{"id":31178,"date":"2026-05-19T13:03:55","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T17:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=31178"},"modified":"2026-05-19T13:04:01","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T17:04:01","slug":"mary-beard-talking-classics-the-shock-of-the-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2026\/05\/19\/mary-beard-talking-classics-the-shock-of-the-old\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Beard: Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
by Mary Beard (2026)<\/span>
The University of Chicago Press (2026)<\/span>
198 pp<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2023, Mary Beard gave a series of lectures at the University of Chicago, and I feel fortunate that she has now adapted those lectures into a new book:\u00a0Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old<\/em>. I am probably someone who reveres the classics a bit too much, and so I was immediately intrigued by Beard\u2019s introduction:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

One big questions drives this book. What is the point of the ancient classics? To put it another way, why should we bother about what people did 2,000 years ago or more: what they made, wrote and thought? What can it all mean to us now? I want to capture what is still so exciting, rewarding and sometimes unsettling about the classical world — or at least what has excited, rewarded and unsettled me<\/em>. The underlying message is that you get much more out of classics if you revere it less. Amazement, surprise, pleasure, puzzlement, even revulsion, yes. Reverence and gratitude, no.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That was pretty thrilling to me. I love encountering perspectives that help me see more clearly, even if it means — maybe especially if it means — challenging a misguided and myopic view I may hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book that followed was not what I expected, but I found myself glad for that. See, I initially thought it would focus primarily on the ancient texts I love so much, complicating them (and sure doing a lot of work for me). So I was a bit surprised when the book opens with Beard discussing an ancient loaf of bread from ancient Egyptian Thebes. What is a loaf of bread doing in a book about the Classics? I wondered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, clearly, this is a book about Classics as a field of study devoted to an enormous and varied world, and not narrowly about, say, the shock of the old Greek drama. Given Beard\u2019s career, I should have known better, but I come to this subject as an appreciative dilettante. Maybe my thoughts are helpful to people in the same place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now better adjusted to the book (though secretly still yearning for a Mary Beard deep dive into some of my own favorite ancient works of literature), I found myself increasingly delighted by the book\u2019s exploratory spirit. Rather than building a straightforward argument, Beard moves through a series of vignettes that show a lifetime spent thinking about the ancient world not as a shrine to greatness but as something messy, surprising, contested, and continually capable of shocking us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That, ultimately, is what I most appreciated about\u00a0Talking Classics<\/em>. Beard\u2019s defense of the field is not rooted in claims that the Classical world represents some unquestionable pinnacle of civilization. In fact, she repeatedly demonstrates a solid case against that kind of thinking. Instead, she argues for what she calls the \u201cparadoxical newness of classics\u201d: the way these ancient materials still unsettle us, resist us, and expose the changing ways later cultures, including our own, have used and misused them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And clearly her arguments are important. In the acknowledgements at the end of the book, Beard notes that while this book was being finalized, the University of Chicago itself, home of her lectures and<\/em> publisher of this book, was \u201cpausing admissions to post-graduate humanities programmes, including Classics.\u201d That note gives an added poignancy to the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary Beard’s latest is a great exploration of why Classics still have the capacity to shock us, and why that’s important. Here are some brief thoughts on Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800,1533],"tags":[1366,1525],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-31178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-mary-beard","tag-2020s","tag-1525"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Talking-Classics-Featured-Image.jpg?fit=700%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-86S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31180,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31178\/revisions\/31180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31178"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=31178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}