Carol Atack joins me in the Lesche to discuss Plato's civic entanglements (and disenchantments) with his native Athens. Carol is the author of a new biography of Plato titled Plato: A Civic Life (Reaktion Books/University of Chicago Press 2024). The book is the second in a new series, Great Lives of the Ancient World , edited by Paul Cartledge. Ancient texts Plato: lots and lots Xenophon's Socratic works Isocrates, Against the sophists About our guest Carol Atack is a fellow and Director of Stud...
Feb 19, 2025•57 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Josh Billings and Christopher Moore join me in the Lesche to discuss the fifth-century BCE 'sophists', the subject of their new edited volume The Cambridge Companion to the Sophists . Works and fragments of the 'sophists' are most easily accessible in: André Laks, Glenn W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy. 9 volumes. Loeb Classical Library, 524-532 . Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016. Primary texts Lots, but especially Works of the Presocratic philosophers Gorgias, Encomium of ...
Feb 05, 2025•56 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Andromache Karanika joins me in the Lesche to discuss how we can detect traces of wedding poetics in early Greek literature, especially poetry (hexamter and lyric). Andromache is the author of Wedding, Gender, and Performance in Ancient Greek Poetry (OUP 2024). Primary texts Iliad , esp. the Teikhoskopeia (Book 3) and the Deception of Zeus (Book 14) Odyssey , esp. the start of Book 6 Homeric Hymn to Demeter Sappho 21 (virginity poem), 44 (Wedding of Hector and Andromache) Pollux 9, on the "torto...
Jan 22, 2025•56 min•Season 1Ep. 10
James Diggle joins me in the Lesche to discuss the 2021 Cambridge Greek Lexicon (2 vols.) of which he was editor-and-chief. We discuss why it was time for this sort of thing (and why it took 24 years to complete), how to use it, and why it improves on LSJ ... plus, how the team approached translating some of the naughtier words. Some links ' Liddell and Scott ' poem by Thomas Hardy (1843) Cambridge Greek Lexicon project page , where you'll also find a video of the Faculty of Classics' publicatio...
Jan 08, 2025•54 min•Season 1Ep. 9
John Ma joins me in the Lesche to discuss the longue durée of the Greek polis . John is the author of the new, monumental, and much anticipated book Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State from the Early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity (Princeton 2024). Happy Holidays! About our guest John Ma was born in New York of Chinese parents. He grew up in Geneva, where he studied Greek and Latin at school and outside school. He went on to study Classics, then ancient history at Oxford. He h...
Dec 25, 2024•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 8
( Spoiler alert! This episode is jam-packed with plot spoilers for THE RETURN.) Homeric scholar Barbara Graziosi joins me in the Lesche to discuss Umberto Pasolini's THE RETURN, a film adaptation of the second half of the Odyssey starring Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope. About our guest Barbara Graziosi is Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies at Princeton, holding the C. Ewing Chair of ancient Greek. Graziosi attended Oxford University (Corpus Christi Co...
Dec 13, 2024•47 min•Season 1Ep. 102
Emma Greensmith and Tim Whitmarsh join me in the Lesche to discuss how Imperial Greek epic fits into our understanding of Ancient Greek epic as a whole. Emma has just edited the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic , and she was also a member of the research project Greek Epic of the Roman Empire: A Cultural History , which Tim directed. About our guests Emma Greensmith is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St John’s College. ...
Dec 11, 2024•55 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Emily Wilson, acclaimed translator, joins me in the Lesche to discuss the challenges and pleasures of translating the Iliad. We discuss the Greek of two passages in detail: Book 6 lines 482-502 and Book 22 lines 199-204 (lines as in the OCT). Ancient texts Homer's Iliad and Odyssey Plato, Hippias Minor Longinus, On the Sublime (ch. 9) Also mentioned Karen Emmerich, Literary Translation and the Making of Originals . Bloomsbury 2017. "Munro's Law", i.e., D. B. Munro's observation that there is no ...
Nov 27, 2024•58 min•Season 1Ep. 6
David M. Pritchard joins me in the Lesche to discuss what appears to have been, in Nicole Loraux's famous words, a "very Athenian invention": the epitaphios logos , or funeral oration given over the war dead at their public burial. Both the Athenian funeral oration and the legacy of Nicole Loraux's pioneering study of it are the subjects of David's new edited volume The Athenian Funeral Oration: After Nicole Loraux. About our guest David M. Pritchard is Associate Professor of Greek History at th...
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Rachel Kousser joins me in the Lesche to discuss Alexander III of Macedon's post-Persepolis campaigns in Asia (330-323 BCE), the subject of her recent book Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great. About our guest Rachel Kousser writes and teaches about Alexander the Great, the destruction of monuments in ancient Greece, and the representation of gender and power in the Mediterranean world. For her work, she has received fellowships from the National En...
Oct 23, 2024•50 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Ferdia Lennon joins me in the Lesche to discuss his award-winning and bestselling novel, Glorious Exploits (UK Penguin Fig Tree/US Macmillan 2024), which is set in Syracuse in the aftermath of the Athenian invasion of Sicily during the Peloponnesian War. About our guest Ferdia Lennon was born and raised in Dublin. He holds a BA in History and Classics from University College Dublin and an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. Glorious Exploits is his first novel. It was broadca...
Oct 09, 2024•49 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Charlie Covell joins me in the Lesche to discuss their hit Netflix show KAOS, a modern, dark dramedic take on Ancient Greek mythology. The show, set in something like modern-day Crete (and on Olympus and in Hades), interweaves stories of Prometheus, the Olympian gods, Orpheus and Eurydice, Minos/Ariadne/Theseus/the Minotaur, and Caeneis. Special thanks on this one to Mike Farah & Jess Sze. About our guest British creator-writer Charlie Covell (pronouns: they/them) recently created the Netfli...
Oct 03, 2024•54 min•Season 1Ep. 101
Leah Lazar and Christy Constantakopoulou join me in the Lesche to discuss their work on the relationship between Athens and its subject communities (the "allies") during the fifth-century Athenian "empire" (ἀρχή). Leah has a new book out on the subject, Athens and Power in the Fifth Century BC ; Christy’s monograph Dance of the Islands (a favorite of my Classical Greek History students) opened up new ways of thinking about the interconnectivity of the empire’s communities when it came out in 200...
Sep 25, 2024•59 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Yvona Trnka-Amrhein and John Gibert join me in the Lesche to discuss their editio princeps of a newly-discovered papyrus (P.Phil.Nec. 23) containing lines from two of Euripides' fragmentary plays, Ino and Poluidos . The publication, in ZPE, is currently only available in print. The ToC for the issue in which it appears is available here . Information about the conference on 'The New Euripides' held at the Center for Hellenic Studies this past June is available here . Pre-prints based on the spea...
Sep 11, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Welcome to Lesche, a podcast on new books and ideas in the field of Ancient Greek Studies. In each episode, we'll be talking to classicists about their latest contributions to the field. We’re going to start by releasing two episodes each month, on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month. The first episode will debut on Wednesday, September 11. You can find us on Instagram, @leschepodcast, or send us an email at leschepodcast@gmail.com If you have an idea for a new book or topic you think ...
Aug 28, 2024•2 min
