The Dead Language Ladies: A Classics Podcast

In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies discuss Ancient Rome's famous festival, the Lupercalia, held from February 13 to 15, right around modern-day Valentine's Day. Tune in to hear about the nudity, whipping, and scandals that surrounded this sacred religious holiday, as well as its most infamous connection to Julius Caesar in 44 BC, when he was handed a crown during the festival by Marcus Antonius—exactly one month before his brutal assassination. Stay for a dramatic reading of Cicero's letters recounting this scene, heralding the fall of the Roman Republic, which would shape history forever...

In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies discuss the highly anticipated Christopher Nolan film, The Odyssey. Listen as we unpack the controversial choice of the director to use historically inaccurate costuming for these Bronze Age heroes, which has many Ancient Greece lovers in an uproar--while those like us are merely disappointed. Many film lovers, however, find the backlash to be irrelevant and only demand a good movie. Despite convincing points from both sides of the debate, we ultimately ask another question that addresses the glaring gap between academia & scholarship on the one hand and creative media & film on the other: when did historians cease being creative?

In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies play a game of WORD you rather with Germanic and Romance descended words in English. Listen and play along as we discuss the merits and faults of words with similar semantics but different etymologies, such as gold vs. money, wrath vs. ire, and deadly vs. mortal. As we playfully and lovingly debate each pairing, you will learn about English's unique and fascinating linguistic composition and how both history and sound go hand in hand to express the imaginations and beliefs of a culture through words.

In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies discuss whether Alexander the Great or Augustus Caesar was the better conqueror of ancient history. Tune in to this age-old debate and our two cents on these war generals turned political leaders, assessing their military prowess, political strategies, manner of death, legacy, and even their physical representations--all to decide who, ultimately, deserves to be crowned the Greatest.

In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies quiz each other on ancient and modern female-written poetry to see if they can distinguish between 6th-century BCE poet Sappho (considered the 10th muse by Plato) and her surviving fragments and the 21st-century Canadian poet Rupi Kaur's trendy poetry. Due to their similar intimate style and female-centered experiences, this was not without its challenges. Tune in and try to guess along with them who wrote which lines--you might just be surprised by the answer.

In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies dissect arguably the most famous Latin epic, the Aeneid, written by Vergil in the 1st century BCE. Walking the line between propaganda and political critique, this poem tackles the complex themes of mortality in a tale of historical (fan)fiction, in which Vergil draws explicitly upon Homer's two major poems, the Odyssey and the Iliad, as well as Roman mythology, history, and their contemporary political landscape to weave together one of the greatest tapestries of storytelling that we still talk about today.

In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies continue the conversation of last episode and dive into Sophocles' complicated and compelling play Antigone, which, as its name suggests, centers around the daring, snarky heroine, Antigone, daughter of the recently disgraced and exiled Oedipus. We discuss everything from the role of women in tragedy, the purpose of the half-removed, often strange choral odes, and the even more perverse relationships between Creon, Ismene, Antigone, and Haemon unraveling in the wake of Oedipus' tragic downfall, whose ripples are still wreaking havoc in the lives of his incestuously-born children.

In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies take a closer look at Sophocles' most well-known trilogy, centered around the tragic, infamous hero Oedipus, who is destined to kill his father and sleep with his mother. In Part 1 of this episode, we discuss Oedipus Rex, breaking down the most important themes and moments, like the roles that blindness and fate play in both larger and smaller ways, or the act of Oedipus gauging out his eyes with his wife/mother's brooches. Tune in to dissect the perverse but perennial fascination that has so closely clung to this tragedy and the reasons why we still talk about it today.

In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies discuss whether Cicero is a bad friend in light of the roughly 1000 letters that survive written by and to Cicero--many addressed to his dearest friend Atticus--during the final decades of the Republic and its ultimate fall at the hands of infamous Romans such as Mark Antony, Caesar Augustus, and Lepidus. Listen in to learn about the friendships, enemies, and political maneuvers of the great Roman orator, and decide for yourself whether Cicero played by the rules of Roman amicitia, or if his "friendships" were one of the heralds of his murder.

In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies talk about the riveting world of noun cases and their personalities in ancient languages like Greek and Latin. Listen in to hear about the bold, showy Nominative, the complex, sexy Genitive, the thrifty, 'junk case' Ablative, and more. Plus, we each pick our favorite cases and choose which case we would be!

In our first episode of The Dead Language Ladies: A Classics Podcast, we compare Homer's famous protagonists and great heroes, Odysseus and Achilles, discussing everything from their love interest(s), violent habits, modern portrayals in Song of Achilles, and who we ultimately like more.