{"id":12923,"date":"2026-04-22T14:00:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T14:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=12923"},"modified":"2026-05-08T01:32:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T01:32:25","slug":"talking-classics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/22\/talking-classics\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking Classics"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Crumbling Foundations<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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In Talking Classics<\/em>, Mary Beard rejects old justifications for studying classics but fails to articulate compelling reasons of her own.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Sebastian Neri<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the academic study of the classics is aware of its long, slow decline. Greek and Latin, once the cornerstones of liberal education, have steadily receded from university curricula, in some cases disappearing altogether. This shift reflects deeper changes in our understanding of the purpose of higher education and our relationship to our shared history. The old foundations of classical studies have been unsettled, and no compelling new foundation has taken their place. Mary Beard\u2019s new book Talking Classics<\/em> is, in this respect, an illuminating account of the discipline\u2019s present predicament, though an unsatisfying defense of its continued importance.<\/p>

Mary Beard opens Talking Classics<\/em> with a reflection on thauma<\/em>\u2014wonder\u2014recalling her encounter with a four-thousand-year-old piece of bread in the British Museum. It is this sense of wonder that first drew her to the ancient world, and it is here that the book is at its most compelling. Beard captures well the peculiar doubleness of antiquity: at once remote and yet strangely familiar. What initially captivated her were not the grand narratives of epic poetry or martial heroism, but small, ordinary remnants of daily life that seemed to collapse the gap of time and space. For readers like myself who first encountered the classics through Homeric epics, this offers a refreshing alternative point of access. There is something pleasant and quietly persuasive in Beard\u2019s attention to these overlooked details, and she effectively shows that there are many paths by which one might be drawn into the ancient world.<\/p>

In the second chapter, Beard shifts from autobiography to argument, challenging the common assumption that \u201cthe classics\u201d as such constitute a stable canon of universally admired works or fixed values. Instead, she emphasizes their instability. For instance, texts and artworks now regarded as exemplary were often controversial, contested, or ambiguously received in their own time. The Aphrodite of Knidos<\/em> and the Aeneid<\/em> serve as her primary examples, each illustrating how modern reverence can obscure contemporary complexity. The former was among the first nude female sculptures, while the latter challenged Roman attitudes of cultural superiority.<\/p>

There is certainly truth in this; the Greeks and the Romans held a variety of outlooks on aesthetics, politics, and life in general. Yet this revisionary impulse risks flattening important distinctions. That a work was once controversial or ambiguous does not mean that it cannot also be genuinely excellent. If anything, the enduring power of texts like the Aeneid<\/em> may lie precisely in their capacity to sustain competing interpretations without collapsing into incoherence. Beard is surely right to remind us that antiquity was not a monolith, but a living, argumentative\u2014indeed, deeply agonistic\u2014culture. Still, she exhibits too strong a reluctance to judge, as if affirming the greatness of certain works would mean reasserting the very hierarchy she seeks to complicate.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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That a work was once controversial or ambiguous does not mean that it cannot also be genuinely excellent.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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This hesitation becomes more pronounced when Beard turns to broader claims about what is often called the \u201cGreek miracle.\u201d She is skeptical about the uniqueness of Greek achievement, emphasizing instead the likelihood that practices such as philosophy, history, and drama did not emerge ex nihilo<\/em>. This is, in part, a reasonable suggestion. And yet, the corrective risks obscuring what remains genuinely remarkable: the density, range, and lasting influence of Greek intellectual and artistic production emerging from its tiny population. From classical Athens, a small polis of fewer than 100,000 citizens, emerged both a vibrant civic culture and foundational ideas such as citizenship and phusis<\/em> (nature), the latter underpinning later secular science. To deny this distinctiveness altogether is not so much to refine the traditional account as to evacuate it of explanatory force.<\/p>

This same tendency to flatten or overcorrect appears in Mary Beard\u2019s discussion of how the classics have been appropriated in modern political contexts. She traces the ways in which antiquity has been invoked to justify an array of causes, from the far left to the far right, and rightly notes that the ancient world has long served as a reservoir of symbols for competing visions of order and freedom. Yet the people she critiques often feel less like fully realized interlocutors and more like caricatures. The observation that ancient marble statues were originally painted, for instance, is introduced as a corrective to modern aesthetic and political projections, particularly those attributed to white nationalists. But it is unclear who, precisely, remains to be corrected given how widely known polychromy has become. More importantly, the colored reconstructions themselves complicate the point since they often depict figures with light skin, blond or red hair, and light-colored eyes. The result is that what is meant as a corrective dissolves into mere gesture, accusing misuse without truly clarifying the object of critique.<\/p>

More broadly, these chapters raise a deeper question: whether the classics can be anything more than a contested field of interpretation, ever shaped by the mood of the present. Beard is keen to dismantle the notion that antiquity offers a unified, stable set of moral or cultural exemplars. Yet in doing so, she leaves largely unaddressed the possibility that certain works endure not merely because they are reinterpreted, but because they contain real insights about human life and truths applicable across time.<\/p>

It is here that the book\u2019s underlying difficulty comes most clearly into view. When Beard turns to the question of why the classics should be studied, her answer is notably restrained. Rather than defending their formative power, their civilizational significance, or their claim to convey enduring truths, she offers a more modest account: that they train us to read carefully, to grapple with fragmentary evidence, and to navigate uncertainty. These are genuine intellectual goods, but they sit uneasily beside what has historically been the central justification for classical study, namely that the legacy of the Greeks and Romans forms the very foundation of what we call Western civilization. Beard acknowledges this more traditional view only to set it aside, noting that many contemporary scholars are reluctant to affirm it, and offers no attempt to reconsider it on stronger grounds. Consequently, her account of why these texts, rather than others, should occupy a privileged place in education is rendered rather thin. After all, if the Greeks and Romans had no formative power, no bearing on the origin of our own civilization, and no unique contributions, then why study classics instead of the canon of some other civilization, such as China or India?<\/p>

In the end, the question Beard raises but does not fully answer remains unavoidable. Why the classics? Why these texts, these languages, this inheritance? If they do not shape us, if they do not belong in any special sense to the civilization we inhabit, and if they offer nothing that cannot be found elsewhere, then their place in education becomes difficult to justify. Beard is too careful a scholar to supply easy answers. But her hesitation may point to a deeper problem: not that the classics lack meaning, but that we have lost confidence in our ability to recognize and defend it.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sebastian Neri <\/strong>is the Manager of Marketing and Communications at the Witherspoon Institute. Before joining Witherspoon, he worked in logistics and sales operations at a national freight brokerage, and previously interned at the Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture. He holds a B.A. in History from Drexel University, where his academic work focused on classical political thought, ancient virtue ethics, and the metaphysical foundations of public life.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old <\/strong><\/em>will be published by University of Chicago Press in May 2026. Fare Forward<\/em> appreciates their provision of a review copy. You can purchase your own copy\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Talking Classics, Mary Beard rejects old justifications for studying classics but fails to articulate compelling reasons of her own. 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