Classicist Mary Beard on Feminism, Online Trolls and What Ancient Rome Can Tell Us About Trump
Mary Beard is reclining at such a steep angle that her toes hang several feet above her head. Typing leisurely on her laptop, the Cambridge University historian is polishing off a paragraph of her next book on Ancient Rome. It’ll be one more to add to the hundreds of hefty volumes on classics that jostle for space with mock-Greek busts on the walls of her light-filled home office. When she finally swings back into a more conventional relationship with gravity, she tells TIME that her devotion to the ancient world doesn’t mean she’s out of touch. “I wouldn’t work on Rome if I didn’t think it had something to do with the present. Why would you spend your life buried in the past?”
Over the last decade, Beard’s ability to seamlessly weave her knowledge of Ancient Rome and Greece into lessons on modern politics, culture and society has turned her into the world’s most famous classicist. She has written 18 books and hosted nine TV shows. Along the way, she’s gained a reputation for upending..