Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

Naoise Mac Sweeney joins me in the Lesche to discuss her ERC-funded multi-year project "Migration and the Making of the Ancient Greek World" (MIGMAG). Read more about the project here . The first major output is a volume titled Local Migration and the Making of the Ancient Greek World (c.1200-550 BCE), edited by MIGMAG team members Naoíse Mac Sweeney, Jana Mokrišová, and Francesco Quonda...

Mirjam E. Kotwick joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book The Ancient Interpretation of Dreams: Early Greek Hermeneutics and Its Sources , which is hot off the (Princeton University) press. For more on Katerina Evangelatou's 2015 production of  Rhesus , as part of the Epidaurus-Athens Theatre Festival, see this article by Scott Andrew Cally in Didascalia . Ancient works  Homer, Odyssey...

Daniel Schillinger joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book Luckless: The Idea of Luck in Ancient Greek Thought , which recently appeared with Oxford University Press. Find out more about Daniel's work here: https://www.danielschillinger.com/ Ancient authors and texts Sophocles, Oedipus Rex Euripides, Trojan Women (and Hippolytus ) Thucydides Aristotle, Physics , Nicomachean Ethics, Poe...

Scott Lawin Arcenas joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book, Political Violence in Ancient Greece: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to Stasis, 500-301 BCE (Cambridge University Press 2026). Ancient texts (select) Homer, Odyssey and Iliad Alcaeus Solon Herodotus, esp. the account of the stasis in Chios Thucydides, esp. the account of the stasis at Corcyra (Book 3)    Xenophon, Helleni...

Content warning: This episode contains detailed descriptions of childbirth complications -- including maternal and infant mortality -- and of how such complications were handled by ancient midwives and physicians. There are graphic references to surgical procedures. Tara Mulder joins me in the Lesche to discuss her brand new book,  A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient...

Eric Csapo and Peter Wilson join me in the Lesche to discuss their three-volume A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC (Cambridge University Press).   Volume 1, The Theatre Festivals of Athens: Documents with Translation and Commentary , appeared earlier this year. Volume 2, Theatre Beyond Athens: Documents with Translation and Commentary , came out in 2020. Volume 3, on theater pe...

Bill Beck joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new translation of the vetera scholia to Iliad Book 1-2: The Ancient Scholia to Homer's Iliad: A Translation, Volume 1 (Cambridge 2025). The book is the first in a series dedicated to translation of the Iliadic scholia. For an episode on the Iliad itself, and its translation, see Lesche episode 1.6, " Translating the Iliad , with Emily Wils...

Art historian Verity Platt joins me in the Lesche to discuss her much-anticipated new book Epistemic Impressions: Making and Mediating Classical Art and Text (Oxford 2026). On May 11, the Queen Mary University of London Imagination Research Network will be hosting a "launch symposium" to celebrate the book's publication. Information and tickets are available here . The novel that Ve...

Marie-Louise Nosch, former director of the Centre for Textile Research at the Saxo Institute of the University of Copenhagen, joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book Time of Textiles in Ancient Greece (DeGruyter 2025). If you like this episode, you might also enjoy Lesche episode 1.10, "Wedding Poetics in Ancient Greek Literature," with Andromache Karanika. Ancient texts Homer, Il...

Christos C. Tsagalis joins me in the Lesche to discuss the Doloneia, i.e., Iliad 10, which is the topic of both Christos' monograph The Homeric Doloneia: Evolution and Shaping of Iliad 10 (Oxford 2024) and his chapter in Jonathan Ready's recent edited volume, the Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Iliad (Oxford 2024). The Doloneia/Iliad 10 is traditionally divided into two sections: t...

Rosa Andújar joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book, Playing the Chorus in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 2025). Tragedies mentioned Aeschylus Agamemnon (chorus fragmentation) Seven Against Thebes (use of semi-choruses) Suppliant Women ("choral swarm" with multiple groups) Sophocles Oedipus Rex (actor-chorus interaction) Euripides Phaethon ( "augmentation" and secondary chor...

Michael Satlow joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book An Enchanted World: The Shared Religious Landscape of Late Antiquity , which will be published on February 3 by Princeton University Press.  Resources "Lived Religion Project" at the University of Erfurt's Max Weber Institute  If you're new to Late Antiquity, the foundational work is Peter Brown's 1971 The World...

Piero Boitani joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book Timaeus in Paradise: Metaphors and Beauty from Plato to Dante and Beyond (Princeton University Press 2025).  Ancient texts Hebrew Bible, Genesis Plato: Timaeus, Phaedrus, Symposium, Apology Aristotle: Nicomachaean Ethics Lucretius, De Rerum Natura Ovid, Metamorphoses Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation ( de Opificio mundi : treatise on...

Inger Kuin joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book Diogenes: The Rebellious Life and Revolutionary Philosophy of the Original Cynic (Basic Books 2025).  Ancient sources Aristotle, Politics 1.3-7 (on 'natural' slavery) Diogenes Laertius, 2.6, Life of Diogenes Plutarch,  Life of Alexander  14 (on the 'get out of my sun' episode) Xenophon, Anabasis 5-6 (on Sinope, Diogenes&...

Tatiana Bur joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge University Press 2025).  Ancient texts Homer, Iliad 18 (on Hephaestus and his self-moving tripods)  Many Athenian tragedies and comedies that made use of the μηχανή or κράδη (in comedy) Aristotle, Poetics (on the theatrical ‘crane’/μηχανή)  The Aristotelian/Peripatetic wor...

Mary Beard, Classics editor at the Times Literary Supplement , and Clifford Ando, senior editor of the Bryn Mawr Classical Review , join me in the Lesche to discuss the state of Classics reviewing today.  How do the TLS and BMCR assign appropriate reviewers?  What makes for a good review?  What's the line between critique and nastiness?  Why are reviews these days so often lacking in susbtant...

Harvard University historian Paul Kosmin joins me in the Lesche to discuss his recent book The Ancient Shore (Harvard University Press 2024), winner of the American Historical Association's 2025 Prize in History Prior to CE 1000.  Works mentioned Agatharchides of Cnidus, On the Erythraean Sea (2nd C. BC) Philip de Loutherbourg, "Shipwreck" (painting, 1793). Demuth, Bathsheba. 2019....

James Romm joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new biography Demosthenes: Democracy's Defender . The book is a part of Yale University Press's Ancient Lives series, of which James is also the editor.  James's author website Ancient texts mentioned Demosthenes, speeches Aeschines, speeches About our guest James Romm is an author, reviewer, and the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of...

Sam Holzman joins me in the Lesche to discuss "bilingual" Ionic column capitals (i.e., column capitals that combined an archaic convex style of relief carving with a more modern concave style). These are the subject of his book Retrospective Columns: Ionic Capitals and Perceptions of the Past in Greek Architecture , which just came out with Princeton University Press . Ancient source Vit...

Dan-el Padilla Peralta joins me in the Lesche to discuss the critique of classicism that he articulates in his recent book Classicism and Other Phobias (PUP 2025). Works mentioned (select) Adeshei Carter, Jacoby. “Racing the Canon.” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Race , edited by Paul C. Taylor, Linda Martín Alcoff, and Luvell Anderson, 163–174. New York: Routledge, 2017. Baldwin, Jam...

Patricia (Tricia) Kim joins me in the Lesche to discuss the art of Hellenistic queenship -- i.e., art that depicted Hellenistic queens, art patronized by Hellenistic queens, and art that spoke to the construction of queenship across the Hellenistic world.  Egypt Museum on the "Arsinoe-Aphrodite" statue Franck Goddio write-up of the statue Lesche episode 18 is a conversation about Isis Wo...

Anthony Kaldellis joins me in the Lesche to discuss an in-progress edited volume about the transmission of classical texts in the East Roman Empire (aka Byzantium), and why, more generally, classicists should be better informed about the Greek Middle Ages, aka the Byzantine Millennium. Anthony is the host of a wonderful podcast called Byzantium and Friends , which was (and still is) a major inspir...

Marden Fitzpatrick Nichols joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book How to Make a Home: An Ancient Guide to Style and Comfort , a curated collection of passages (by Cicero, Juvenal, Ovid, Pliny, Vitruvius, and others) that relate to the design, decor, and ideology of the ancient Roman house and home. The book is part of Princeton University Press's "Ancient Wisdom for Modern Reader...

Emily Hauser joins me in the Lesche to discuss the lives of the real Bronze Age women remembered in Homeric epic, the subject of her new book Penelope's Bones: A New History of Homer's World through the Women Written Out Of It (UK title: Mythica ). We also discuss the popularity of feminist retellings of Greek myth, and why (it's good) they're not going anywhere anytime soon. T...

Clare Rowan and M.E. (Mairi) Gkikaki join me in the Lesche to discuss the use of monetiform tokens in Greek (and a bit of Roman) antiquity. Clare was the PI on the ERC-funded project " Token Communities of the Ancient Mediterranean ." Mairi was a postdoctoral researcher on the project, and her edited volume Tokens in Classical Athens and Beyond was published (open-access) with Liverpool...