Mary Beard Quotes
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My fantasy is going into a men's loo. And listening to what they say.
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There's a basic rule of thumb that the more a culture oppresses women, or oppresses anyone, the more culturally preoccupied they are with that.
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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.
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Nobody but an idiot would pretend that they had an error-proof way of choosing the 'best' out of hundreds of perfectly qualified applicants - not for university or for anything.
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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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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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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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You cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded as male; you have to change the structure.
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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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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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Barring some sociopaths, probably, there is nobody who doesn't care about their appearance.
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I was 11 when I started Latin - not like boys, who start early at prep school. At 14, you had to choose whether to start Greek and drop German, but my mum made a fuss, and I took Latin, Greek, French, and German at O-level, which meant I didn't do much science.
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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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I don't want to see a world in which women can communicate on Twitter, but their actual voices are not heard.
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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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I think most people gain some sense of how to look at a painting, but no one ever teaches you how to look at a piece of silver.
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The gloomiest way of describing the ancient world is it is misogyny from A to Z, really.
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English country towns are often seen as a cultural wasteland, but the more cut off you are, the more the need to create things, to make your own culture.
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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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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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When I am making a TV show, I am looking for engagement, not admiration.
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We are sold the idea of a refugee as a tiny child sitting crying, as a way of raising money, but elderly ladies and kids largely can't move. The demographic is mostly young men.
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I was into Black Power, and my practice Oxbridge essay was a rant. The headmistress said I'd never get in with that, but she was probably wrong. I was the ideal combination: a swot who was also a bad girl.
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I think, when I was 25, nobody in the world knew who I was.