Mary Beard

“No women in ancient Rome ever had the vote.”

“I remember plastering the kitchen with Black Power pictures of Angela Davis.”

“What I find very interesting is, we're not enthralled by the ancient world, and we've escaped all kinds of ancient preconceptions and assumptions and prejudices. But, nevertheless, we still...”

“At 16, I got into local-education archaeology classes - you got to go to summer digs. It allowed me to be both intellectual and a bad girl with a wicked social life every evening!”

“I was into Black Power, and my practice Oxbridge essay was a rant. The headmistress said I'd never get in with that, but she was probably wrong. I was the ideal combination: a swot who was a...”

“I think you have to realize that most ancient warfare is really kind of hit and run, honestly. You go and you bash down the walls of some enemy 50 miles away and you take some slaves, you ta...”

“My mother took me to the British Museum aged five. I had thought people from the past weren't as good as we were, and then I saw the Elgin marbles. Suddenly, the world seemed more complicate...”

“I used to think that the British press were particularly awful to Cherie Blair. I think Blair's foreign policy was a complete disaster, but the British press, when they wanted to explain why...”

“The building blocks of discrimination tend to be similar wherever you find them.”

“We lived in the schoolhouse of the village school in Church Preen, in deepest Shropshire, and my mum was the schoolmistress. She taught the juniors, and one other teacher taught the infants....”

“We make two mistakes about the ancient world. One is to assume they were better than us - that, for instance, the ancient Olympics didn't involve money-making. The opposite mistake, and just...”

“One of its most powerful weapons has always been 'barbarity': 'we' know that 'we' are civilised by contrasting ourselves with those we deem to be un-civilised, with those who do not - or can...”

“In 1984, I returned to Newnham College at Cambridge University to teach after completing my Ph.D. there a couple of years earlier. Almost all of my colleagues in the university's classics de...”

“I loved 'Gladiator,' and I thought its depiction of gladiatorial combat, although it was an aggrandizing picture, was cleverly and expertly done.”

“I think that what will help women get into positions of power - well, day nurseries, equal pay, family-friendly working hours. And I think all that's important. I used to think it was the so...”

“I knew that Trump was ghastly. I knew I'd vote for Hillary if I had a vote.”

“I have lots of heroes and heroines, mostly unsung and including my husband.”

“It's great fun being an academic because you have a certain licence to be a bit of a joker.”

“However judicious academics may be - not like me - they are all taught to see through crap.”

“People who exploit others come to spend an enormous amount of energy wondering about and justifying that exploitation.”