Christopher Pelling, Maria Wyke

Twelve Voices from Greece and Rome: Ancient Ideas for Modern Times

Professors Christopher Pelling and Maria Wyke select 12 of the most important voices from ancient Greece and Rome that still have resonance for the 21st-century reader. Pelling and Wyke explain why the writings of Homer Sappho Herodotus Euripides Thucydides Plato Caesar Cicero Virgil Horace Juvenal and Tacitus have resonated so strongly over the centuries. What do they have to say about such things as war and courage dictatorship and democracy empire immigration city life art madness and religion and why are we drawn to what they have to say even today? Pelling is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford and author of Literary Texts and the Greek Historian and Plutarch and History: Eighteen Studies. Wyke is professor of Latin at University College London and author of The Roman Mistress: Ancient and Modern Representations Caesar: A Life in Western Culture and Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome Cinema and History.Discussions will be chaired by retired academic Professor Oliver Taplin an expert in ancient Greek epic tragedy and comedy and author of Greek Fire a celebration of Greek culture's ability to stand the test of time that accompanied a Channel 4 documentary series of the same name.