Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

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 textsHomer, 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 Mechanical Questions (Μηχανικά)Philo of Byzantium, Μηχανική Σύνταξη Works on mechanics by Hero of Alexandria Polybios, History 12.13, on the mechanical snail in the procession at Athens Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.5, on Herodes Atticus’ mechanical Panathenaic shipAthenaeus, Deipnosophistai 196a-203c, on the πομπή of Ptolemy PhiladelphusModern bibliographyEric Csapo's work on ancient theaterAlfred Gell’s work on art agency, particularly "technologies of enchantment"Susan Harvey, 2006. Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. Berkeley, Ca. Verity Platt, 2011. Facing the Gods: Epiphany in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature, and Religion. Cambridge.Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, 1997. Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube. Stanford, CA.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

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? What do editors wish review authors knew or would consider before writing a review? Some bibliographyClifford Ando, "BMCR: A view under the hood." Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2022.11.26. (Read all the papers from the 30th anniversary celebration of BMCR here. Several deal with book reviewing.)Mary Beard, Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations. Liveright 2013. (See especially the Afterword, "Reviewing Classics".)Daniel Mendelsohn, "A Critic's Manifesto," The New Yorker, August 28, 2012.About our guestsClifford Ando teaches Classics and History at the University of Chicago.  His work focuses on the histories of law, religion, and government in the ancient world.  He is the author, editor, and translator of some 20 books, and he has served as an editor, associate editor, or senior editor of Bryn Mawr Classical Review for not quite twenty years.Mary Beard is professor emerita of classics at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Newnham College, and professor of Ancient Literature at the Royal Academy. She is also the classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, a fellow of the British Academy, and an international member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  She is the author of more than twenty books on the ancient world. Her latest book, Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old, is due out in spring 2026 with Profile Books (UK) and the University of Chicago Press (USA).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

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 mentionedAgatharchides of Cnidus, On the Erythraean Sea (2nd C. BC)Philip de Loutherbourg, "Shipwreck" (painting, 1793).Demuth, Bathsheba. 2019. Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait. W. W. Norton.Dening, Gregory Moore. 1980. Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land, Marquesas, 1774–1880. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.About our guestPaul Kosmin completed his undergraduate degree at Oxford and earned a PhD in Ancient History from Harvard University in 2012. He was appointed an Assistant Professor in Harvard's Classics Department in 2012, was tenured in 2019, and in 2020 became the Philip J. King Professor of Ancient History, where he currently serves as Interim Chair. His research focuses on the political and cultural history of the ancient Greek world, concentrating on the globalizing and colonial Hellenistic period, and now includes an environmentally-oriented turn.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

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 websiteAncient texts mentionedDemosthenes, speechesAeschines, speechesAbout our guestJames Romm is an author, reviewer, and the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College in Annandale, NY. He specializes in ancient Greek and Roman culture and civilization. His reviews and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the London Review of Books, the Daily Beast, and other venues. He has held the Guggenheim Fellowship (1999-2000), the Birkelund Fellowship at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at the New York Public Library (2010-11), and a Biography Fellowship at the Leon Levy Center of the City University of New York (2014-15).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form

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 sourceVitruvius, de Architectura, esp. Books 3 & 4.Modern worksArchitectural drawings in James Stuart and Nicholas Revett's Antiquities of Athens and Julien-David Le Roy's Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce.Alzinger, Wilhelm. 1967. "Alt-Ephesos: Topographie und Architektur." Das Altertum 13.1: 20-44.Hanink, Johanna. Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy. Cambridge 2014.Rudwick, Martin J. S. 1976. "The Emergence of a Visual Language for Geological Science 1760—1840," History of Science 14.3: 149-95.Schmidt-Dounas, Barbara. 2005. "Frühe Peripteraltempel in Nordgriechenland." Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 120: 107-41.About our guestSam Holzman is an assistant professor in the Department of Art & Archaeology and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University. He received his BA from Brown, where his senior thesis advisor in Classics was none other than Professor Hanink! He also received an MPhil from Cambridge and PhD from UPenn. He has excavated in Greece and Turkey and now leads the architectural research team of American Excavations Samothrace. ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form