't think it
1:06:55
of course it doesn't matter it's great that you
1:06:57
know you take from the past what you want really
1:06:59
it's only the past you know it's not it's not
1:07:04
the be all and end all Tony last question the
1:07:09
title of your book is a paraphrase of the famous
1:07:11
line in the Monty Python film The Life of Brian
1:07:13
right where John Cleese his character playing
1:07:16
a revolutionary who wants to rebel against Roman
1:07:18
rule cries out to his followers Apart from the
1:07:21
sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public
1:07:24
order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system,
1:07:27
and public health, what have the Romans ever
1:07:30
done for us? Now, if I forced you to weigh Roman
1:07:34
contributions on one hand and Greek ones on the
1:07:36
other and told you you have to pick one, which
1:07:39
one would it be? Well, it's difficult, of course,
1:07:42
to pick because without the Romans... That's
1:07:43
why I asked. Yes, of course. It's a good question
1:07:46
for an interviewer to ask. You know, without
1:07:50
the Romans, we wouldn't really have the Greeks
1:07:52
because it was the Romans' love of ancient Greek
1:07:55
civilization, which essentially allowed it to
1:07:59
come down to us. I would opt for the Greeks,
1:08:01
of course, because there's more to like about
1:08:03
the ancient Greeks. I mean, the Romans were more
1:08:06
about kind of... brute force, really, and they
1:08:10
knew how to build empires, all these things which
1:08:13
are nowadays rather unfashionable, although that's
1:08:17
not to say they have gone out of fashion, if
1:08:19
you follow the distinction. But, yeah, the Greeks,
1:08:24
I mean, really, when you go into a museum and
1:08:26
you look at the Roman rooms, what you're looking
1:08:28
at are sort of simulacra, sort of, you know,
1:08:31
imitations, pale often, of things, really, that
1:08:35
the Greeks had been the first to do or devise.
1:08:38
And I think Greek thought and Greek literature,
1:08:41
well, one has to be careful. Greek thought maybe
1:08:44
has had a long life and is still around. You
1:08:48
know, I mean, we talked about homosexuality at
1:08:50
the beginning, but I mean, it was only in 1993
1:08:52
that Plato was being cited for the prosecution
1:08:59
in this famous Colorado gay rights. trial in
1:09:05
a Denver courtroom where an attempt was being
1:09:10
made to reduce, I think, LGBTQ plus rights. And
1:09:15
in defense of LGBTQ rights, experts were brought
1:09:21
on to highlight um ancient philosophical attitudes
1:09:26
including uh specifically plato and this is extraordinary
1:09:30
it was in 1993 it's not that long ago it's well
1:09:33
within uh you know my living um memory um and
1:09:38
uh i think you know that takes you back to the
1:09:40
respect especially in the us which um ancient
1:09:46
Greece still has and I would just say on that
1:09:48
that in the field of architecture Mr Trump in
1:09:54
his first presidency he introduced an executive
1:09:58
order which required federal architecture to
1:10:03
follow classical norms and he specified the Greek
1:10:10
style in the form of the 19th century group revival
1:10:14
as one of the ideal styles which the Trump administration
1:10:20
thought was most suitable for state architecture,
1:10:25
which obviously is controversial. And I think
1:10:30
it was Mr. Biden squashed this order, but I don't
1:10:35
know what its fate has been under the second
1:10:37
Trump administration. But those are just examples
1:10:40
of the fact that it's not gone away. ancient
1:10:43
greek yeah yeah well it's odd i've seen pictures
1:10:46
of trump's penthouse and they have a lot of greek
1:10:50
influence in it if i remember correctly everything
1:10:52
was in gold it was more like russian billionaire
1:10:55
style yes i i mean i and far be it for me to
1:11:01
criticize Mar -el -Lago. But of course, there
1:11:06
are always different registers of architecture
1:11:08
and what you want in a public building can be
1:11:11
very different from what you might enjoy in the
1:11:13
relative privacy of your home. I don't know.
1:11:16
Tony, thank you so much. This was fantastic.
1:11:19
Is book number three underway so we can have
1:11:22
another conversation in the future? It is. It's
1:11:25
in... production now, but it's a very different
1:11:29
book because I also have a sideline in French
1:11:31
history. And this book is called Paris and Versailles,
1:11:35
The Road to Revolution. So that's what it's about.
1:11:38
It's about... Oh, wow. Well, I had Professor
1:11:41
Andres on the podcast talking about the French
1:11:46
Revolution. So, I mean, this podcast is... definitely
1:11:50
not limited to ancient history so we'll be very
1:11:53
interested for you to to come back after the
1:11:55
book is published well i would love that and
1:11:57
thank you and i i i know people it's always thought
1:12:00
cheap to sell your own your own ways but i should
1:12:04
i just hold this up because please there is now
1:12:07
um i'm sorry it's coming out i don't know whether
1:12:10
that's the right way out but yeah it's perfect
1:12:12
it's now a cheap paperback version of um what
1:12:14
the greeks did for us um for anyone who's not
1:12:17
totally put off by um by this podcast not not
1:12:23
at all we're gonna put uh the link into the description
1:12:26
box terrific thank you thank you thank you so
1:12:29
much again okay goodbye Hey, peeps. Thank you
1:12:32
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