Classic Chats: Daniel Mendelsohn on translating the Odyssey

There are thousands of surviving busts and sculptures of Roman emperors, but… do we actually know what they looked like? The problem is that the function of these statues was less to do with realistically representing the supreme ruler (if at all), and more about asserting his power over the empire. Mary and Charlotte delve into the complexities of representation in ancient Rome.  People across the Roman Empire certainly had an image in mind when they thought about Augustus, because it’s estimated there were over 50,000 sculptures of him – and his profile was on millions of coins. But these idealised images are very different to Suetonius’ descriptions of an almost toothless, blotchy-faced man with various skin conditions. And, of course, Suetonius had his own agenda when it came to describing the emperors of the past. So where does the truth lie? The buff hero of sculpture, the dermatologically fascinating figure of Suetonius, somewhere in between, or none of the above?  There are clues, from documents and other sources, which suggest some attempts at resemblance were made in official portraiture - for some emperors at least. And a remarkable surviving painting of Septimius Severus suggests he may have been black, despite the lack of any written commentary on this subject. But even here… the skin tone may have indicated patriarchal seniority rather than ethnicity. As ever, if we leave you more unsure of your history then when you started, we feel we’re doing our job!  Further reading: Mary has written about Roman imperial portraiture in several places. Try her Emperor of Rome (Profile, pb. 2024), especially the chapter “Face to Face”; or The Twelve Caesars (Princeton UP, pb, 2023) (most of the book is concerned with modern images of emperors, but it starts with Roman versions of emperors) An important turning point in modern studies of Augustus’ portraits was P Zanker’s The Power of Images (UMichigan Press, pb, 1990) One useful discussion of Hadrian’s beard (and there are many others) is C. Vout’s  “What's in a beard? Rethinking Hadrian's Hellenism” in S.Goldbill and R. Osborne, Rethinking Revolutions (Cambridge UP, pb, 2010) Lea  Cline and Nathan Elkins (eds),  The Oxford handbook of Roman imagery and iconography. (Oxford UP, pb., 2025) offers a series of more theoretical approaches.  The Severan Tondo is in the Antikensammlung in Berlin. Here is the object webpage: https://search.smb.museum/en/object/obj-681547 @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: [email protected] Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole  Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mary and Charlotte delve into the stitching of the Bayeux Tapestry, a 224-foot long narrative embroidery charting William the Conqueror’s successful invasion of England in 1066. Little is certain about the creation of the textile, but it was likely commissioned by one of the Norman victors, Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who was granted lands in Kent by his half brother William the Conqueror, shortly after the conquest, and it is widely believed the actual labour was primarily done by women in Canterbury. An English story told by English craftspeople - no wonder England is so excited about its temporary visit to the British Museum.  But what does the Bayeux Tapestry have to do with ancient Greece and Rome? Well, quite a lot actually. There are 338 Latin words on the tapestry, providing added context to the images. The words say things like ‘HIC HAROLD REX INTERFECTUS EST’ (Here King Harold was  killed). Those words also give names to participants lower down the social scale, like Turold and Wadard, who were retainers of Bishop Odo and - who knows? - might have been the Laurel and Hardy of their day.  The Latin words provide a vital piece of evidence to the ‘Made in England’ argument because the Latin is particular (and contains one or two telling inaccuracies). It includes some Norman variations, but also - and here’s the smoking gun - Anglo-Saxon variations too, suggesting that both Norman and Anglo-Saxon hands and minds were involved at various stages. Surely the greatest English-French collab until the Channel Tunnel?  The Latin language is one classical presence in the tapestry, but so too is the narrative form. Scholars have identified several ways in which the tapestry seems to refer to and even verbally echo Virgil’s Aeneid. There are other resonances too, such as the presence of Halley’s Comet (not called Halley’s Comet at the time, of course), which passed close to Earth in 1066. The sighting of a comet early in the Aeneid is one of inciting incidents that sets Aeneas off on his long journey to Italy.   Further reading: A fantastically detailed and well informed series of podcasts from History Extra brings together scholars to talk about the tapestry in 5 episodes - highly recommended if you are lucky enough to have bagged tickets for the British Museum exhibition  https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/unravelling-the-bayeux-tapestry-ep1-when-where-and/id256580326?i=1000513237032 The Bayeux museum has a wonderful version of the complete tapestry online: https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/discover-the-bayeux-tapestry/explore-online/ There is a vast bibliography on the tapestry itself. A major study has been produced by the BM to accompany the show, with more reading suggestions than any could need! The Bayeux Tapestry, edited by Sue Brunning et al (British Museum Press, 2026) The studies of the Latin itself are usually very technical. One of the more approachable is: Gale Owen-Crocker, "The embroidered word: text in the Bayeux Tapestry." , in Signs on the edge: space, text and margin in medieval manuscripts, edited by Sarah Keefer & Rolf  Bremmer, (Rodopi, 2007). On the influence of Virgil in particular, there are two notable articles in journals: N. Rollason and M Lewis, “Harold-as-Aeneas”, Greece and Rome 2020. T. A Heslop, “Regarding the spectators of the Bayeux Tapestry”, Art History 2009 @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: [email protected] Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole  Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mary and Charlotte talk to Daniel Mendelsohn, one of America’s most revered classicists, whose new translation of the Odyssey was published last year.  Daniel’s decision to translate the Odyssey occurred rather unusually. In 2011, his 82-year-old father decided to attend his weekly Odyssey seminar at Bard College. In his memoir An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic (2017), Daniel recounts how through his father’s eyes he came to see the Odyssey differently - as well as their own relationship. In the book, he translated short passages which led to a commission from University of Chicago Press to translate the entire poem.  Daniel talks about the decisions he made in his translation - and, of course, how he tackled the word polytropos. He also talks about the response to his less than enthusiastic review of Nolan’s adaptation, why it’s nevertheless been a great moment for the Odyssey, and why literature is sometimes best when it’s NOT relatable.  Further reading: Slightly confusingly, Mendelsohn’s Odyssey is published by University of Chicago Press in the USA and by Penguin Classics in the UK (adding to Penguin’s array of Odyssey translations). Daniel has his own website: https://www.danielmendelsohn.com/ with links to many of his great classical (and other) essays. Emily Wilson reviewed An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and and Epic in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/13/an-odyssey-a-father-a-son-and-an-epic-by-daniel-mendelsohn-review @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: [email protected] Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole  Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last episode, Mary and Charlotte looked at how Homer’s Odyssey was reinterpreted in the Ancient World by writers like Euripides, Virgil and Ovid. In this episode, they show how it shaped English fiction - from Shakespeare through to Madeline Miller. They are joined by Jonty Claypole - Instant Classics producer and co-host of the Secret Life of Books podcast. One of the great turning points of English literature was George Chapman’s translations of Homer in the 1590s and 1600s which introduced a new generation to Homer’s writing - including Shakespeare who seems to respond to Chapman (and Homer) in plays like Troilus and Cressida and The Tempest.  A hundred years later, the novel emerges with a series of books - Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews - which are implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, responses to The Odyssey. Homer also inspired some of the greatest poems in the English language, including John Keats’ On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer and Tennyson’s Ulysses.  Finally, Mary, Charlotte and Jonty look at how The Odyssey continues to inspire revision and reinterpretation - whether Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Derek Walcott’s Omeros, Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad or Madeline Miller’s Circe.  Further reading:  Richard Holmes’ recent book The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief (Harper Collins, 2025) contains a brilliant description of Tennyson’s Ulysses and the circumstances behind its competition.  Several modern versions of Homer are discussed by Henry Power in his Homer-Haunted: the many after-lives of an ancient poet (Bloomsbury, 2026) Edith Hall explores how the various themes of the Odyssey have been adapted by many modern authors in The Return of Ulysses: A cultural history of Homer’s Odyssey (free online). Jonty’s podcast is Secret Life of Books, which he co-hosts with Sophie Gee. Recent episodes go into more depth on some of the topics above - including whole episodes on Tennyson’s Ulysses and James Joyce’s Ulysses.  There is a free online text of Chapman’s Homer here @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: [email protected] Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole  Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ever since the Odyssey was composed, people have retold the story, played with it or used it as a departure point for similar or related stories. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte look at what happened next. How the Odyssey inspired other writers long before Christopher Nolan thought of adapting it for the big screen.  As now, the ancients were drawn to certain episodes more than others. One was the cyclops, who becomes the unlikely subject of a satyr play (think Benny Hill sex comedy) by the playwright Euripides in the 5th century BCE. two hundred years later, the poet Theocritus imagines the cyclops as an articulate, love-sick shepherd. Meanwhile, Apollonius of Rhodes responded to the epic scope of Homer’s story with the Argonautica - a famous story about Jason and his crew of Argonauts searching for the Golden Fleece.  Roman authors were equally drawn to the Odyssey. Virgil used it as a template for a foundation myth for Rome - a Trojan prince leaves Troy, experiences various adventures, including a trip to the underworld, and ends by founding Rome. Ovid, who takes a rather less referential approach to the Odyssey in his Metamorphoses, has a brilliant scene where he retells the Circe story from the point of view of Odysseus’ men as they are turned into pigs.  Further reading  The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes is available in World’s Classics and Penguin Classics English translations Plutarch’s Gryllus is available online in translation Theocritus’s Idylls are available in translation online - Idyll 11 is the Cyclops poem  Ovid’s Metamorphoses can be found in many translations, and also a decent one online. Circe and her pigs appear in book 14 Virgil’s Aeneid – there are many recent translations including by Sarah Ruden from Yale and online.   @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: [email protected] Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole  Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Few elements of ancient Rome have inspired quite such lurid speculation – by the Romans as well as ourselves – as the vestal virgins. Mary and Charlotte enter the (imaginary) temple of Vesta to separate fact from myth.  The Vestal Virgins were six (at any given time) priestesses who tended the eternal flame at the Temple of Vesta - goddess of hearth, home and family. As their name suggests, they weren’t allowed to have sex, although could retire from duties (and marry) at the age of 30. Maintaining chastity was evidently a challenge of the job - or perceived as one - because several vestals were put to death for breaking their vows over the centuries. In exchange for this life of piety, they enjoyed certain privileges - such as being able to sit in the front row of the colosseum - and were power-brokers in Rome, even looking after Julius Caesar’s will (for any Dune fans, think Bene Gesserit!) Charlotte grills Mary about an early article she wrote on the Vestals in 1980, in which she argued that the role of the virgins wasn’t to adhere to traditional notions of female purity, but actually to challenge them - the vestals shared privileges unique to married women, unmarried women and men. They were both gendered and ungendered, which is what makes them so compelling. Fifteen years later, Mary wrote another article which took (slight) issue with her earlier one, questioning to what extent the Romans even had ‘traditional notions’ of gender. Further reading  Mary’s landmark (this is Charlotte’s editorialising!) article on the Vestal Virgins (“The sexual status of Vestal Virgins”) was published in the Journal of Roman Studies 1980; her reassessment is in R Hawley and B Levick (eds), Women in Antiquity: New Assessments (Routledge, pb, 1995) Booklength studies of  the Vestals include: Robin Wildfang, Rome’s Vestal Virgins (Routledge, pb, 2006) S. A. Takacs, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls and Matrons (UTexas Press, pb, 2008) Ariadne Staples, From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins (Routledge, pb, 2012) For their portraits: Molly Lindner, Portraits of the Vestal Virgins (UMichigan Press, 2015) At the time she wrote her first article on the Vestals, Mary was very influenced by Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (Routledge, pb, reissued 2002; originally published 1966) @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube@insta_classics for Xemail: [email protected] Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole  Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mary and Charlotte talk to best-selling author Robert Harris about his new novel ‘Agrippa’. Robert Harris has published 16 novels, of which nine have been made into films, including The Ghost Writer, Enigma and the Oscar-winning papal thriller Conclave. Five of Robert’s novels are set in Ancient Rome: the Cicero Trilogy, Pompeii and Agrippa.  Robert discovered Agrippa while researching the Cicero Trilogy and became increasingly interested in this decisive, but largely forgotten figure, whose legacy is everywhere in Ancient Rome. He describes what interested him in the story: the friendship between the aristocratic Augustus and his plebeian sidekick, and the tension that inevitably developed between the two. He compares Augustus and Agrippa to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, only with higher stakes.  Further reading: We covered the history of this period in the last episode, with further reading in the shownotes. If you haven’t read Robert’s other Roman novels, they are all available in paperback: Pompeii (Arrow pb, 2009) (A younger Mary Beard “fact-checked for the hard-back version of this – though didn’t find many mistakes!) The Cicero Trilogy, Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator (Arrow pb, 2009, 2010, 2016) Aprippa is published in hardback by Hutchinson Heinemann, 27 August, 2026 @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube@insta_classics for Xemail: [email protected] Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole  Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Of all the Roman Emperors, Augustus has the reputation of being the most… well… august. That is to say, competent, level-headed and judicious. Not to mention one of the few who died of natural causes. But, according to Mary and Charlotte, the main reason Augustus got anything done is because he had a secret weapon in the form of Marcus Agrippa.  We don’t know much about Marcus Agrippa’s early life, because he didn’t come from the aristocracy, but by the time he was thirty Augustus couldn’t do much without him. There is evidence that Agrippa managed the battles for which Augustus is famous, including the Battle of Actium, while Augustus pulled another sickie. When not defeating Rome’s enemies, Agrippa put a great deal of energy into building works. He constructed baths, temples (including the original Pantheon) and aqueducts. There are even stories of him getting onto a boat and rowing amidst the faeces of the Cloaca Maxima - Rome’s sewage system - to oversee improvements.  While Agrippa did not come from the upper classes, he ended up there. He is buried with the imperial family in the mausoleum of Augustus (which you can still visit) and his great-grandson Nero became emperor. Perhaps, when we call some great figure ‘august’, we should call them ‘agrippan’ instead!  Further reading:  Lindsay Powell, Marcus Agrippa: Right-hand man of Caesar Augustus (Pen and Sword, pb, 2023) is the fullest recent biography of Agrippa (otherwise, in English, you have to go back to the 1930s) For the archaeology, the Pantheon in Rome remains Agrippa’s greatest and most visible monument, with his name prominently displayed (albeit rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian, probably to a new plan). The probable residence of Agrippa and Julia in Rome lies underneath the later, Renaissance, Villa Farnesina near the Tiber bank. Both were exquisitely decorated. You can still see Raphael's designs in the later villa. Most of the major ancient paintings from Agrippa’s property have been removed to the Palazzo Massimo museum. The archaeology is briefly discussed here: https://www.digitalaugustanrome.org/records/villa-farnesina/ Paintings from another villa owned by Agrippa, at Boscotrecase outside Pompeii, can be seen in the Met Museum in New York.  @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: [email protected] Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole  Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A few months back we spoke to Emily Wilson on our subscriber series Exploring the Odyssey. Emily has been in the news recently, partly because her acclaimed 2017 translation of The Odyssey inspired Christopher Nolan, and partly because her criticisms of Nolan’s film have sparked debate. So we thought we would share the episode here on Instant Classics. In  the episode, Emily tells Mary and Charlotte why translating from Ancient Greek to modern English is so difficult, the choices she had to make from the outset and the challenges she encountered once underway.  In a surprise revelation, Emily confesses that she enjoyed the process so much she has decided to do it all over again and will ultimately publish a SECOND translation of The Odyssey - which is the equivalent of Odysseus spending ten years getting home only to decide he enjoyed the experience so much he’s going to repeat the whole trip.  Further reading: One of Mary’s favourite ancient “reflections” on the story of Odysseus (inc the Laestrygonians) is the so-called “Odyssey landscapes” found in Rome, an ancient depiction of this part of the Odyssey story. If you are interested in digging down into different translations, Patrick Reardon has a useful online essay, which compares passages of Emily’s translation with Daniel Mendelsohn’s and Richmond Lattimore’s. The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson, is published in paperback by Norton Her volume of essays, Crossing the Wine-dark Sea, is published by Profile Books. Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole  Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mary talks to Charlotte about her book Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War. For the last four years, Charlotte has returned repeatedly to Ukraine to report on the cultural life of the nation as it defends itself against Russia. Part of Putin’s attempts to legitimise the war lies in an age-old argument that Ukraine is simply an extension, or part of, Russia itself. Art and culture have always played a critical role in Ukraine’s identity and self-determinism –and never more so than now.  Charlotte talks about what first took her to Ukraine in 2022, some of what she has learned over the last four years, and how reading the classics, especially Homer and Greek tragedy, have helped her make sense of the current situation. And Mary and Charlotte discuss Ukraine’s classical past: histories of Ukraine often start with Herodotus and his account of the Scythians of the steppe; and the Black Sea coast, and Crimea, are dotted with some of the earliest Greek “colonies” or trading emporia. Further reading  Charlotte’s book Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War (Cape) is published on 20 August. Charlotte and Mary also mentioned Oleksandr Mykhed’s book The Language of War (Penguin, paperback, 2026), and Cassandra by Lesia Ukrainka (HURI, 2023) On the classical connections of Ukraine, there is a good introduction to the ruins of Olbia. Euripides’ fifth-century play, Iphigeneia in Tauris (Iphigeneia among the Taurians) is set in the Crimean peninsula (English translations widely available in Oxford World’s Classics, Penguin Classics etc).  A BBC news article about the return of Scythian artefacts to Kyiv after a decade of court hearings. @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: [email protected] Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole  Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices