Instant Classics

Ancient street scribbles reveal everything from bawdy jokes and brothel notes to election slogans and price lists. They show children’s practice verses, parodying Virgil, and messy spellings that challenge interpretation. These writings act like an ancient social feed, offering fleeting, intimate glimpses of everyday Roman life.

A vivid retelling of the 430 BCE plague that tore Athens apart. They probe Thucydides’ clinical symptom list and his claim to scientific objectivity. The conversation traces social collapse, moral panic, and political fallout including Pericles’ fate. They weigh modern medical theories and draw stark parallels to recent epidemics.

Think Roman food and we imagine extravagant banquets involving rare delicacies. There’s some truth in this, but only for the few. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte ask: what did your average Roman eat?  Cooking at home was only for the very rich - you had to have not only a kitchen, but the staff to manage it. For this reason, most Romans ate on the hoof or at fast food outlets. In Pompeii, for instance, there is surviving evidence of many such establishments: places where citizens could access a pre-cooked meal straight away.  While we know that most Romans ate out, and the sorts of places where they ate, until recently there was very little evidence showing what such establishments served. Modern archaeological techniques are starting to provide answers through the analysis of excrement in Roman lavatories. Comparing the evidence from lavatories in Herculaneum and modern day Scotland, a faeces - sorry, thesis - emerges of people surviving on whatever the local countryside could provide - varying dramatically from region to region - with a few luxury imports for special occasions.    Forget dormice and think cabbage. Lots of it. In myriad ways.  Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading: There is a good overview of the Herculaneum cesspit here: https://www.cambridgeamarantus.com/topics/topic-vi/63/63-evidence And detailed scientific analysis here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11457-018-9218-y  For a brief account of the menu at an ordinary Pompeian bar, see: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/fast-food-joint-pompeii-served-snails-fish-and-wine-new-finds-suggest-180976651/  Cato’s On Agriculture – complete with its praise of cabbage – can be found in English translation here. And some information on the Bearsden latrine analysis @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube@insta_classics for Xemail: instantclassicspod@gmail.com 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

They unpack imperial food theatre, from pearls hidden in rice to Vitellius’s grotesque signature dish. They explore garum, dormice and other curious ingredients from Apicius. They discuss palace logistics, dining rituals and culinary deception as performance. They tease contrasts between extravagant feasts and emperors who preferred frugal fare.

Tom Holland, historian and author famed for narrative histories of Rome and translator of Suetonius. He discusses why Suetonius’ gossip-rich approach speaks to today. He recounts early Roman fascinations from Asterix to Catullus. He explains his translation process and how storytelling shapes portrayals of emperors, power and succession.

They unpack the wild Roman festival of Lupercalia, from naked processions and goat sacrifices to thonged whipping. They trace its links to Romulus, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar scene, and how leaders like Caesar and Augustus reshaped the rites. They also explore why rituals resist neat explanations and how this ancient festival persisted into the Christian era.

A lively tour of Helen’s afterlives across art, literature and film. They track the origin of “the face that launched a thousand ships” and how writers one-up each other. Victorian painters’ creative solutions to depicting impossible beauty get playful scrutiny. Modern casting dilemmas and fresh retellings by contemporary novelists round out a portrait of a perpetually reinvented, unresolved figure.

A brisk journey through Helen’s long return from Troy, including a surprising settled life in Sparta. The puzzling Egypt interlude and the striking eidolon theory that the real Helen never went to Troy. Dramatic retellings from Euripides and rhetorical defenses that recast her as loyal, culpable, or even a unifying figure. Multiple, conflicting endings keep her story delightfully unsettled.

They dissect the new Christopher Nolan trailer and whether the hype is deserved. Discussion of the trailer’s focus on muscular warriors versus a solitary Odysseus. Notes on Nolan’s temporal choices and sci‑fi armour that unsettle fixed images of the poem. Observations about stark Scottish landscapes creating menace and hints the film may play with irony and ambiguity.

When Paris, a Trojan prince, abducted Helen of Sparta, the Greeks came in hot pursuit and besieged Troy for ten years. But what was Helen’s role in all this? Was she really kidnapped, or did she elope? And whose side was she really on during the ensuing war? Mary and Charlotte turn to a variety of ancient texts to explore these questions.  In Homer’s The Iliad - the longest and greatest account of the war - Helen isn’t even one of the main characters. She watches Paris and Menelaus fight a duel in her name, draws the admiration of old men, and spends some sexy time with Paris. In The Odyssey, we find out about her role in the final episode of the war - the Trojan Horse. Here she appears more of a double agent: secretly communicating with Odysseus, but also tormenting his soldiers.   In Virgil’s Aeneid, she is a hate figure and a focus of murderous fantasies for the hero Aeneas. Finally, Mary and Charlotte look at The Trojan Women by Euripides, where Helen defends herself as a victim of the gods and her own beauty. Menelaus plans to slaughter her, but we know by the end of this play that is unlikely. What happens next is the focus of the next episode! @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading: The key sections of the Iliad that feature Helen are Book 3 (where she appears 4 times), Book 6, 342 ff and towards the very end of Book 24. Helen herself and Menelaus tell her story of the war in Odyssey Book 4, esp. 220ff. Aeneas’s outburst against Helen is in Virgil Aeneid Book 2,  567 ff.  Key modern works on Helen and her role in myth and literature are: Ruby Blondell, Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation (Oxford UP, pb, 2015) Bettany Hughes, Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore (Pimlico, pb, 2013) 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