Talking Classics: A persuasive case for questioning over venerating them

Personal, anecdotal and humorous, Mary Beard's book is a love letter to antiquity, but one that wants readers to question, denounce, and be shocked by the findings

Talking Classics: The Shock Of The Old

By Mary Beard

Published by Hachette India

186 pages  ₹699

 

A passionate teacher can turn a class full of agnostics into believers and even the severely numerically challenged into aspiring mathematicians. Talking Classics by Mary Beard is just such a classroom where the doyen of classics transfers her love and obsession for the ancient Greek and Roman world to a whole new generation of readers so charmingly that even the utterly disinterested will find it impossible to resist its allure. 

Personal, anecdotal and humorous, this slim book reads like a love letter. Not the vertiginous syrupy romance of an infatuated teenager but a love that has weathered many disillusionments. The classics must be read not because they contain “timeless truths” or “timeless wisdom”, writes Ms Beard, but for the ideas they carry and their ability to ignite imaginations even today. In her words, “Don’t imagine that there are pure nuggets of truth waiting to be discovered in classics. It’s the debate between us and antiquity that is important”. 

Debate is fundamental. Critical engagement and not reverence is the way to understand and, perhaps appreciate, the ancient world. The book discusses the sharp edges, the warts and the transformative power of the ancient Greek and Roman world to make the point. “I am not writing advertising copy,” writes Ms Beard. She wants readers to question, denounce, be shocked by and laugh at the heroes, gods and monarchs of antiquity, just as she has done. 

Different people engage with the past differently. She recounts a story, probably apocryphal, about Indian Nobel laureate and poet Rabindranath Tagore, who, it is believed, burst into tears at the sight of the Parthenon in Athens. He was overcome, not by its “aesthetic grandeur or grace but by its ‘barbarian ugliness’.” 

The power of antiquity does not lie in the beauty of its art and architecture but in the ability to force extreme reactions and ask awkward questions and, most importantly, evoke wonder and awe. Just as it did for the five-year-old Ms Beard on a trip to the British Museum when she was mesmerised by a 4,000-year-old moldy piece of Egyptian bread stuck inside a glass case. Museums in those days were not child-friendly and she struggled for a closer look when a kind curator who was passing by indulged her. He opened the case and held the bread in front of her. It was a transformative moment, she writes. And it had the young girl hooked, although it was not the Egyptian, but the Roman world that she went on to teach and write about. 

Ms Beard uses a conversational, reflective style. She lets the questions that have troubled and engaged her throughout her career lead the narrative forward. She pauses and weighs the options around an argument, and reels her readers in with the practised panache of a great teacher. 

Classical literature has forced her to think harder and face the uncomfortable, she writes. Slavery, fascism, violence and misogyny are not modern inventions. To study the ancient world means wrestling with these aspects of antiquity too. It also means questioning the idea of heroism and courage in the ancient epics. Were the great heroes truly worthy of being called thus? Was their behaviour irreproachable? For instance, as Ms Beard asks, “How do you judge a leader who manages to get back to his family but only after losing all his men (Odysseus)?” Or when he plunges his sword into the single eye of the Cyclops Polyphemus and blinds him, how does one pick a side? Questions open up channels of accessibility and understanding. It is not about finding the right answers, but to develop perspectives that help illuminate the ancient texts. 

The book also asks readers to consider the classical experience in its entirety. While the classical texts, art and sculpture are mostly representations of the elite, the voice of the common people is not just as important but also more interesting. There is more to the ancient Greeks and Romans than the royal and the divine. Ms Beard uses several examples to illustrate her point. 

The extremely popular statue of the nude Aphrodite of Knidos is one example. Exquisitely sculpted, the sculpture seems to show that the goddess has been caught unawares as she emerged from her bath. This sculpture became so popular that numerous replicas were commissioned and today almost every museum in Europe has one. But it was once considered so radical that no town wanted it and it even caused a young man to take his life. When we gaze at the sculpture today, can we separate the aesthetic appreciation of the statue from the leering male gaze that it attracts? The goddess and her sculpture are better appreciated when we ask the uncomfortable questions. 

Ms Beard teases meaning and adventure out of the ancient stories through her endless questioning, humorous anecdotes and sharp insight. Her five-decade-plus experience as an academic and author lights up the journey that she is encouraging the reader to undertake and, frankly, who can resist? 

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The reviewer is a writer, teacher of comparative mythology and cofounder of The Mythology Project