Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

Content warning: This episode contains detailed descriptions of childbirth complications -- including maternal and infant mortality -- and of how such complications were handled by ancient midwives and physicians. There are graphic references to surgical procedures.Tara Mulder joins me in the Lesche to discuss her brand new book, A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome (University of California Press 2026). You can read a Q&A with Tara on the UC Press blog here. Tara's personal website: taramulder.comAncient texts/authorsHippocratic corpusGalen of PergamonSoranus of EphesusAgrippina the Younger's lost memoirsModern scholarshipBonell Freidin, Anna. 2024. Birthing Romans: Childbearing and Its Risks in Ancient Rome. University of Michigan Press. Hug, Angela. 2023. Fertility Ideology and the Cultural Politics of Reproduction at Rome. Brill. About our guestTara Mulder is assistant professor of Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with an affiliation in Gender and Women's Studies. She is the editor of the forthcoming volume, A Cultural History of Pregnancy and Childbirth in Antiquity. As the daughter of a home birth midwife, she has assisted in over two dozen births. More of her writing on pregnancy, childbirth, abortion, medicine, gender, and sexuality in antiquity can be found at taramulder.com. ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Eric Csapo and Peter Wilson join me in the Lesche to discuss their three-volume A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC (Cambridge University Press). Volume 1, The Theatre Festivals of Athens: Documents with Translation and Commentary, appeared earlier this year. Volume 2, Theatre Beyond Athens: Documents with Translation and Commentary, came out in 2020. Volume 3, on theater personnel and individuals associated with the theater, is in the works.Ancient texts (many are mentioned)Aristophanes, Acharnians (Dicaeopolis' celebration of a private "rural" Dionysia)Several ancient plays!Plato, Ion and Laws Inscriptional records for dramatic festivals (IG II2 2318-2325; see Millis and Olson's 2012 edition). These include the "Fasti" (IG II2 2318).Modern worksBoeckh, A. 1817 Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener (The Public Economy of Athens). Berlin.Csapo, E. and N. Wilson. 1995. The Context of Ancient Drama. Ann Arbor.Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens. First published 1953; 2nd edn. 1968; revised edn. by J. Gould and D. M. Lewis (1988).About our guestsEric Csapo is Emeritus Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick and Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney. He is co-author of The Context of Ancient Drama (1995), Theories of Mythology (2005), and Actors and Icons of the Ancient Theatre (2010), as well as co-editor of various volumes on ancient theatre history.Peter Wilson is William Ritchie Professor of Classics at the University of Sydney and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is the author of The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia: the Chorus, the City and the Stage (2000) and the editor or co-editor of The Greek Theatre in the Fourth Century (2014), Dithyramb in Context (2013), Music and the Muses: the Culture of ‘Mousike’ in the Classical Athenian City (2004) and Greek Theatre and Festivals: Documentary Studies (2007).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Bill Beck joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new translation of the vetera scholia to Iliad Book 1-2: The Ancient Scholia to Homer's Iliad: A Translation, Volume 1 (Cambridge 2025). The book is the first in a series dedicated to translation of the Iliadic scholia.For an episode on the Iliad itself, and its translation, see Lesche episode 1.6, "Translating the Iliad, with Emily Wilson" (by far the most popular Lesche episode ever!).Ancient worksHomer's Iliad (and Odyssey)The various scholia traditions"Mythographus Homericus"Modern bibliography & referencesDickey, E. 2007. Ancient Greek scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises, from their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Erbse, H. 1969-1988. Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (Scholia vetera). Berlin: de Gruyter.Nünlist, R. 2011. The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.van Thiel, H. 2014. Scholia D in Iliadem. Cologne: Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek.Wolf, F. A. 1795. Prolegomena to Study of Homer. See Anthony Grafton's 2016 translation (the original is in Latin), published by Princeton University Press.About our guestBill Beck is an Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Indiana University. His research focuses on Archaic Greek epic and ancient Homeric scholarship. He is the co-editor of The Ancient Scholia to Homer’s Iliad: Exegesis and Interpretation (Oxford, 2021) and the author of The Ancient Scholia to Homer’s Iliad: A Translation, Volume 1 (Cambridge, 2025). He is currently completing a monograph on the Iliad’s representation of the first nine years of the Trojan War, provisionally entitled Ten Years in Troy, Fifty-One Days at Ilios: The Iliad and the Trojan War.N.B. The podcast Bill recommends at the end of the episode is called Totalus Rankium.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Art historian Verity Platt joins me in the Lesche to discuss her much-anticipated new book Epistemic Impressions: Making and Mediating Classical Art and Text (Oxford 2026).On May 11, the Queen Mary University of London Imagination Research Network will be hosting a "launch symposium" to celebrate the book's publication. Information and tickets are available here.The novel that Verity recommends at the end of the podcast is When the Museum is Closed, by Emi Yagi. Read an excerpt here, in Yuki Tejima's translation.Ancient sourcesDionysius of Halicarnassus, various treatises (see Verity's Ch. 5) for the term archetypon (and 'style' as charaktēr)Herodotus 3.40-43, on the "seal" of PolycratesMesomedes 9, "Ekphrasis of a sponge" (see here on Mesomedes, a Hadrianic-era poet)Philostratus, for using languge relating to "impressions" and typoiPlato's, esp. Republic, Phaedrus, Timaeus and on mimesisPliny the Elder, Natural History book 35 (103 on the story of Protogenes and the sponge)Posidippus, various epigrams, esp. AB 13-15 (Verity reads AB 14)Theophrastus, On StonesModern bibliography/referencesThe work of Charles Sanders Peirce (American scientist, mathematician and semiotician) on the "index" and "indexical reference"Platt, V. J.  2016. ‘The Artist as Anecdote: Creating Creators in Ancient Texts and Modern Art History’. In J. Hanink and R. Fletcher, (eds). 2016. Creative Lives in Classical Antiquity: Poets, Artists, and Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 274–304.Pollitt, J. J.  1974. The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History, and Terminology. New Haven: Yale University Press.Stoichita, V. I. 1997. A Short History of the Shadow. London: Reaktion Books.Image: Joseph Wright's "The Corinthian Maid" (oil on canvas, 1782-84), in the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.).About our guestVerity Platt is a professor of Classics and History of Art at Cornell University, where she is also co-curator of the plaster cast collection and directs the Humanities Scholar Program for undergraduates. She is the author of Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature, and Religion (Oxford 2011), and the newly published Epistemic Impressions: Making and Mediating Classical Art and Text (Oxford 2026). She is also an editor of the Classical Receptions Journal.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Marie-Louise Nosch, former director of the Centre for Textile Research at the Saxo Institute of the University of Copenhagen, joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book Time of Textiles in Ancient Greece (DeGruyter 2025).If you like this episode, you might also enjoy Lesche episode 1.10, "Wedding Poetics in Ancient Greek Literature," with Andromache Karanika.Ancient textsHomer, Iliad and Odyssey (lots of weaving scenes)Hesiod, on the creation of Pandora (Theogony and Works and Days)Aeschylus, Libation Bearers (the "recognition scene" also parodied in Euripides' Electra)Euripides, Ion (on Creusa's "sampler" as recognition token)Thucydides 1.6 (on ancient Ionian dress)The "Old Oligarch"/[Xenophon] Constitution of the Athenians 1.10 (on the indistinguishability of free and enslaved persons on the basis of dress in Athens)Modern bibliographyAndersson Strand, Eva and Mannering, Ulla. 2021. “Sailmaking. A Gigantic Collective Undertaking”, in Jeanette Varberg and Peter Pentz (eds.), The Raid. Join the Vikings, 29 – 44. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark.Brøns, Cecilie. 2016. Gods and Garments: Textiles in Greek Sanctuaries in the 7th to the 1st Centuries BC. Oxbow.Bücher, Karl. 1896. Arbeit und Rhythmus. Leipzig: Teubner.Karanika, Andromache. 2014. Voices at Work: Women, Performance, and Labor in Ancient Greece. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Pantelia, Maria C. 1993. “Spinning and Weaving. Ideas of Domestic Order in Homer”, The American Journal of Philology 114 no. 4, 493 – 501.About our guestMarie Louise Nosch studied Ancient Greek History in Nancy and Naples and completed her doctoral thesis at the University of Salzburg. Her special field of research is Aegean epigraphy and Mycenaean Linear B inscriptions, as well as ancient textile production. She was the Director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research (2005-2016) at the University of Copenhagen and has been Professor of Ancient Greek History at the University of Copenhagen since 2011. She was elected to the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in 2017 and served as President from 2020-2024.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Christos C. Tsagalis joins me in the Lesche to discuss the Doloneia, i.e., Iliad 10, which is the topic of both Christos' monograph The Homeric Doloneia: Evolution and Shaping of Iliad 10 (Oxford 2024) and his chapter in Jonathan Ready's recent edited volume, the Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Iliad (Oxford 2024).The Doloneia/Iliad 10 is traditionally divided into two sections: the Nyktegersia (the 'night watch' or nocturnal council scene, lines 1-179) and the spy-mission itself. BibliographyDanek, Georg. (1988) Studien zur Dolonie. Vienna.Dué, Casey and Mary Ebbott (2010. Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush: a Multitext Edition with Essays and Commentary. Hellenic Studies 39. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University Press.Also mentionedHomeric scholarship by Gregory Nagy and his pupilsThe Parry-Lord Hypothesis (of oral composition)About our guestChristos C. Tsagalis is Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Ordinal Member of the Academia Europaea, Corresponding Member of the Cypriot Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts, Member of the Governing Board of the Center for the Greek Language in Thessaloniki. He is the Co-Editor of the Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic (Brill), the series of monographs Key Perspectives on Classical Research (Walter de Gruyter), Assistant Editor of the series Trends in Classics Supplementary Volumes (Walter de Gruyter), and Member of the scientific board of the series of classical commentaries Aris and Philips. Ηe specializes in Early Greek Epic Poetry. ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Rosa Andújar joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book, Playing the Chorus in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 2025).Tragedies mentionedAeschylusAgamemnon (chorus fragmentation)Seven Against Thebes (use of semi-choruses)Suppliant Women ("choral swarm" with multiple groups)SophoclesOedipus Rex (actor-chorus interaction)EuripidesPhaethon ( "augmentation" and secondary choruses)Trojan Women (chorus entering in fragmented small groups)Hippolytus ( subsidiary chorus appears before the main chorus)Orestes (unusual choral divisions)Suppliant Women (exceptional choral activity)Other ancient textsAristotle, Poetics (mentioned for lack of interest in the chorus)Aristophanes, Birds (for having a 'differentiated' chorus)Plutarch, On Listening (de Audiendo) 45e-f (Euripides training a chorus; a chorus member bursts out laughing)Antiphon 6 (On the Chorus Boy: I don't mention it by name, but this is the speech regarding the death of a choreute by performance enhancing drugs)Modern worksAzoulay, Vincent and Paulin Ismard. 2020. Athènes 403: une histoire chorale. Paris / 2025. Athenes 403 BC: A Democracy in Crisis, trans. Lorna Coing. Cambridge.Carlson, Marvin. 2003. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Ann Arbor.Diggle, James. 1970. Euripides: Phaethon. Cambridge.duBois, Page. 2022. Democratic Swarms: Ancient Comedy and the Politics of the People. Chicago. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (on choral powerlessness/inertness)Halliwell, Stephen. 1998. Aristotle's Poetics. Bristol/Chicago.Jackson, Lucy. 2019. The Chorus of Drama in the Fourth Century BCE. Cambridge.Sansone, David. 2016. "The Size of the Tragic Chorus," Phoenix 70: 233-54.Uhlig, Anna. 2019. Theatrical Reenactment in Pindar and Aeschylus. 2019.About our guestRosa Andújar is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She has published widely on Greek drama in its fifth-century Athenian context as well as on its modern global reception, particularly across the Americas. She is the author of Playing the Chorus in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 2025) and the editor of The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro (Methuen Drama, 2020), which won the 2020 London Hellenic Prize. ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Michael Satlow joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book An Enchanted World: The Shared Religious Landscape of Late Antiquity, which will be published on February 3 by Princeton University Press. Resources"Lived Religion Project" at the University of Erfurt's Max Weber Institute If you're new to Late Antiquity, the foundational work is Peter Brown's 1971 The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150-750. It's been reissued in various editions, including a 2024 illustrated one from Thames & Hudson (relatively affordable!).I mention Philogelos joke 203 in the episode introduction. About our guestMichael Satlow is Professor of Judaic Studies and Religious Studies at Brown University. A historian of religion in antiquity, his work explores how Jews, Christians, and others experienced the sacred in everyday life. His new book, An Enchanted World, draws on inscriptions and material culture to reveal a shared religious landscape in Late Antiquity, one filled with gods, angels, demons, and divine presence. ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Piero Boitani joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book Timaeus in Paradise: Metaphors and Beauty from Plato to Dante and Beyond (Princeton University Press 2025). Ancient textsHebrew Bible, GenesisPlato: Timaeus, Phaedrus, Symposium, ApologyAristotle: Nicomachaean EthicsLucretius, De Rerum NaturaOvid, MetamorphosesPhilo of Alexandria, On the Creation (de Opificio mundi: treatise on the Genesis creation narrative)New Testament: Acts of the ApostlesPseudo-Longinus, On the SublimeCalcidius, Latin translation of much of Timaeus (4th century CE)Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, mystical treatises (c. 500 CE)Later sites of reception & influenceIn Literature and PhilosophyJohannes Scotus Eriugena (John "the Scot"), translation of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (9th century)Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Divine Names (1260s)Dante, Paradiso (early 1300s)Marsilio Ficino's work on Plato and Timaeus (15th century)Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), scientific treatisesAlfred North Whitehad, Process and Reality (1929)Ezra Pound, Cantos (1915-1959)In Visual Art and ArchitectureCrypt of San Magno in Anagni (11th century)Sculptures of Chartres Cathedral (12th century)Botticelli, "Birth of Venus" (mid-1480s)Raphael, "School of Athens" (1509-11, Apostolic Palace, Vatican) and Chigi Chapel (1510s, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome)Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel (1508-1512)About our guestPiero Boitani is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the University of Rome “Sapienza.” A Fellow of the British Academy, the Medieval Academy of America, the Accademia dei Lincei, and the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, in 2016 he received the Balzan Prize for Comparative Literature. He is chairman of the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla and general editor of its series of Greek and Latin Writers. His most recent books include Il grande racconto dei classici (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2024); «Reconnaître est un Dieu». L’anagnorisis dans la littérature occidentale (Paris, Garnier, 2025); Timaeus in Paradise: Metaphors and Beauty from Plato to Dante and Beyond (Princeton University Press 2025). A new book, The Five Elements-I cinque elementi, with a preface by Stephen Greenblatt, will be published by Mondadori, in the Lo Specchio series, in February 2026.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Inger Kuin joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book Diogenes: The Rebellious Life and Revolutionary Philosophy of the Original Cynic (Basic Books 2025). Ancient sourcesAristotle, Politics 1.3-7 (on 'natural' slavery)Diogenes Laertius, 2.6, Life of DiogenesPlutarch, Life of Alexander 14 (on the 'get out of my sun' episode)Xenophon, Anabasis 5-6 (on Sinope, Diogenes' birthplace)Other Diogenes testimonia from a variety of sourcesFor an accessible English-language collection of testimonia for Diogenes, see Robert Dobbin's The Cynic Philosophers, from Diogenes to Julian (Penguin Classics, 2012).About our guestInger Kuin is a researcher, writer, and teacher focused on the intellectual history of ancient Greece and Rome. She is Associate Professor of Classics General Faculty at the University of Virginia. Originally from The Netherlands, she splits her time between Charlottesville (VA) and Rotterdam, and publishes both in English and in Dutch.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Tatiana Bur joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge University Press 2025). Ancient textsHomer, Iliad 18 (on Hephaestus and his self-moving tripods) Many Athenian tragedies and comedies that made use of the μηχανή or κράδη (in comedy)Aristotle, Poetics (on the theatrical ‘crane’/μηχανή) The Aristotelian/Peripatetic work Mechanical Questions (Μηχανικά)Philo of Byzantium, Μηχανική Σύνταξη Works on mechanics by Hero of Alexandria Polybios, History 12.13, on the mechanical snail in the procession at Athens Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.5, on Herodes Atticus’ mechanical Panathenaic shipAthenaeus, Deipnosophistai 196a-203c, on the πομπή of Ptolemy PhiladelphusModern bibliographyEric Csapo's work on ancient theaterAlfred Gell’s work on art agency, particularly "technologies of enchantment"Susan Harvey, 2006. Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. Berkeley, Ca. Verity Platt, 2011. Facing the Gods: Epiphany in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature, and Religion. Cambridge.Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, 1997. Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube. Stanford, CA.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Mary Beard, Classics editor at the Times Literary Supplement, and Clifford Ando, senior editor of the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, join me in the Lesche to discuss the state of Classics reviewing today. How do the TLS and BMCR assign appropriate reviewers? What makes for a good review? What's the line between critique and nastiness? Why are reviews these days so often lacking in susbtantive criticism? What do editors wish review authors knew or would consider before writing a review? Some bibliographyClifford Ando, "BMCR: A view under the hood." Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2022.11.26. (Read all the papers from the 30th anniversary celebration of BMCR here. Several deal with book reviewing.)Mary Beard, Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations. Liveright 2013. (See especially the Afterword, "Reviewing Classics".)Daniel Mendelsohn, "A Critic's Manifesto," The New Yorker, August 28, 2012.About our guestsClifford Ando teaches Classics and History at the University of Chicago.  His work focuses on the histories of law, religion, and government in the ancient world.  He is the author, editor, and translator of some 20 books, and he has served as an editor, associate editor, or senior editor of Bryn Mawr Classical Review for not quite twenty years.Mary Beard is professor emerita of classics at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Newnham College, and professor of Ancient Literature at the Royal Academy. She is also the classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, a fellow of the British Academy, and an international member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  She is the author of more than twenty books on the ancient world. Her latest book, Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old, is due out in spring 2026 with Profile Books (UK) and the University of Chicago Press (USA).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Harvard University historian Paul Kosmin joins me in the Lesche to discuss his recent book The Ancient Shore (Harvard University Press 2024), winner of the American Historical Association's 2025 Prize in History Prior to CE 1000. Works mentionedAgatharchides of Cnidus, On the Erythraean Sea (2nd C. BC)Philip de Loutherbourg, "Shipwreck" (painting, 1793).Demuth, Bathsheba. 2019. Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait. W. W. Norton.Dening, Gregory Moore. 1980. Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land, Marquesas, 1774–1880. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.About our guestPaul Kosmin completed his undergraduate degree at Oxford and earned a PhD in Ancient History from Harvard University in 2012. He was appointed an Assistant Professor in Harvard's Classics Department in 2012, was tenured in 2019, and in 2020 became the Philip J. King Professor of Ancient History, where he currently serves as Interim Chair. His research focuses on the political and cultural history of the ancient Greek world, concentrating on the globalizing and colonial Hellenistic period, and now includes an environmentally-oriented turn.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

James Romm joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new biography Demosthenes: Democracy's Defender. The book is a part of Yale University Press's Ancient Lives series, of which James is also the editor. James's author websiteAncient texts mentionedDemosthenes, speechesAeschines, speechesAbout our guestJames Romm is an author, reviewer, and the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College in Annandale, NY. He specializes in ancient Greek and Roman culture and civilization. His reviews and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the London Review of Books, the Daily Beast, and other venues. He has held the Guggenheim Fellowship (1999-2000), the Birkelund Fellowship at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at the New York Public Library (2010-11), and a Biography Fellowship at the Leon Levy Center of the City University of New York (2014-15).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Sam Holzman joins me in the Lesche to discuss "bilingual" Ionic column capitals (i.e., column capitals that combined an archaic convex style of relief carving with a more modern concave style). These are the subject of his book Retrospective Columns: Ionic Capitals and Perceptions of the Past in Greek Architecture, which just came out with Princeton University Press.Ancient sourceVitruvius, de Architectura, esp. Books 3 & 4.Modern worksArchitectural drawings in James Stuart and Nicholas Revett's Antiquities of Athens and Julien-David Le Roy's Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce.Alzinger, Wilhelm. 1967. "Alt-Ephesos: Topographie und Architektur." Das Altertum 13.1: 20-44.Hanink, Johanna. Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy. Cambridge 2014.Rudwick, Martin J. S. 1976. "The Emergence of a Visual Language for Geological Science 1760—1840," History of Science 14.3: 149-95.Schmidt-Dounas, Barbara. 2005. "Frühe Peripteraltempel in Nordgriechenland." Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 120: 107-41.About our guestSam Holzman is an assistant professor in the Department of Art & Archaeology and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University. He received his BA from Brown, where his senior thesis advisor in Classics was none other than Professor Hanink! He also received an MPhil from Cambridge and PhD from UPenn. He has excavated in Greece and Turkey and now leads the architectural research team of American Excavations Samothrace. ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Dan-el Padilla Peralta joins me in the Lesche to discuss the critique of classicism that he articulates in his recent book Classicism and Other Phobias (PUP 2025).Works mentioned (select)Adeshei Carter, Jacoby. “Racing the Canon.” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Race, edited by Paul C. Taylor, Linda Martín Alcoff, and Luvell Anderson, 163–174. New York: Routledge, 2017.Baldwin, James. “Stranger in the Village.” Harper’s Magazine, October 1953.Du Bois, W. E. B. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920.Eccleston, Sasha-Mae, and Dan-el Padilla Peralta. “Racing the Classics: Ethos and Praxis.” American Journal of Philology 144, no. 2 (2023): 199–218.de la Vega, Garcilaso. Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru. Translated by Harold V. Livermore. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966.Guevara, Ernesto “Che.” The Congo Diary: Episodes of the Revolutionary War in the Congo. Edited by Mary-Alice Waters. Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1999.Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.Morrison, Toni. “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature.” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Delivered at the University of Michigan, October 7, 1988.Proctor, Hannah. Burnout: A Guide to the Psychopolitical Condition. London: Pluto Press, 2024.Shia, Moon-Ho Jung. Archive of Tongues: An Intimate History of Brownness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021.Umachandran, Mathura, and Marchella Ward, eds. Critical Ancient World Studies: The Case for Forgetting Classics. London: Routledge, 2023.Wynter, Sylvia. Black Metamorphosis: New Natives in a New World. Manuscript, 1970s. Edited version published in Katherine McKittrick, ed., Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Why Arendt Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.About our guestDan-el Padilla Peralta is professor of Classics, and associated faculty in African American Studies and affiliated faculty in the Programs of Latino Studies and Latin American Studies and the University Center for Human Values, at Princeton University. He is the author of Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League (Penguin 2015); Divine Institutions: Religions and Community in the Middle Roman Republic (Princeton 2020); and Classicism and Other Phobias (Princeton 2025).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Patricia (Tricia) Kim joins me in the Lesche to discuss the art of Hellenistic queenship -- i.e., art that depicted Hellenistic queens, art patronized by Hellenistic queens, and art that spoke to the construction of queenship across the Hellenistic world. Egypt Museum on the "Arsinoe-Aphrodite" statueFranck Goddio write-up of the statueLesche episode 18 is a conversation about Isis Worship in the Greek East (including Egypt) with Lindsey Mazurek.Ancient passage Pliny, Natural History 34.148 (on Timochares' idea for a floating statue of Arsinoe II)Works mentionedHistorical work by Sheila L. Ager, Elizabeth Carney, Sabine Müller, et al. on Hellenistic queenship.Najmabadi, Afsaneh (2006) "Beyond the Americas: Are Gender and Sexuality Useful Categories of Analysis?" Journal of Women's History 18: 11-21.Parmenter, Christopher Stedman (2024) Racialized Commodities: Long-Distance Trade, Mobility, and the Making of Race in Ancient Greece, C. 700-300 BCE. Oxford.Seaman, Kristen (2020) Rhetoric and Innovation in Hellenistic Art. Cambridge.Smith, R.R.R. (1989) Hellenistic Royal Portraits. Oxford.Stewart, Andrew (1993) Faces of Power: Alexander's Image and Hellenistic Politics. University of California.Waywell, Geoffrey B. (1978) The Free-Standing Sculptures of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in the British Museum. London.About our guestPatricia Kim is assistant professor at New York University and author of The Art of Queenship in the Hellenistic World (Cambridge University Press, 2025)—the first book-length study on the visual and material cultures of queenship from the 4th-2nd centuries B.C.E, across the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia. She is guest-curator of a forthcoming exhibition on ancient queenship at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Getty Villa (2027). ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Anthony Kaldellis joins me in the Lesche to discuss an in-progress edited volume about the transmission of classical texts in the East Roman Empire (aka Byzantium), and why, more generally, classicists should be better informed about the Greek Middle Ages, aka the Byzantine Millennium.Anthony is the host of a wonderful podcast called Byzantium and Friends, which was (and still is) a major inspiration for Lesche.Ancient texts mentionedPhotius, BibliothecaEustathius of Thessalonica's commentaries on the Iliad and the OdysseySome bibliographyAnthony has written a huge amount. During this episode we mention in particular:his "minigraph" Byzantium Unbound (Arc Humanities 2019)his groundbreaking article "The Byzantine Role in the Making of the Corpus of Classical Greek Historiography: A Preliminary Investigation," in the 2012 issue of the Journal of Hellenic Studies (vol. 132).Baukje van den Berg, Homer the Rhetorician: Eustathios of Thessalonike on the Composition of the Iliad. (Oxford 2022).Elizabeth Jeffreys, "We need to talk about Byzantium: or, Byzantium, its reception of the classical world as discussed in current scholarship, and should classicists pay attention?" Classical Receptions Journal 6 (2014) 158-74.Filippomaria Pontani, "Scholarship in the Byzantine Empire (529-1453)," in F. Montanari, ed., History of Ancient Greek Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Byzantine Age (Brill 2020).Listen to Anthony's "Byzantium and Friends" podcast episdoe, in which he and Pontani discuss the article, here.L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature. 4th edn. Oxford 2013.About our guestAnthony Kaldellis is a professor of Classics at the University of Chicago. He has published many books and articles on the history, culture, and literature of Byzantium, ranging from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries. His most recent book is a comprehensive history of the eastern Roman empire: The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium (Oxford, 2023). He is also the host of the academic podcast “Byzantium & Friends.”________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Marden Fitzpatrick Nichols joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book How to Make a Home: An Ancient Guide to Style and Comfort, a curated collection of passages (by Cicero, Juvenal, Ovid, Pliny, Vitruvius, and others) that relate to the design, decor, and ideology of the ancient Roman house and home. The book is part of Princeton University Press's "Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers" series.Preview the book's Table of Contents here.Read Yung In Chae's 2020 article (in the Princeton Alumni Weekly) about the "Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers" series.Ancient authors (selection)Bibaculus fragments 1 and 2Cicero, Epistulae ad familiares and de OfficiisJuvenal Satires 3; 8Ovid, Metamorphoses 8 (Baucis and Philemon scene)Pliny the Younger, epistles. Marden also mentions Christopher Whitton's 2013 "Green and Yellow," Pliny the Younger: Epistles Books II (Cambridge).Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome 2.13-14Vitruvius, de Architectura (various passages)Also mentionedStudies of the Roman house by scholars including Catherine Edwards, Elaine Gazda, Hérica Valladares, and Andrew Wallace-HadrillJosiah Osgood's books in PUP's "Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers" seriesAbout our guestMarden Nichols is Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor and Chair of the Classics Department at Georgetown University. She is a scholar of ancient Roman literature, art, and architecture, whose work situates Vitruvius’ De architectura within the literary, cultural, and intellectual contexts of the ancient world. She is the author of Author and Audience in Vitruvius’ “De architectura” (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and translator of How to Make a Home: An Ancient Guide to Style and Comfort, a collection of ancient Roman writings about home design and decoration that has just appeared from Princeton University Press.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Emily Hauser joins me in the Lesche to discuss the lives of the real Bronze Age women remembered in Homeric epic, the subject of her new book Penelope's Bones: A New History of Homer's World through the Women Written Out Of It (UK title: Mythica). We also discuss the popularity of feminist retellings of Greek myth, and why (it's good) they're not going anywhere anytime soon.This is the last regular episode of Lesche's first season. We'll be back with a second season on September 10. Ancient textsHomer, Iliad and OdysseyAlso mentionedBeard, Mary, Women & Power: A Manifesto (Norton/Liveright 2017).Cline, Eric, 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Princeton 2014/revised edn. 2021) and After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations (Princeton 2024).Emily Hauser's own Golden Apple Trilogy (Penguin Random House): For the Most Beautiful (2016); For the Winner (2017); For The Immortal (2018).Haynes, Natalie, No Friend to This House (Pan Macmillan forthcoming 2025).Hewlett, Rosie, Medea (Random House 2024).About our guestDr Emily Hauser is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter and the Times bestselling author of Mythica: A New History of Homer's World through the Women Written Out Of It (Penelope's Bones in the US). She also wrote a trilogy of novels reworking the women of Greek myth, including For the Most Beautiful (published in 2016). She has a PhD in Classics from Yale and was Junior Fellow at Harvard before returning to the UK.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Clare Rowan and M.E. (Mairi) Gkikaki join me in the Lesche to discuss the use of monetiform tokens in Greek (and a bit of Roman) antiquity. Clare was the PI on the ERC-funded project "Token Communities of the Ancient Mediterranean." Mairi was a postdoctoral researcher on the project, and her edited volume Tokens in Classical Athens and Beyond was published (open-access) with Liverpool University Press in 2023.See here for the project's Database of Token Types.Ancient texts (selection)Aristophanes, Ekklesiazousai (Assemblywomen)Aristotle, Athenaion PoliteiaHerodotus 6.86 (story of Glaucus)IG I3 34, the "Cleinias Decree"IG II3 4 76 (mention of tribal token distribution at line 79)Philochorus (Atthidographer)Plato, Symposium (Aristophanes' speech)Also mentioned (selection)Kroll, J.H. and Mitchel, F.W. 1980, "Clay Tokens Stamped with the Names of Athenian Military Commanders," Hesperia 49, pp. 86–96. Lang, M. 1959, "Allotment by Tokens," Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 8, pp. 80–89. Lang, M. and M. Crosby. 1964, The Athenian Agora X. Weights, Measures and Tokens. ASCSA/Princeton.M.I. Rostovtzeff's work on tokensSvoronos, I.N. 1900, "Κατάλογος των Μολύβδινων Συμβόλων του Εθνικού Νομισματικού Μουσείου," Journal International d 'Archéologie Numismatique 3, pp. 322-343.See further work by Svoronos on tokens (εἰσιτήρια) in the Journal International d’Archéologie Numismatique. About our guestsClare Rowan is an Associate Professor in the department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick. She specialises in ancient numismatics, in particular ancient tokens, iconography and small change. She was the principal investigator on the European Union Research Council-funded project "Token Communities of the Ancient Mediterranean" (2016-2021).M.E. Gkikaki is an honorary research fellow at the Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Warwick, where she has been a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow (2018–21) and a team member of the ERC-funded project "Token Communities of the Ancient Mediterranean" (2016–18). She is editor of the volume Tokens in Classical Athens and Beyond (Liverpool University Press 2023). Her monograph Symbola: Athenian Tokens from Classical to Roman Times will soon be appearing with Liverpool University Press. ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Seth Estrin joins me in the Lesche to discuss Classical Athenian funerary sculpture -- the largest single corpus of classical sculpture -- and his emotion-based readings of it. Seth is the author of Grief Made Marble: Funerary Sculpture in Classical Athens (Yale University Press 2024).A couple of images that accompany this episode are on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leschepodcast/If you're interested in hearing more about Athenian funerary practice, check out this Lesche episode on The Athenian Funeral Oration.Ancient textsAristotle (see esp. Parts of Animals 640b35-641a8 on homonymy)Athenian funerary epigrams, as in Tsagalis (see below)Athenian tragedy, including Euripides' AlcestisAlso mentionedShear, T. Leslie (2016) Trophies of Victory: Public Building in Periklean Athens. Princeton.Tsagalis, Christos (2008) Inscribing Sorrow: Fourth-Century Attic Funerary Epigrams. De Gruyter. Also recommendedArrington, Nathan (2018) Ashes, Images, and Memories: The Presence of the War Dead in Fifth-Century Athens. Princeton.Hunter, Richard (2022) Greek Epitaphic Poetry: A Selection (a "Green and Yellow"). Cambridge.About our guestSeth Estrin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, where he specializes in the art, archaeology, and visual culture of ancient Greece. His scholarship and teaching explore the lived experience of art objects—their sensuous properties, their entanglement with felt experiences, and their place in shaping intersubjective encounters and personal histories. His work foregrounds interconnections across subfields of Classics, including those between archaeological, literary, and epigraphical sources.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Debbie Felton and Carolina López-Ruiz join me to discuss monsters -- and what they mean and represent -- in classical mythology. Debbie is the editor of the new Oxford Handbook of Monsters in Classical Myth, to which Carolina contributed a chapter on the Sphinx.Ancient sourcesApollonius of Rhodes, MedeaAvianus/Aesop, "The Satyr and the Traveler"Euripides, MedeaHerodotus (esp. 3.38, on the Callatiae)Hesiod, TheogonyPalaephatus, "On Unbelivable Tales" (Περὶ ἀπίστων)Plato, PhaedrusTheocritus 11 ("The Cyclops")This kylix attributed to Douris depicting Jason being eaten by a dragon (Vatican Museums)This pithos (scene with winged deities) (Archaeological Museum of Tinos)Also mentionedCohen, Jeffrey Jerome (1996) Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis. (Debbie specifically mentions Cohen's famous essay in the volume, "Monster Culture: Seven Theses")Mittman, Asa Simon and Peter J. Dendle (2013) The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous. Routledge.Various chapters in the Oxford Handbook of Monsters in Classical MythAbout our guestsDebbie Felton, Professor of Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specializes in ancient folklore. Her books include Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity, Monsters and Monarchs: Serial Killers in Classical Myth and History and the edited volumes A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in Antiquity and The Oxford Handbook of Monsters in Classical Myth. She has appeared in various media in the U.S. and Europe, including Coast to Coast AM, Weird Tales, and CBS Mornings, and she also runs "The Ancient Monsters Blog" (https://websites.umass.edu/felton).Carolina López-Ruiz is Professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, Classics Department (of which she is also chair) and member of ISAC (Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures). She specializes in ancient Mediterranean mythology, religion, Greek and Near Eastern cultural exchange, and Phoenician culture. Her latest books are Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean (2021) and Greek Mythology: From Creation to First Humans (2025). She co-directs an excavation in the Phoenician site of Cerro del Villar in Malaga, Spain.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Vincent Azoulay and Paulin Ismard join me in the Lesche to discuss their study of the restoration of democracy in Athens in 403 BC, in which they examine the Athenian civil war through the prism of chorality. A translation of their 2020 book Athènes 403: une histoire chorale (Flammarion, Paris) has just appeared in an English translation by Lorna Coing with the title Athens, 403 BC: A Democracy in Crisis? (Cambridge University Press).Ancient sourcesAristophanes, FrogsAristotle, Politics Book 3Fragments of poetry by Critias (accessible in Brill’s New Jacoby: 338a; see also this Oxford bibliography)IG II2 10, Honors for foriegners who had supported the democracy against the Thirty (401/0). Online hereXenophon, Hellenica, esp. 2.4.20-22 (speech of Cleocritus)Also mentionedAnderson, Greg (2018) The Realness of Things Past: Ancient Greece and Ontological History. Oxford University Press.Keesling, Catherine M. (2012) "Syeris, Diakonos of the Priestess Lysimache on the Athenian Acropolis (IG II2 3464)," Hesperia 81: 467-505.Loraux, N. (1997) La cité divisée : l'oubli dans la mémoire d'Athènes. Payot: Paris. Translated by Corinne Pache and Jeff Fort as The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens. Zone/Princeton University Press 2002/2006.About our guestsVincent Azoulay is Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He is a former member of the Institut Universitaire de France and the current director of the international bilingual journal Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. He has been awarded several prizes, including the Prix du Sénat du Livre d'Histoire (2011). He is the author of several books already translated into English: Pericles of Athens (2014), The Tyrant-Slayers of Ancient Athens (2017) and Xenophon and the Graces of Power (2018).Paulin Ismard is Professor of Ancient History at Aix-Marseille University. His work focuses on the history of democracy in antiquity and the history of slavery in a comparative perspective. His publications include L'événement Socrate (Flammarion, 2013), Democracy’s Slaves (Harvard, 2017), La cité et ses esclaves. Institution, fictions, expériences (Seuil, 2019), Le miroir d'Œdipe (Seuil 2023), and, with Vincent Azoulay, Athens, 403 BC. A Democracy in Crisis? (Cambridge University Press, 2025).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Lindsey Mazurek joins me in the Lesche to discuss Isis worship during the Roman Empire, and how it intersected with and contributed to constructions of Greek identity.Ancient textsApuleius, Metamorphoses (esp. Book 11)Plutarch, Isis and OsirisAlso mentionedBarrett, Caitlin E. (2019) Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens. Oxford.Bricault, Laurent (2005) Recueil des inscriptions concernant les cultes isiaques I-III. Paris.Brubaker, Rogers (2006) Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge, Mass.Eshleman, Kendra (2012) The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire: Sophists, Philosophers, and Christians. Cambridge. Moyer, Ian (2011) Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism. Cambridge. Vasunia, Phiroze (2001) The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander. Berkeley. Parker, Grant. (2008) The Making of Roman India. Cambridge.Walters, Elizabeth J. (1988) Attic Grave Reliefs That Represent Women in the Dress of Isis. Hesperia Supplement 22.Whitmarsh, Tim (2001) Greek Literature and the Roman Empire. Oxford.About our guestLindsey Mazurek is an assistant professor in the Department of Classical Studies at Indiana University. Her research focuses on the intersections of ethnicity, religion, migration, and material culture in the Roman provinces, particularly Greece. She is the author of Isis in a Global Empire: Greek Identity Through Egyptian Religion in Roman Greece, which was published with Cambridge University Press in 2022. She also co-directs the Mediterranean Connectivity Initiative, a digital history and archaeology project that examines social ties in Rome's port cities. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Archaeology, Hesperia, and the Memoirs of the American Academy at Rome.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Sasha-Mae Eccleston joins me in the Lesche to discuss classicizing and chronopolitics in the contemporary United States. And yes, we talk about that Virgil quotation.Ancient textsHomer, Iliad Euripides & Seneca, MedeaVirgil, Aeneid 9.447 (nulla dies umquam memori uos eximet aeuo)Also mentioned (selection)Modern creative worksEric Fischl, "Tumbling Woman" (2001) (sculpture)Ben Lerner, Angle of Yaw (2006)Adrienne Rich, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems, 2007-2010 (2011), esp. "Reading the Iliad as if it were the first time" and "Don't flinch"Juliana Spahr, The Connection between Everything with Lungs: Poems (2005)Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016)Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones (2011)Op/edsCaroline Alexander, "Out of Context," New York Times, April 6, 2011.Tom Brokaw, "Two Dates Which Will Live in Infamy," San Diego Union-Tribune, December 7, 2001.Academic worksScholarship in Temporality Studies by Elizabeth Freeman and Sarah Sharma.Greenwood, Emily. "Reception Studies: The Cultural Mobility of Classics," Daedalus 145.2 (2016): 41-9.Haley, Shelley P. "Self-Definition, Community, and Resistance: Euripides' 'Medea' and Toni Morrison's 'Beloved'," Thamyris 2.2 (1995): 177-206.Van Schepen, Randall. "Falling/Failing 9/11: Eric Fischl's Tumbling Woman Debacle," Aurora: The Journal of the History of ART 9 (2008): 116-43.Wright, Matthew. "Making Medea Medea." In Female Characters in Fragmentary Greek Tragedy, ed. P. J. Finglass and Lyndasy Coo, 216-243. Cambridge 2020.About our guestSasha-Mae Eccleston is currently the John Rowe Workman Assistant Professor of Classics where she is affiliated with the Initiative for Environmental Humanities, the Department of comparative literature, and the Department of Africana studies. She  directs the fellowship in critical classical studies for PhDs and/or MFAs. She is cofounder of the scholarly society Eos and of Racing the Classics, a field-wide initiative for early career researchers and doctoral candidates in Classics.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Buckle your seatbelt and prepare to clutch your pearls! Walter Scheidel joins me in the Lesche to discuss his case for globalizing the study of ancient history -- and for killing off Classics as we know it. Scheidel is the author of What is Ancient History?, a new manifesto published by Princeton University Press.MentionedSheldon Pollock, "Future Philology? The Fate of a Soft Science in a Hard World," Critical Inquiry, Vol. 35, No. 4, The Fate of Disciplines, edd. James Chandler and Arnold I. Davidson (Summer 2009), pp. 931-961The Herodotus HelplineEidolon articles about reshaping the field of ClassicsAbout our guestWalter Scheidel is Dickason Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University. His research ranges from ancient social and economic history and premodern historical demography to the comparative and transdisciplinary world history of inequality, state formation, and human welfare. He has written, edited and co-edited some 21 books and published more than 260 papers and reviews. His latest book, What is Ancient History, is out now with Princeton University Press. ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Scarlett Kingsley joins me in the Lesche to discuss Herodotus' place in the intellectual milieu of the fifth century, the subject of her book Herodotus and the Presocratics: Inquiry and Intellectual Culture in the Fifth Century BCE.If you enjoy this episode, you might also like Episode 11 on The Sophists, with Josh Billings and Christopher Moore.Ancient textsHerodotus, Histories (especially the meeting between Solon and Croesus at 1.30-33, and the Constitutional Debate set in Persia at 3.80-82)Aristophanes, CloudsEuripides, PhoenissaeThucydides, History of the Peloponnesian WarHippias, Synagoge (non-extant)Dissoi logoiScattered references to many fifth-century thinkersAlso mentionedDewald, C. (1987) "Narrative Surface and Authorial Voice in Herodotus' Histories," Arethusa 20: 147-68.Diels, H. and W. Kranz (1951-52), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, griechisch und deutsch (6 vols.). Berlin.Laks, A. and G. Most (2016), Early Greek Philosophy (9 vols.). Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA and London. Carolyn Miller's work on genreNestle, W. (1908) Herodots Verhältnis zur Philosophie und Sophistik. Stuttgart.Thomas, R. (2002) Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion. Cambridge.About our guestScarlett Kingsley is an Associate Professor of Classics at Agnes Scott College. Her research explores the intersections of early Greek historiography and philosophy, with a particular focus on Herodotus, Thucydides, and the Presocratics. Her first monograph, Herodotus and the Presocratics: Inquiry and Intellectual Culture in the Fifth Century, was supported by a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship. She is also the co-editor, with G. Monti and T. Rood, of The Authoritative Historian: Tradition and Innovation in Ancient Historiography (CUP, 2022). She is currently co-writing a book with Tim Rood entitled Land, Wealth, and Empire in Herodotus: Reading the End of the Histories (forthcoming, OUP).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Daniel Mendelsohn joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new translation of Homer's Odyssey, out on April 9 with the University of Chicago Press. Daniel Mendelsohn's websiteAncient textsHomer, Iliad and OdysseyAlso mentionedPrevious translations of the Odyssey by Richmond Lattimore, Robert Fitzgerald, and Emily Wilson (and Alexander Pope); also Caroline Alexander's Iliad.Previous books by Daniel Mendelsohn: An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic (Knopf 2017), The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (Harper 2006), The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity (Knopf Doubleday 2009), and Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate (University of Virginia Press, 2020)The Homeric scholarship of Jenny Strauss Clay, see, e.g., The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey. Princeton University Press, 1983. (Reprint, Rowman and Littlefield, 1996)Anne Parry, Blameless Aegisthus: A study of αμύμων and other Homeric epithets. Leiden 1973.Johanna's 2017 Eidolon essay on Daniel's An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, "'Ithaca Gave to You the Beautiful Journey': Classics, An Odyssey, and a Conversation with Daniel Mendelsohn" About our guestDaniel Mendelsohn, an award-winning memoirist, translator, and essayist, writes frequently for the New Yorker and New York Review of Books, where he is the Editor-at-large. His books include the international bestsellers "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million" and "An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic," as well as a translation of the poetry of Constantine Cavafy. His translation of Homer's Odyssey will be published in April, 2025.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Alex Knodell, co-director of the Small Cycladic Islands Project (SCIP), joins me in the Lesche to reflect on this amazing six-season survey project, which wrapped up last summer. Alex's co-directors on the project were Demetrios Athanasoulis (Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades) and Žarko Tankosić (University of Bergen).Works mentionedSCIP publicationsChristy Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands (Cambridge 2007). NB: Christy was a featured guest on the second(!) episode of Lesche ("Subject Communities of the Athenian Empire," with Leah Lazar)The Mazi Archaeological Project (MAP)Scott M Fitzpatrick, Victor D Thompson, Aaron S Poteate, Matthew F Napolitano, Jon M Erlandson, "Marginalization of the margins: The importance of smaller islands in human prehistory," The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 11 (2016): 155-70Excavations on Daskalio: see this 2018 Guardian article on the findings of the Cambridge Keros Project.About our guestAlex Knodell is currently the chair of the classics department and director of the archaeology program at Carleton College, where he teaches classes on Mediterranean archaeology, global prehistory, and archaeological method and theory. His research revolves around the broad themes of landscape and interaction within and between ancient societies, especially in the ancient Greek world. He is especially interested in late prehistory and early history, which is the subject of his book, Societies in Transition in Early Greece: An Archaeological History (University of California Press, open access). Since 2019, he has codirected the Small Cycladic Islands Project with his colleagues Demetris Athanasoulis of the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades and Zarko Tankosic of the University of Bergen.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Christopher Metcalf joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book Three Myths of Kingship in Early Greece and the Ancient Near East, as well as the potential that Ancient Near Eastern texts and literary traditions have to shed light on early Greek ones -- and vice versa. Ancient textsGilgameshThe Hebrew BibleVarious Sumerian and Akkadian texts about Sargon, Dumuzi/Tammuz, and InannaIliad, esp. Book 1Homeric Hymn to AphroditeHerodotus Book 1, esp. on Gyges and Cyrus the GreatCtesias, PersikaSophocles, Oedipus RexEuripides, IonThe BM text on Inanna that Christopher edited is:Marie-Christine Ludwig and Christopher Metcalf (2017), "The Song of Innana and Išme-Dagan: An Edition of BM 23820+23831,"  Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 107: 1-21.Also mentionedWorks by Jean BottéroThe Electronic Babylonian LibraryGeorge, Andrew (2003) The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford.West, M. L. (1997) The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry. Oxford.Worthington, M. (2010)  Complete Babylonian Beginner to Intermediate Course: A Comprehensive Guide to Reading and Understanding Babylonian, with Original Texts (Teach Yourself).About our guestChristopher Metcalf is Associate Professor in Classical Literature at the University of Oxford. He is interested in the languages, literatures and religions of early Greece and the ancient Near East. He grew up in continental Europe, and came to the UK to study first Classics and then Ancient Near Eastern languages. In his research he enjoys combining detailed philological work, such as text editions, with larger-scale comparative studies of literary and religious aspects of the ancient world. He is the author of The Gods Rich in Praise in Early Greek and Mesopotamian Religious Poetry (2015), Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology (2021), and now Three Myths of Kingship in Early Greek and the Ancient Near East (2024).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Carol Atack joins me in the Lesche to discuss Plato's civic entanglements (and disenchantments) with his native Athens. Carol is the author of a new biography of Plato titled Plato: A Civic Life (Reaktion Books/University of Chicago Press 2024). The book is the second in a new series, Great Lives of the Ancient World, edited by Paul Cartledge. Ancient textsPlato: lots and lotsXenophon's Socratic worksIsocrates, Against the sophistsAbout our guestCarol Atack is a fellow and Director of Studies in Classics at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Her books include Plato: A Civic Life (2024), Xenophon (Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics, 2024), and The Discourse of Kingship in Classical Greece (2019), based on her doctoral research. She has published many articles and chapters on classical Greek political thought and its modern reception, on topics ranging from free speech through utopian thought to radical contemporary readings of Greek political thought. She is currently working on a monograph on the temporality of Plato’s dialogues.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Josh Billings and Christopher Moore join me in the Lesche to discuss the fifth-century BCE 'sophists', the subject of their new edited volume The Cambridge Companion to the Sophists.Works and fragments of the 'sophists' are most easily accessible in:André​ Laks, Glenn W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy. 9 volumes. Loeb Classical Library, 524-532​. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016.Primary textsLots, but especiallyWorks of the Presocratic philosophersGorgias, Encomium of Helen and Defense of PalamedesWorks of PlatoThucydides, History of the Peloponnnesian WarPlays of EuripidesAlso mentionedKerferd, G.B., 1981, The Sophistic Movement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.About our GuestsJosh Billings is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. His research centers on ancient Greek literature and philosophy and modern intellectual history, with a particular concentration on tragedy. He is the author of Genealogy of the Tragic: Greek Tragedy and German Philosophy (Princeton 2014) and The Philosophical Stage: Drama and Dialectic in Classical Athens (Princeton 2021).Christopher Moore is a Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Penn State University. He has published three monographs focusing on topics in classical philosophy, principally on the form taken by early debates about eventually-canonical philosophical topics (self-knowledge, virtue, philosophy itself). He is currently completing a book on intellectual culture in the fifth century BCE.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Andromache Karanika joins me in the Lesche to discuss how we can detect traces of wedding poetics in early Greek literature, especially poetry (hexamter and lyric). Andromache is the author of Wedding, Gender, and Performance in Ancient Greek Poetry (OUP 2024).Primary textsIliad, esp. the Teikhoskopeia (Book 3) and the Deception of Zeus (Book 14)Odyssey, esp. the start of Book 6Homeric Hymn to DemeterSappho 21 (virginity poem), 44 (Wedding of Hector and Andromache)Pollux 9, on the "tortoise game"The ballad of the 'bride who suffered misfortune' (της νύφης που κακοτύχησε/κακοπάθησε, Modern Greek folk song)Also mentionedM. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (2nd ed. Rowman and Littlefield 2002 [1st ed. 1975]).A. Lardinois and L. McClure, eds., Making Silence Speak: Women's Voices in Greek Literature and Society (Princeton 2001).J.H. Oakley and R. Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens (Ann Arbor 1993).  R. Seaford, 1987. 'The tragic wedding', JHS 107: 106-30. About our guestAndromache Karanika is Professor of Classics at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Voices at Work: Women, Performance and Labor in Ancient Greece (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) and Wedding, Gender, and Performance in Ancient Greece (Oxford University Press), and co-editor of Emotional Trauma in Greece and Rome: Representations and Reactions (2020). She served as editor of TAPA (2018-2021) and President of CAMWS (2023-2024).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

James Diggle joins me in the Lesche to discuss the 2021 Cambridge Greek Lexicon (2 vols.) of which he was editor-and-chief. We discuss why it was time for this sort of thing (and why it took 24 years to complete), how to use it, and why it improves on LSJ ... plus, how the team approached translating some of the naughtier words. Some links'Liddell and Scott' poem by Thomas Hardy (1843)Cambridge Greek Lexicon project page, where you'll also find a video of the Faculty of Classics' publication celebration.Alison Flood's review in The Guardian: English dictionary of ancient Greek ‘spares no blushes’ with fresh look at crudity Peter Jones' review in The Spectator: The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is an eye-opener for classical scholars About our guestJames Diggle, CBE, FBA, is Professor Emeritus of Greek and Latin at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Queens' College, where he was Director of Studies in Classics for over forty years. His publications include The Phaethon of Euripides (Cambridge, 1970), Flauii Cresconii Corippi Iohannidos Libri VIII (joint editor, Cambridge, 1970), Euripidis Fabulae (Oxford Classical Text, 3 vols., 1981–1994), Studies on the Text of Euripides (1981), The Textual Tradition of Euripides' Orestes (1991), Euripidea: Collected Essays (1994), Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Selecta (1998), Theophrastus, Characters (Cambridge 'Orange' 2004; 'Green and Yellow' 22). He was University Orator at Cambridge for eleven years and has published a selection of his speeches (Cambridge Orations 1982–1993 (Cambridge, 1994)). He is also joint editor of The Classical Papers of A. E. Housman (Cambridge, 1972), joint author of Odysseus Unbound: The Search for Homer's Ithaca (Cambridge, 2005), and Editor-in-Chief of The Cambridge Greek Lexicon (Cambridge, 2021). He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens.   ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

John Ma joins me in the Lesche to discuss the longue durée of the Greek polis. John is the author of the new, monumental, and much anticipated book Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State from the Early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity (Princeton 2024). Happy Holidays!About our guestJohn Ma was born in New York of Chinese parents. He grew up in Geneva, where he studied Greek and Latin at school and outside school. He went on to study Classics, then ancient history at Oxford. He has taught ancient history in Classics Departments at Princeton, Oxford, and Columbia. Ma is deeply interested in studying Greek history, especially in the Hellenistic period, using documentary and material sources.Ancient textsArchaic poetryAristotle, PoliticsXenophon, HellenicaAnd many more...Also mentionedToo many to list! But I'll note: Josiah Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton 1989).Mogens Herman Hansen and Thomas Heine Nelson, An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Greek Poleis (Oxford 2004).Mogens Herman Hansen, Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State (OUP 2006)The Polis Inventory App________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

(Spoiler alert! This episode is jam-packed with plot spoilers for THE RETURN.) Homeric scholar Barbara Graziosi joins me in the Lesche to discuss Umberto Pasolini's THE RETURN, a film adaptation of the second half of the Odyssey starring Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope.About our guestBarbara Graziosi is Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies at Princeton, holding the C. Ewing Chair of ancient Greek. Graziosi attended Oxford University (Corpus Christi College B.A. and MSt in Classics) and Cambridge University (Ph.D. in Classics) and taught at Oxford, Reading, and Durham before joining the faculty at Princeton in 2018. She also held various visiting positions in Italy. She has written widely on ancient Greek literature (especially Homer) and its reception, as well as more autobiographical pieces on how we make ancient literature our own. Her latest books are Homer (OUP 2018) and Classics, Love, Revolution: The Legacies of Luigi Settembrini, with Andrea Capra (OUP 2024).Ancient textsHomer's Iliad and OdysseyAlso mentionedEmily Wilson's discussions of the murder of the "disloyal" enslaved women in Odysseus' household -- and the sexual politics of translation. See, e.g., Wilson's New Yorker article: "A translator's reckoning with the female characters of the Odyssey" (Dec. 18, 2017).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Emma Greensmith and Tim Whitmarsh join me in the Lesche to discuss how Imperial Greek epic fits into our understanding of Ancient Greek epic as a whole. Emma has just edited the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic, and she was also a member of the research project Greek Epic of the Roman Empire: A Cultural History, which Tim directed. About our guestsEmma Greensmith is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St John’s College.  She is the editor of Omnibus and an associate editor for the Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic. She specialises in imperial Greek literature, particularly epic poetics and religious culture. Her 2020 book, The Resurrection of Homer in Imperial Greek Epic, offers a new reading of the role of epic and the reception of Homer in the Graeco-Roman world. She has written many articles on ancient Greek literature and has co-edited a volume on ‘Writing Homer Under Rome’ (2022). She works on several public engagement initiatives with the charity Classics for All, and recently filmed a documentary on Homer’s Odyssey and its cultural legacy.Tim Whitmarsh FBA is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity College. A specialist in the literature, culture and religion of ancient Greece, he is the author of 10 books, including Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (Knopf 2015), and over 100 academic articles. He has contributed to newspapers such as The Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books, and to BBC radio and TV. Ancient textsHomer's Iliad and OdysseyTriphiodorus, Sack of TroyQuintus of Smyrna, PosthomericaAnon., Vision of DorotheusNonnus, DionysiacaEudocia, Homeric CentonesColluthus, Abduction of HelenAlso mentionedJasper Griffin, "Greek Epic," in the Cambridge Companion to the Epic (Cambridge 2010). ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Emily Wilson, acclaimed translator, joins me in the Lesche to discuss the challenges and pleasures of translating the Iliad. We discuss the Greek of two passages in detail: Book 6 lines 482-502 and Book 22 lines 199-204 (lines as in the OCT).Ancient textsHomer's Iliad and OdysseyPlato, Hippias MinorLonginus, On the Sublime (ch. 9)  Also mentionedKaren Emmerich, Literary Translation and the Making of Originals. Bloomsbury 2017. "Munro's Law", i.e., D. B. Munro's observation that there is no overlap in the content of the Iliad and the Odyssey (more info here).Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. A (5th ed.)Johanna's review of Emily's translation of the Iliad for Slate (here)About our guestEmily Wilson is Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, holding the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities. Wilson attended Oxford University (Balliol College B.A. in Classics and Corpus Christi College M.Phil. in Renaissance English Literature) and Yale University (Ph.D. in Classics and Comparative Literature). She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance & Early Modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow.Emily's substackEmily on Blue Sky________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

David M. Pritchard joins me in the Lesche to discuss what appears to have been, in Nicole Loraux's famous words, a "very Athenian invention": the epitaphios logos, or funeral oration given over the war dead at their public burial. Both the Athenian funeral oration and the legacy of Nicole Loraux's pioneering study of it are the subjects of David's new edited volume The Athenian Funeral Oration: After Nicole Loraux.  About our guestDavid M. Pritchard is Associate Professor of Greek History at the University of Queensland in Australia. He is well known internationally for researching the symbiosis between war, democracy and culture in classical Athens. He has held some fifteen fellowships in Australia, Europe and the US. Associate Professor Pritchard speaks on radio and regularly writes for newspapers around the world.Ancient textsAthenian funeral orations "Historical” texts: Thucydides 2.34-46, Demosthenes 60, Hyperides' Funeral Oration"Literary" examples:  Gorgias' fragmentary funeral oration, Lysias 2, Plato's Menexenus, Isocrates' PanegyricusAlso mentionedCornelius Castoriadis, L'institution imaginaire de la société (Paris 1975).Nicole Loraux, L'invention d'Athènes: Histoire de l'oraison funèbre dans la "cité classique" (Paris 1981 [1st ed.]; 1993 [2nd abridged ed.), translated into English by Alan Sheridan as The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City (HUP 1986/reprint PUP 2006)Nicole Loraux, Les enfants d'Athéna. Idées athéniennes sur la citoyenneté et la division des sexes (Paris 1984), translated into English by Caroline Levine as The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and Division Between the Sexes (PUP 1993).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Rachel Kousser joins me in the Lesche to discuss Alexander III of Macedon's post-Persepolis campaigns in Asia (330-323 BCE), the subject of her recent book Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great.About our guestRachel Kousser writes and teaches about Alexander the Great, the destruction of monuments in ancient Greece, and the representation of gender and power in the Mediterranean world. For her work, she has received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Getty Research Institute, and the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts. She’s published articles in Art Bulletin, American Journal of Archaeology, and Res: Archaeology and Aesthetics, as well as two books with Cambridge University Press. Rachel is currently the chair of the Classics Program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and a professor of ancient art and archaeology at Brooklyn College. She has a B.A. in Classics and Art History from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Ancient textsPolybius, HistoriesDiodorus, BibliothecaCurtius, Historiae Alexandri MagniPlutarch, Life of AlexanderArrian, Anabasis AlexandriAlso mentionedBrooke Allen, "Alexander the Great: Or the Terrible?" The Hudson Review, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 220-230.Pierre Briant, The First European: A History of Alexander in the Age of Empire (translated from the French by Nicholas Elliott), Harvard 2017.Michael Kulikowski, "A Very Bad Man: Julius Caesar, Génocidaire." London Review of Books, 18 June 2020.Alexander scholarship by W. W. Tarn, Ernst Badian, and Brian Bosworth.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Ferdia Lennon joins me in the Lesche to discuss his award-winning and bestselling novel, Glorious Exploits (UK Penguin Fig Tree/US Macmillan 2024), which is set in Syracuse in the aftermath of the Athenian invasion of Sicily during the Peloponnesian War.About our guestFerdia Lennon was born and raised in Dublin. He holds a BA in History and Classics from University College Dublin and an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. Glorious Exploits is his first novel. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as a Book at Bedtime, was a Sunday Times bestseller and the winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2024. After spending many years in Paris, he now lives in Norwich with his wife and son. Ancient textsPlutarch, Life of NiciasThucydides, History of the Peloponnesian WarEuripides, various tragediesAristophanes, various comediesAlso mentionedLouis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit)Karl Ove Knausgaard, InadvertentMary Renault’s historical novelsFurther readingKathryn G. Bosher, Greek Theater in Ancient Sicily. Cambridge 2021.Kathryn G. Bosher, ed., Theater outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy. Cambridge 2012.Emily Greenwood, "Thucydides on the Sicilian Expedition," in S. Forsdyke, E. Foster, and R. Balot, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides. Oxford 2017.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Charlie Covell joins me in the Lesche to discuss their hit Netflix show KAOS, a modern, dark dramedic take on Ancient Greek mythology. The show, set in something like modern-day Crete (and on Olympus and in Hades), interweaves stories of Prometheus, the Olympian gods, Orpheus and Eurydice, Minos/Ariadne/Theseus/the Minotaur, and Caeneis.Special thanks on this one to Mike Farah & Jess Sze. About our guestBritish creator-writer Charlie Covell (pronouns: they/them) recently created the Netflix original series “Kaos” starring Jeff Goldblum, Janet McTeer, Nabhaan Rizwan, David Thewlis, and Debi Mazar, among others. The 8-episode debuted on August 29, 2024.   Previously, Charlie wrote the hit series “The End of The F***ing World” for Channel 4 in the UK (also available on Netflix). The series was praised for its writing, execution and subject matter, and has gone on to win a BAFTA TV Award, Peabody Award, and Royal Television Society Award. Charlie was also individually nominated for a British Screenwriters Award, BAFTA TV Craft Award, Royal Television Society Award, and Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award. Charlie was also part of BAFTA’s prestigious Breakthrough Brits program and previously named one of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Leah Lazar and Christy Constantakopoulou join me in the Lesche to discuss their work on the relationship between Athens and its subject communities (the "allies") during the fifth-century Athenian "empire" (ἀρχή). Leah has a new book out on the subject, Athens and Power in the Fifth Century BC; Christy’s monograph Dance of the Islands (a favorite of my Classical Greek History students) opened up new ways of thinking about the interconnectivity of the empire’s communities when it came out in 2007.About our guestsLeah Lazar is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents in Oxford. She is part of the ERC-funded CHANGE Project, researching the monetary and economic history of Anatolia. In January 2025, she will be starting as a lecturer at the University of Manchester. Her first book, Athens and Power in the Fifth Century BC, came out this year with Oxford University Press. Christy Constantakopoulou is a researcher in the National Hellenic Research Foundation. She was previously Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has published on the history of the Aegean islands, ancient historiography, Greek religion, and the Athenian empire. Her book The Dance of the Islands: Insularity, Networks, the Athenian Empire, and the Aegean World came out in 2007 with Oxford University Press (paperback 2010). Ancient textsThucydidesAristophanes, Babylonians (fragmentary) and AcharniansThe lapis primus of the Athenian Tribute Lists, 454/3 BC: IG I3 259The 'Chalkis Decree', 446/5 (or 424/3?): IG I3 40Decrees for Methone, 430/29–424/3 BC: IG I3 61Also mentionedAnthropologist Veena Das's work on "poisonous knowledge".R. Meiggs (1972), The Athenian Empire. Oxford.B. D. Meritt, H. T. Wade-Gery, and M. F. McGregor (1939-53), The Athenian Tribute Lists, Vols. 1-4. Princeton. L. Nixon and S. Price (1990), "The Size and Resources of Greek Cities," in O. Murray and S. Price, eds., The Greek City. Oxford: 137–70.R. Osborne (1999), "Inscribing Performance," in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne eds., Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy. Cambridge: 341–358.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Yvona Trnka-Amrhein and John Gibert join me in the Lesche to discuss their editio princeps of a newly-discovered papyrus (P.Phil.Nec. 23) containing lines from two of Euripides' fragmentary plays, Ino and Poluidos. The publication, in ZPE, is currently only available in print. The ToC for the issue in which it appears is available here.Information about the conference on 'The New Euripides' held at the Center for Hellenic Studies this past June is available here. Pre-prints based on the speakers' presentations are available here. During the episode, there's mention of an upcoming (as of the day of this podcast's release) public conference on the new papyrus, which will be held at UC Boulder on Saturday, September 14th. Information about the conference is available here.About our guestsYvona Trnka-Amrhein is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder. She works on Greek literature of the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods, literary papyrology, the culture of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, and the reception of Greek narrative literature in Armenian historiography. Her current book project, Portraits of Pharaohs, studies the historical fictions of Greco-Roman Egypt. She co-directs The City of the Baboon Project at Hermopolis Magna in Middle Egypt.John Gibert is Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder. He writes mainly on archaic and classical Greek poetry, especially drama. He is the author of Euripides’ Ion (2019) and Change of Mind in Greek Tragedy (1995), and co-author (with Christopher Collard and Martin Cropp) of Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Tragedies II (2004). Ancient textsEuripides, Ino and Poluidos; Medea, HecubaPlato(?), MinosAlso mentionedCarrara, L. 2014. L’Indovino Poliido: Eschilo, Le Cretesi, Sofocle, Manteis, Euripide, Poliido (Rome).Coo, L. and A. Uhlig, eds. 2019. Aeschylus at Play: Studies in Aeschylean Satyr Drama. BICS 62.2 (special issue).Finglass, P. J. and L. Coo, eds. 2020. Female Characters in Fragmentary Greek Tragedy. Cambridge. Johnson, W. A. 2004. Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus. Toronto.Luppe, W. and Henry, W. B. (2012) 5131. Tragedy (Euripides, Ino?), The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 78: 19-25.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

Welcome to Lesche, a podcast on new books and ideas in the field of Ancient Greek Studies. In each episode, we'll be talking to classicists about their latest contributions to the field.We’re going to start by releasing two episodes each month, on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month. The first episode will debut on Wednesday, September 11.You can find us on Instagram, @leschepodcast, or send us an email at [email protected] If you have an idea for a new book or topic you think would make for a good conversation, please reach out using this form. ____________________________For more on the Song of Seikilos see:M. L. West, Ancient Greek Music. Oxford, 1992, with modern musical notation on p. 301A. D'Angour, "The Song of Seikilos: a Musically Annotated Ancient Greek Poem, in AntigoneE. Pöhlmann and M. West, Documents of Ancient Greek Music. Oxford, 2001. (The Song of Seikilos is dossier #90)________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form