Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

Mirjam E. Kotwick joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book The Ancient Interpretation of Dreams: Early Greek Hermeneutics and Its Sources, which is hot off the (Princeton University) press.

For more on Katerina Evangelatou's 2015 production of Rhesus, as part of the Epidaurus-Athens Theatre Festival, see this article by Scott Andrew Cally in Didascalia.

Ancient works 

• Homer, Odyssey: Penelope's dream in Book 19
• Aesc...

Daniel Schillinger joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book Luckless: The Idea of Luck in Ancient Greek Thought, which recently appeared with Oxford University Press.

Find out more about Daniel's work here: https://www.danielschillinger.com/

Ancient authors and texts

• Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
• Euripides, Trojan Women (and Hippolytus)
• Thucydides
• Aristotle, Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, Poetics (Daniel's book also contains a chapter o...

Scott Lawin Arcenas joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book, Political Violence in Ancient Greece: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to Stasis, 500-301 BCE (Cambridge University Press 2026).

Ancient texts (select)

• Homer, Odyssey and Iliad
• Alcaeus
• Solon
• Herodotus, esp. the account of the stasis in Chios
• Thucydides, esp. the account of the stasis at Corcyra (Book 3)   
• Xenophon, Hellenika, esp. the account of stas...

Content warning: This episode contains detailed descriptions of childbirth complications -- including maternal and infant mortality -- and of how such complications were handled by ancient midwives and physicians. There are graphic references to surgical procedures.

Tara Mulder joins me in the Lesche to discuss her brand new book, A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome (University of California P...

Eric Csapo and Peter Wilson join me in the Lesche to discuss their three-volume A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC (Cambridge University Press).

Volume 1, The Theatre Festivals of Athens: Documents with Translation and Commentary, appeared earlier this year. Volume 2, Theatre Beyond Athens: Documents with Translation and Commentary, came out in 2020. Volume 3, on theater personnel and individuals associated with ...

Bill Beck joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new translation of the vetera scholia to Iliad Book 1-2: The Ancient Scholia to Homer's Iliad: A Translation, Volume 1 (Cambridge 2025). The book is the first in a series dedicated to translation of the Iliadic scholia.

For an episode on the Iliad itself, and its translation, see Lesche episode 1.6, "Translating the Iliad, with Emily Wilson" (by far the most popular Lesche episode ever...

Art historian Verity Platt joins me in the Lesche to discuss her much-anticipated new book Epistemic Impressions: Making and Mediating Classical Art and Text (Oxford 2026).

On May 11, the Queen Mary University of London Imagination Research Network will be hosting a "launch symposium" to celebrate the book's publication. Information and tickets are available here.

The novel that Verity recommends at the end of the podcast is When the...

Marie-Louise Nosch, former director of the Centre for Textile Research at the Saxo Institute of the University of Copenhagen, joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book Time of Textiles in Ancient Greece (DeGruyter 2025).

If you like this episode, you might also enjoy Lesche episode 1.10, "Wedding Poetics in Ancient Greek Literature," with Andromache Karanika.

Ancient texts

• Homer, Iliad and Odyssey (lots of weaving scenes)
• Hesi...

Christos C. Tsagalis joins me in the Lesche to discuss the Doloneia, i.e., Iliad 10, which is the topic of both Christos' monograph The Homeric Doloneia: Evolution and Shaping of Iliad 10 (Oxford 2024) and his chapter in Jonathan Ready's recent edited volume, the Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Iliad (Oxford 2024).

The Doloneia/Iliad 10 is traditionally divided into two sections: the Nyktegersia (the 'night watch' or nocturnal coun...

Rosa Andújar joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book, Playing the Chorus in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 2025).

Tragedies mentioned

Aeschylus

• Agamemnon (chorus fragmentation)
• Seven Against Thebes (use of semi-choruses)
• Suppliant Women ("choral swarm" with multiple groups)

Sophocles

• Oedipus Rex (actor-chorus interaction)

Euripides

• Phaethon ( "augmentation" and secondary choruses)
• Trojan Women (chorus entering in frag...

Michael Satlow joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book An Enchanted World: The Shared Religious Landscape of Late Antiquity, which will be published on February 3 by Princeton University Press. 

Resources

"Lived Religion Project" at the University of Erfurt's Max Weber Institute 

If you're new to Late Antiquity, the foundational work is Peter Brown's 1971 The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150-750. It's been reissued in ...

Piero Boitani joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book Timaeus in Paradise: Metaphors and Beauty from Plato to Dante and Beyond (Princeton University Press 2025). 

Ancient texts

• Hebrew Bible, Genesis
• Plato: Timaeus, Phaedrus, Symposium, Apology
• Aristotle: Nicomachaean Ethics
• Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
• Ovid, Metamorphoses
• Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation (de Opificio mundi: treatise on the Genesis creation narrative)
• New ...

Inger Kuin joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book Diogenes: The Rebellious Life and Revolutionary Philosophy of the Original Cynic (Basic Books 2025). 

Ancient sources

• Aristotle, Politics 1.3-7 (on 'natural' slavery)
• Diogenes Laertius, 2.6, Life of Diogenes
• Plutarch, Life of Alexander 14 (on the 'get out of my sun' episode)
• Xenophon, Anabasis 5-6 (on Sinope, Diogenes' birthplace)
• Other Diogenes testimonia from ...

Tatiana Bur joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge University Press 2025). 

Ancient texts

• Homer, Iliad 18 (on Hephaestus and his self-moving tripods) 
• Many Athenian tragedies and comedies that made use of the μηχανή or κράδη (in comedy)
• Aristotle, Poetics (on the theatrical ‘crane’/μηχανή) 
• The Aristotelian/Peripatetic work Mechani...

Mary Beard, Classics editor at the Times Literary Supplement, and Clifford Ando, senior editor of the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, join me in the Lesche to discuss the state of Classics reviewing today. 

• How do the TLS and BMCR assign appropriate reviewers? 
• What makes for a good review? 
• What's the line between critique and nastiness? 
• Why are reviews these days so often lacking in susbtantive criticism? 
• Wh...

Harvard University historian Paul Kosmin joins me in the Lesche to discuss his recent book The Ancient Shore (Harvard University Press 2024), winner of the American Historical Association's 2025 Prize in History Prior to CE 1000. 

Works mentioned

• Agatharchides of Cnidus, On the Erythraean Sea (2nd C. BC)
• Philip de Loutherbourg, "Shipwreck" (painting, 1793).
• Demuth, Bathsheba. 2019. Floating Coast: An Environmental History of t...

James Romm joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new biography Demosthenes: Democracy's Defender. The book is a part of Yale University Press's Ancient Lives series, of which James is also the editor. 

James's author website

Ancient texts mentioned

• Demosthenes, speeches
• Aeschines, speeches

About our guest

James Romm is an author, reviewer, and the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College in Annandale, NY. ...

Sam Holzman joins me in the Lesche to discuss "bilingual" Ionic column capitals (i.e., column capitals that combined an archaic convex style of relief carving with a more modern concave style). These are the subject of his book Retrospective Columns: Ionic Capitals and Perceptions of the Past in Greek Architecture, which just came out with Princeton University Press.

Ancient source

• Vitruvius, de Architectura, esp. Books 3 & 4...

Dan-el Padilla Peralta joins me in the Lesche to discuss the critique of classicism that he articulates in his recent book Classicism and Other Phobias (PUP 2025).

Works mentioned (select)

• Adeshei Carter, Jacoby. “Racing the Canon.” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Race, edited by Paul C. Taylor, Linda Martín Alcoff, and Luvell Anderson, 163–174. New York: Routledge, 2017.
• Baldwin, James. “Strang...