Mary Beard Quotes
-
There is nothing inherently conservative in the ancient world.
-
I think you have to realize that most ancient warfare is really kind of hit and run, honestly. You go and you bash down the walls of some enemy 50 miles away and you take some slaves, you take some cattle, probably a bit of cash too, and then you say goodbye and go home and you probably do the same thing next year - or try to, or they do it to you.
-
Fate has it in for me to be an exhibit: that funny old lady from the telly.
-
We lived in the schoolhouse of the village school in Church Preen, in deepest Shropshire, and my mum was the schoolmistress. She taught the juniors, and one other teacher taught the infants. I went there from the age of three, no doubt as a form of childcare.
-
If you say to a group of women professors, 'Close your eyes and think of a professor,' what they will see is a guy. I will. And I'll stop myself and think, 'Hey, hang on, what am I doing here?'
-
You don't overturn x-thousand years of patriarchy in a generation.
-
It's a bit naff, but there is something exciting about pulling a bit of pottery out of the ground that's 2,000 years old.
-
Grey is my hair colour. I really can't see why I should change it.
-
I was nearly struck by lightning on an excavation in Turkey.
-
I used to think that the British press were particularly awful to Cherie Blair. I think Blair's foreign policy was a complete disaster, but the British press, when they wanted to explain why Blair took unexpected moves, they did create Cherie as the power behind the throne.
-
When you look at me on the telly and say, 'She should be on 'The Undateables,'' you are looking at a 59-year-old woman. That is what 59-year-old women who have not had work done look like. Get it?
-
I don't think that we are completely dominated by what we have inherited from the past, but it is the case that as far back as you can go - just to Homer, but also to the literature of Rome, the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance - what you will find is that women's voices are not taken seriously.
-
We have never escaped a certain male cultural desire for women's silence.
-
What interests me is the idea that classics is actually quite democratic. It isn't only the toff, upper-class subject it's often thought to be. Every generation enjoys rediscovering it.
-
You always regret upsetting people needlessly.
-
If talking about arts means being pretentious, a bit like being a wine critic, then I don't feel comfy with that. You can get a lot from paintings without getting mystical about brush strokes.
-
Greek myths, early Roman history, is configured around violence against women. And I think we need to get in there, get our hands dirty, face it, and see why and how it was.
-
My day job is working on Roman history and ancient Roman history.
-
Gender is a key marker of power and powerlessness. Most of the structures of how our world works are biased in terms of men.
-
Thinking through how you look to your enemies is helpful. That doesn't mean that your ideology is wrong and theirs is right, but maybe you have to recognise that they have one - and that it may be logically coherent. Which may be uncomfortable.
-
I was really good at Latin at school, and because I was good at it, I got more interested and got better at it.
-
Barring some sociopaths, probably, there is nobody who doesn't care about their appearance.
-
Classics isn't about the ancient world. It's partly about the ancient world, but it's about our conversation. It's how we try to talk to antiquity.
-
It's great fun being an academic because you have a certain licence to be a bit of a joker.