Quotes from Bettany Hughes

I cannot write history unless I travel to the places where it happened. I spent a lot of time walking around the Eastern Mediterranean, going to all the shrines that Socrates would have worshiped at, going to all the battlefields that he fought on.

The 'Middle Ages/Dark Ages' were of course no such thing. Achievement in the Arabian crescent was sensational then.

Aphrodite-Venus had become not a subject of adoration, but an agent of exploitation. From the moment Christian society perceived sex not as a gift of the goddess but a crime against God himself, women were believed to be the vessels of love's malign power.

Socrates was a great walker. They say he was a fiend for exercise. He was absolutely not shut away in some ivory tower somewhere.

If I had my way there would be a philosopher sitting round the table on every committee and in every boardroom.

Children hop around Phylakopi on sea-polished pebbles the size of bean bags and bask themselves, alongside the lizards, astride the sturdily built walls of Iron Age homes.

Territorial expansion demands warriors and, once population levels are stable, demotes the female role. Once religious empires have not just an idea but a territory to call their own, the soldiers of god are of more value than his handmaidens.

I love the Bronze Age - the age of the Trojan Wars and Helen of Troy. Contrary to what people think, Troy was a very sophisticated society and they used ostrich eggs - which have surprisingly tough shells - to store perfumed oils.

Peter Jones's is a vital public service. He reminds us that while we shouldn't live in the past, we are wiser and stronger when we live with it.

Plants are so important to the ancients for medicine and in a religious aspect - and in hemlock!

The point of doing TV is not to prove how clever you are, but to make other people realise how clever they are; and I think it's the same with books.

Hapy, the ancient god of the Nile, depicted at Dendera with Cleopatra, is typically shown with breasts - symbolism that demonstrated how the life-giving gifts of Egypt's river artery come only when the power of both female and male was combined.

Rumour, gossip, slander - single drops of poison can pollute an entire system.

A lot of the clothes I wear on telly are second-hand.

The technological revolution is itself a direct descendant of the Ancient Greeks' historia, and the web is populated by young people who want to dive into the past.

I think Socrates was fascinated by Alcibiades. It's almost the opposite of hypocrisy. I think it's like when you can see the potential in someone.

Almost everything I have read about Istanbul talks about it as the gateway to the east. We're so programmed to think of it like that but for much of the world, it's the gateway to the west, or even where north meets south.

My father, who is now 94, was an actor. The prime thing he taught us as children was to walk through the world with our eyes open.

Even the picturesque prehistoric settlements at Akrotiri on the Greek island of Santorini were an exercise in problem-solving; white-washed homes and town halls built with an anti-earthquake technology still employed today, 3,500 years on.

You're a good presenter if you know your subject and you can communicate it with passion. Period. That's all that matters on telly.

At the birth of society and civilisation I find a religious landscape littered with feisty female deities who make wisdom their business.

Sophia - a mystical female presence whose appearance is only fleeting in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament - was clearly once a household name and a fixture in everyday lives.

As soon as men began to write, they made Helen of Troy their subject; for close on three thousand years she has been both the embodiment of absolute female beauty and a reminder of the terrible power that beauty can wield... But who was she?

People tend to have a knee-jerk response to the word 'philosophy'. You imagine it's abstract and inaccessible.