THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, for the very special 100th EPISODE, we interview one of the world’s leading cultural commentators and most important voices in Classics, Professor Dame MARY BEARD!!

A specialist in Roman history and art, Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Newnham College, where she has been since 1984. She is also Professor of Ancient Literature at the Royal Academy, Classics editor of the TLS and a Fellow of the British Academy and International Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

One of the most important writers of our age, Mary Beard has written groundbreaking scholarship, books, documentaries and articles on the subject such as The Parthenon, Pompeii: Life in a Roman Town, Laughter in Ancient Rome, and SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, And more recently, Women and Power: A Manifesto and Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern about Roman Emperors in Renaissance and later art, two books which shifted my understanding of the perception and role of women in society today and the nature of power in our Western word … and I couldn’t be more honoured to have her on for this very special episode of the Great Women Artists Podcast.

In this episode we discuss the women artists in the ancient world, the perception of women from ancient times to the present day – looking at Livia, Melassina, Agrippina, and Cleopatra – and the effect of the depictions of women from the ancient world – Venus, Medusa, Athena, Lilith – and how they filter into society today.

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Twelve Caesars (2021): www.waterstones.com/book/twelve-cae…d/9780691222363

Women & Power (2017): www.waterstones.com/book/women-and-…d/9781788160612

Lecture by Mary Beard on women of the 12 Caesars: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB7W0UzVP24

Edmonia Lewis The Death of Cleopatra (completed 1876)
americanart.si.edu/artwork/death-cleopatra-33878

Detail from The House of the Surgeon, a panelled painting in Pompeii (c.50-79 AD) - shows a woman in front of a painted canvas holding a paintbrush and mixing her paints:
www.theancientartblog.com/post/women-p…in-antiquity

Women artists in antiquity:
www.theancientartblog.com/post/women-p…in-antiquity

by Heather Pringle • The rich, the poor, and the battle for the Bay of Naples.

The original story, along with photos and illustrations, can be found on hakaimagazine.com.

Thanks to a closer look at Elusa’s municipal garbage dumps, however, archaeologists now realize that the city’s decline occurred almost a century before Islamic influences entered the area, during what had traditionally been considered the peak of the Byzantine period. The culprit? A quick and deadly shift in climate brought about by a succession of distant volcanic eruptions. 

After digging through layers of refuse like ash from fireplaces, bones from meat and fish, seeds from grapes and olives, discarded construction material, and broken wine jugs, the researchers found that the main dumps stopped receiving trash around 550. 

The end of trash management at Elusa does, however, correlates with new developments in climate science, which show that the middle of the sixth century was actually a horrible time to be alive in most of Europe and Asia. 

The researchers suggested that the climate events may also be associated with major social changes that started in the middle of the sixth century, from the expansion of Slavic populations west into much of continental Europe, to the collapse of the eastern Turk Empire in northeast Asia. The Late Antique Little Ice Age may have also facilitated the world’s first recorded pandemic outbreak of the bubonic plague, known as the Plague of Justinian, which spread throughout the Mediterranean beginning in 541.

Historians and authors have speculated on the fall of Roman civilization for centuries, and the findings from Elusa are part of new trend to look at the complex web of environmental factors that might have influenced social change across the empire.