Among the Ancients II: Pindar and Bacchylides

In the early 1860s, Tennyson was at the height of his celebrity. His great elegy, In Memoriam (1850), seemed to have captured the spiritual unease of the age, and the first instalment of Idylls of the King came in 1859. But in 1861 he took a break from Arthurian romance to try so ...  Show more

Tom McCarthy, writing in the LRB, described James Joyce's Ulysses as a ‘heavy book, a book full of weight, a fallen book’; a ‘properly obscene book’; ‘a book in which the central stake is the coming into being of the book itself’; a book for which ‘people should desist, once and ...  Show more

<span style="font-size: 12pt;">In this episode, we discuss the various types of ancient Greek musical instruments during the Classical Period; how and for what purpose they were used; and the lives and works of the three great 5th century BC lyric poets who pioneered the genre ...

For the final introduction to next year’s full Close Readings programme, Emily Wilson, celebrated classicist and translator of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, returns for a second season of Among the Ancients, to take on another twelve vital works of Greek and Roman literature with th ...  Show more

On today's episode, Junius and Wesley discuss the timeless world of Greek tragedy! They explore the profound themes and dramatic elements of Oedipus Rex by Sophocles and Aristotle's Poetics. Gain insights into the complexities of fate, tragedy, and catharsis in these classical wo ...  Show more