Mary Beard Quotes
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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.
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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.
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Barring some sociopaths, probably, there is nobody who doesn't care about their appearance.
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I was nearly struck by lightning on an excavation in Turkey.
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I was really good at Latin at school, and because I was good at it, I got more interested and got better at it.
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One of the downsides of working in antiquity is that you don't have many female voices, but you certainly have a lot of male terror about the potential of women's power. It shows you very clearly that the most oppressive cultures tend to be afraid of those whom they oppress.
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The history of art is not just the history of artists; it is also the history of the people who viewed art. And that wider perspective can help us see some of the reasons why the art of the ancient world should still matter to us.
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My fantasy is going into a men's loo. And listening to what they say.
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You always regret upsetting people needlessly.
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History is how we have learnt to think about ourselves. It's not as though the Greeks and Romans are static entities out there to be discovered and translated. We make them speak, we talk to them, and they inform what we say.
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Gender is a key marker of power and powerlessness. Most of the structures of how our world works are biased in terms of men.
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When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice.
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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.
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No women in ancient Rome ever had the vote.
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If women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women?
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I think that what will help women get into positions of power - well, day nurseries, equal pay, family-friendly working hours. And I think all that's important. I used to think it was the solution. I now think it's enabling, and it's important, but still we have got head work to do about this.
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We have never escaped a certain male cultural desire for women's silence.
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Whatever you say about popular culture, people like people who know things, who are experts, and it doesn't particularly matter what they look like.
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Roman military tactics were much over-rated. All the clever ones had the same idea, which was to go round the back.
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In real life, Oxford and Cambridge are two excellent universities, like many others in the country. They are full of highly intelligent, hard-working, and quite ordinary students and teachers.
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A lot of sexism is just very silly... and the best response is laughter and ridicule.
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I think, when I was 25, nobody in the world knew who I was.
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A lot of people will always say, 'I really know nothing about the ancient world.' But there's lots and lots of things people know. Partly, they've been encouraged to think they're ignorant about it. In some ways, the job to do is show people that they know much more than they'd like to admit.
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It's great fun being an academic because you have a certain licence to be a bit of a joker.