Emily Wilson, celebrated classicist and translator of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, is back to take on another twelve vital works of Greek and Roman literature with the LRB’s Thomas Jones, loosely themed around truth and lies – from from Aesop’s Fables to Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.
Episodes will appear once a month throughout 2024.
Among the Ancients is part of the Close Readings podcasts collection from the London Review of Books.
To listen to all the series in full, subscribe:
Directly in Apple Podcasts at the top of this podcast
For Spotify and other podcast apps here: https://lrb.supportingcast.fm/close-readings
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Emily Wilson, celebrated classicist and translator of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, is back to take on another twelve vital works of Greek and Roman literature with the LRB’s Thomas Jones, loosely themed around truth and lies – from from Aesop’s Fables to Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.
Episodes will appear once a month throughout 2024.
Among the Ancients is part of the Close Readings podcasts collection from the London Review of Books.
To listen to all the series in full, subscribe:
Directly in Apple Podcasts at the top of this podcast
For Spotify and other podcast apps here: https://lrb.supportingcast.fm/close-readings
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Plato’s 'Symposium', his philosophical dialogue on love, or eros, was probably written around 380 BCE, but it’s set in 416, during the uneasy truce between Athens and Sparta in the middle of the Peloponnesian War. A symposium was a drinking party, though Socrates and his friends, having had a heavy evening the night before, decide to go easy on the wine and instead take turns making speeches in praise of love – at least until Alcibiades turns up, very late and very drunk. In this episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom discuss the dialogue’s philosophical ideas, historical context and narrative form, and why Aristophanes gets the hiccups.
Non-subscriber will only hear extracts from the rest of this series. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up:
Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq
In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings
Further reading:
Donald Davidson: Plato’s Philosopher
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v07/n14/donald-davidson/plato-s-philosopher
Anne Carson: Oh What a Night (Alkibiades)
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n22/anne-carson/oh-what-a-night-alkibiades
M.F. Burnyeat: Art and Mimesis in Plato’s Republic
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n10/m.f.-burnyeat/art-and-mimesis-in-plato-s-republic
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.