Among the Ancients

Seneca

For the final episode in Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom look at Seneca, whose life is relatively well known to us. A child of the established Roman Empire, born around

Ovid

Ovid was perhaps the most prolific poet of Ancient Rome, certainly in the amount of his poetry which has survived (around 30,000 lines). This episode focuses on his 15-bo

Horace

Emily and Tom follow Virgil with one of his contemporaries, Horace, whose poetry played an important political role in the early years of Augustan Rome and has had an eno

Virgil

In the ninth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom arrive at Virgil, focusing on his 12-book epic the Aeneid, which describes the wanderings of the Trojan prince A

Lucretius

In their eighth episode Emily and Tom look at a contemporary of Catullus, Lucretius, and the only poem we have from him, De rerum natura (The Nature of Things), which set

Catullus

For the second half of their Among the Ancients series, Emily and Tom move to Ancient Rome, starting with the late Republican poet Catullus. Described by Tennyson, somewh

Aristophanes

In their sixth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom discuss the comedies of Aristophanes, in particular Clouds and Lysistrata. How did an Aristophanes comedy diff

Euripides

Euripides was the youngest of the fifth-century Athenian tragedians, and is often described as the most radical. But how daring was he? How far did he push the boundaries

Sophocles

In the fourth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom ask: what was it like to go to the theatre in Athens in 468 BC? And how far do modern ideas about tragedy, deri

Sappho

In the third episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom move from epic to lyric, with the poems of Sappho, or what remains of them. They consider what we know, and don’

The 'Odyssey'

In episode two of Among the Ancients, Tom and Emily turn to Homer’s Odyssey. They discuss the twisting, turning nature of both the narrative and its hero, the poem’s comp

The 'Iliad'

In their first episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom begin with a beginning, Homer's Iliad: its depictions of anger and grief, of capricious gods and warriors’ bod

Introducing Among the Ancients

Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones introduce their series on the great works of Greek and Roman literature, from Homer to Horace, and discuss some of the themes and preoccupat