This is just a quick, but very exciting announcement – I am VERY pleased to be able to say that For the Most Beautiful will be coming to the US soon with Pegasus Books! Exact dates to be confirmed. I am so excited to reach out to all of you in the US and can't wait for For the Most Beautiful to make its way across the pond!

More details coming soon...

It’s a question every Classicist has been faced with at one time or another. You’ve just met a friend you haven’t seen for a few years, say.

“And what are you up to now?” they ask politely.

“Oh — I study Classics,” you say, a little apologetically.

They look a bit bewildered. Sometimes they venture a guess: “Classical music?” “Shakespeare?” Even — “Classic cars?” (I’ve had that one myself.)

“No,” you say patiently. “Classics. It’s the study of the civilisations of the ancient world. You know, ancient Greece and Rome. I read their literature, study the history, that sort of thing.”

Now the look of polite bewilderment has turned into incredulity. “You mean you actually read ancient Greek?” they say. Your heart sinks. You can feel the question coming. You ready yourself for it. And then it happens.

“So tell me – why do you study a dead language?”

Every student of Latin or Greek has to learn to cope with this question. Not only that, they have to have an answer ready to draw from their pockets whenever it’s sprung upon them – and believe me, it happens in the places you least expect it. I’ve been accosted with it everywhere from petrol stations and driving tests to job interviews. So how do you give friends, colleagues and potential employers the sure-fire answer to exactly why you study Classics – one that will bowl them over with your intelligence and wit, and, at the same time, show them that the study of the ancient world is still absolutely relevant?

Read on for a couple of ideas that should get you started the next time someone drops the ‘Why Classics’ question.    

Learning Languages

A good one to start with is the basic fact that ancient Greek and Latin are fantastic toolkits for understanding language better. Few of us have a good understanding of English grammar – after all, we’re brought up speaking it, not reciting verb tables. When you learn Greek and Latin grammar, you start to learn your own grammar at the same time; which means you get to be the annoying person who always corrects everyone else’s syntax. There’s also the fact that the roots of so many English words come from ancient Greek and Latin, which gives you a huge advantage in knowing fancy words other people don’t (it also helps in winning Balderdash). And many of the Romance languages – Italian, Spanish, French – are descended from Latin, making it hugely easier to pick them up once you’ve got a bit of Latin behind you.

Another big advantage of learning Greek and Latin is that it broadens your perspective on language more generally. With English so widespread in the modern world, it’s a humbling and valuable experience to try to get under the skin of another language from scratch. It makes us appreciate what foreign speakers go through when they try to learn our language. And it invites us to begin to understand how relative language is to culture – how different cultures have different words to express the concepts that mean something to them, and how we can begin to understand them in our own languages and our own ways. 

Logic

Anyone who’s done any ancient Greek will confirm this for you in a heartbeat: to learn a dead language, you need to have a highly sharpened sense of logic. The only way you can possibly learn all those irregular verbs is to get a grip on the patterns underlying their structure. I still have my grammar notes from school with all the different conjugations of Greek verbs colour-coded according to tense, person, voice and mood! Let’s just say you have to learn logic pretty quickly to wrap your head around Classics. It’s a quality that’s highly valued in many professions, from finance to business to law – and it’s something that learning Latin and Greek gives you the chance to develop early on.

A Broad Expertise

When people ask you exactly what Classics is, their first guess when you tell them you study Ancient Greece and Rome is normally, in my experience, that you read the literature of the Greeks and Romans (most people have usually heard of Homer). But all of us know that Classics is so much more than that. Studying Classics, you can be expected to know everything from the style of Alexander the Great’s hairdo and how it was depicted on coins, to the philosophical arguments of Socrates, to the origins of modern language in Indo-European roots, as well as some pretty funky myths. We do everything from language, literature and linguistics to philosophy, history, art and archaeology; and it’s one of the things which I think sets Classics apart. It’s hard to find many other subjects that ask you for such a broad skill set – which means that Classics can provide invaluable training for a whole range of different interests.

Cultural Sensitivity

I already touched on this one earlier, but it bears repeating. One of the great things about studying Classics is that it doesn’t just cover the languages, as many people think – it’s the study of an entire culture (actually, two entire cultures). Being exposed to how other people, who lived in a very different time and place from our own, thought, wrote, talked, drew, philosophised, ate, prayed, partied and slept gives you a tremendous window onto the varieties of culture. It makes you comfortable with different gods and different religious practices. It allows you to accept and analyse alternative gender norms to our own with a critical, rather than a prejudiced, eye. Often I have found myself taking friends and relatives around the Classical galleries in some museum or other and being asked in tones of scandalised shock about some of the ruder depictions on vase paintings or in statues. Even more often, I have become so used to these depictions that I hardly notice them, and have to recall my own prejudices when I first started studying Classics in order to understand why my friends are so offended. Being in touch with cultures other than our own forces us to confront our own prejudices and assumptions, again and again. And that, in my opinion, is the first step to letting those assumptions go, and starting to go a little bit deeper into what it really means to be a human on this planet.

Understanding Historical Patterns

Isaac Newton, the famous physicist, once remarked that, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” (His comment is also etched around the edge of two pound coins, just in case you need to whip it out at unexpected moments.) The quotation goes to the heart of history and why we study it. Not only do our historical and cultural achievements rest on the discoveries of the past, as Newton put it; our mistakes are, more often than not, repetitions of the mistakes that were also made by the figures of history. By “standing on the shoulders of giants”, as Newton did, we gain an invaluable perspective on the way that history unfolds, in both good times and bad. The opportunity Classics provides us with is particularly unique in this respect. We can look back to the past from our present vantage point, survey the Classical period and the enormous impact it had on later European civilisation. And we can also climb up onto the shoulders of some of the Classical giants – Cicero, Homer, Augustus – and get inside their heads. What was Augustus thinking when he fought the Battle of Actium and defeated the last remaining opponent to his rule and brought about the end of the Republic? Who was Homer, and why did he decide to commemorate the story of Achilles’ wrath? Why did Cicero make the choices he did – and how would modern politicians face similar dilemmas? 

Learning From The Past

And so this brings me to my final point: the way in which Classics enables us to learn from the past. Some scholars would disagree, but it is my belief that, whilst cultures and historical events may change around us, humans remain largely the same. By comparing ourselves to the people of the past, we can begin to explore how and if humans change. We can start to investigate what we share: what interests us, what we’re passionate about, what we find frightening, what motivates us, what we hate, what we love. We can start to understand what it is that makes us human, and explore the big questions that ultimately underpin every search for knowledge in every book that has ever filled the shelves of a library: the question of why we’re here, how agency and history (or free will and fate, put it whichever way you like) interact, what, if anything, is our relationship to the divine, and, last but not least, the question of how to live the good life.

Now that, I think, is something worth learning. Wouldn’t you agree?

Well, my first reaction was that something like that would put me to sleep pretty quickly. How on earth would an audience have been able to listen to something that repetitive for hours on end? But in the Odyssey, in book 8 when Odysseus is visiting the court of King Alcinous in Phaeacia and hears the tales told by Demodocus the bard, the audience is described as being completely entranced by his stories. Odysseus praises the bard as the best of all men; later, he even bursts into tears at Demodocus’ moving rendition of the Trojan War. And on Michael Wood’s documentary, In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great, modern oral poets are shown on video footage playing to rooms packed full of people listening in enraptured silence.

So what’s the secret to oral poetry? Was it really as good as Homer tells us? Was it just a subtle advertisement from a master of his craft, trying to sell the experience to a few more clients? Or are we numbed to the enchanting effects of poetry in the modern world, with so much information available to us so fast — infinite websites, high-definition films, and endless music and video footage available at the click of a mouse?

Actually, I don’t think so. Thinking back to Alice Oswald’s Hymn to Iris, I was reminded of the way I first came into contact with her poetry. She came to visit Yale, where I’m currently studying as a PhD student, to give a recitation of her poem, Memorial. It’s described as ‘an excavation of the Iliad’, and I’d been told it was a compilation of all the lists of the dead in the Iliad. I wasn’t really sure I wanted to listen to a long list of dead people. Moreover, it was going to be over an hour long. How would I ever be able to keep my attention from wandering that long? But I went anyway, mostly out of a sense of duty and a vague feeling that, as I’m interested in classical reception, I should probably show up. 



What happened totally took my breath away. Alice Oswald began with her opening invocation to Iris, which instantly captured me. I mean, starting with a hymn to a classical god? That’s pretty cool. She then proceeded to the poem itself. She had a mesmerising, lilting voice and piercing blue eyes that seemed to stare at me as I listened. Yes, that’s right – she looked at us the whole time. No looking down at the page, fumbling with notes, speaking into her chest. She’d memorised the entire poem by heart. Her head was up, she was looking at us and, it seemed, talking directly to me. The list of dead and dying heroes became, not a dull roll-call of men who had died thousands of years ago. These heroes mattered to her. You had to listen. It felt like a conversation – not a lecture. For over an hour her audience was spellbound, I couldn’t stop listening. It wasn’t just that the descriptions of the dead were beautifully done – similes that echoed Homer and yet were hollowly modern. It was the delivery, the sheer feat of memory and the way she delivered the poem to us, like a gift, a personal offering to each one of us.

So maybe that’s the secret to oral poetry, then. Perhaps the problem with listening to an extract of a person performing Homer online, through an mp3 player, in a foreign language that was spoken two thousand years ago, is that oral poetry requires an engagement, a relationship between the performer and the audience. It requires the awesome feat of memory that is needed to remember – and deliver – an hours-long poem, and the contract that that creates with the audience to listen and respond. It requires poetry that you can understand and engage with, and the intimacy of watching its creation – right in front of you.

So you never know – maybe Homeric poetry really was as good as Homer makes it out to be, after all.

You can also read Emily's blog, "Missives from Iris", online at www.irisonline.org.uk/index.php/blog


When I was asked to write a blog for Iris Online about all things classical my first thought was: how on earth, from all the hundreds of thousands of facts and artefacts and stories we have about the Classical world, am I meant to choose what to write about? 

And so, after many scrapped drafts and a quick bike ride to my local museum for inspiration, I thought I’d simply start by sharing with you what I’m passionate about: the women of the ancient world. Some of you already know that I’ve recently written a historical-fiction novel, telling the story of the Trojan War from the perspectives of two of the women who loved, lived and lost during one of the most famous battles of all time. I want to share with you why I believe it’s so important to keep thinking about and interpreting the women of the ancient world, and why they still matter today. Contrary to everything we’re told in history books, classical women were smart, they were sexy, and they definitely knew their own minds. Remembering that, and starting to see the world through their eyes, opens up a very different vista onto the past than any you might have seen before – and in turn, makes us see our world with new eyes.

So here are a few of my heroines and their stories.

THE WAR HERO 

My first heroine has to be Briseis, one of the main characters who appears in my novel. She comes up in the first book of Homer’s Iliad, one of the most famous works of Ancient Greek literature, as Achilles’ war-prize. In the famous quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon that opens the poem, Agamemnon forces Achilles to hand over his prize, the captive slave Briseis. Achilles responds by leaving the war in a fury of rage. The story of the Iliad is set – and it’s all because of Briseis.

She might be an unusual choice for my first heroine – she’s a fictional character, after all – but I believe she exemplifies one crucial reason why women of the ancient world need to be remembered: as victims of war. There’s actually a backstory to Briseis’ character hidden between the lines of the Iliad that dramatically changes the way we think about her. Homer mentions that, before she was captured by Achilles, she was a princess in one of the cities around Troy and was married to a nobleman called Mynes. During the sack of the cities around Troy, her three brothers and her husband were all killed by Achilles. It was only then that she was taken as Achilles’ prize to the Greek camp.

Briseis’ story is vitally important, I believe, because it gives us an alternative viewpoint on the legend of the Trojan War. It’s a very different world from Achilles’, with his debates on honour and glory. To see the Trojan myth through the eyes of a woman who has lost everything is to truly understand what’s at stake in a war. And that matters as much now as it ever did.

THE POET OF LOVE 

One of the things we often come across in Classics is that writers are almost always male, and that, by and large, they usually tell stories about men. But Sappho is the exception. Sappho was a female poet who lived on the island of Lesbos in around 600 BCE. And although we only have fragments of her poetry, they are enough to give us an idea of the extraordinary nature of her work.


With Sappho, we start to come across a very different voice from that of her predecessor, Homer – and one that is fully capable of holding up its own against him. There’s a fantastic poem (16) where she reacts and responds to Homer’s epic, and replaces it with some of her own concerns. Sappho opens with these words:



There are some who like war: cavalry, infantry, 
or navy, they'll say it's the most stunning sight on earth 
they've ever seen. I say that it's what- 
ever someone loves.

(My translation)


This is a radical shift. Before Sappho, the only proper subject of literature was war. But Sappho turns it around. As Helen loved Paris and crossed the world to be with him, she goes on to say in the rest of the poem, so she is in love with Anactoria. The message is clear. For Sappho, the Trojan War isn’t about Achilles, as we saw above with Homer. It’s about the passion of Helen and Paris, and Sappho’s longing for her own lover. In other words, for Sappho, as for Briseis, the Trojan War can be and is a woman’s story.

So Sappho is essential in that, like Briseis, she gives us a different narrative of the ancient world; but this time she does it with her own voice. For the first time, the woman’s tale is being told. Life in the ancient world is revealed as not just all about war and battle and politics and men – it’s also about love, and heartbreak, and women, and marriage. It is a breakthrough moment. For the first time in ancient literature, the female voice is speaking up.

THE POLITICIAN

After Sappho you might be forgiven for thinking that the world of women was all love and marriage and rainbows. Well, my next choice is Livia, and her life was a world away from Sappho’s lovestruck song-making on the Greek islands. 

Now, I have to admit I’m biased in choosing Livia as my final heroine. She’s been a personal favourite of mine, ever since I first received I, Claudius for Christmas over ten years ago. But then, anyone who’s read Robert Graves’ sparkling portrait of Livia can’t help but love her for the shrewd politician and cutthroat villain he makes her out to be.

But what are the real facts about Livia? Born in 59 BC into the turbulent years of the late Roman Republic and the triumvirate of Pompey, Crassus and Caesar, Livia grew up at the heart of the Roman civil war. Originally married to a staunch Republican and with two children by him, she met a dashing young general, Octavian (later Augustus, the first Roman Emperor). Octavian apparently fell in love with her at first sight, divorced his own wife, Scribonia, and forced Livia’s husband to divorce her. The couple were immediately married. A few years later Octavian became Augustus, and Augustus became Emperor. Eventually, after Augustus’ death, Livia’s son by her first husband, Tiberius, would become the second Roman Emperor – and so the first to continue the hereditary monarchy that would last for the next 400 years.

Whatever the facts really were, Livia clearly wielded a huge influence over one of the greatest political figures of the ancient world and helped to forge the Roman Empire out of the ashes of the Republic. Her determination to get her son into power (even if she didn’t use all the means Robert Graves attributes to her) ensured the continuation of the monarchy and shaped the Roman Empire for hundreds of years to come. 

So here are our three women: the war hero, the poet of love, and the politician — three extraordinary and passionate women, who were quite capable of making a splash on the historical record. Until a few years ago, however, the traditional view ran that the women of the ancient world were hidden in the background, without much ability to do anything and certainly no opportunity to affect events around them. Thankfully, that point of view is now changing. Since the publication of Sarah Pomeroy’s Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves in 1975, the study of ancient women has burst into life. Women like Briseis, Sappho and Livia are now making their way into the school curriculum. Their stories are being examined in scholarship, rediscovered in fiction, presented in documentaries. The women of the ancient world are, at last, reclaiming their place in history. 

Looking at my heroines, I’d say it’s a story well worth telling. Wouldn’t you?