Instant Classics

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)

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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