Quotes from Mary Beard

I have always hated fancy dress parties.

Classics isn't about the ancient world. It's partly about the ancient world, but it's about our conversation. It's how we try to talk to antiquity.

I don't want to see a world in which women can communicate on Twitter, but their actual voices are not heard.

I don't think that we are completely dominated by what we have inherited from the past, but it is the case that as far back as you can go - just to Homer, but also to the literature of Rome, the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance - what you will find is that women's voices are not taken seriously.

For whatever reason, some sorts of women's silence were broken by MeToo. This is the optimistic bit. And that will lead to a much more careful attention to women's voices.

You don't overturn x-thousand years of patriarchy in a generation.

I was not much good as a waitress.

In general, I never think it is a good idea to try to recreate past successes. You have to strike out on your own, for better or worse.

I loved 'Gladiator,' and I thought its depiction of gladiatorial combat, although it was an aggrandizing picture, was cleverly and expertly done.

I think you have to realize that most ancient warfare is really kind of hit and run, honestly. You go and you bash down the walls of some enemy 50 miles away and you take some slaves, you take some cattle, probably a bit of cash too, and then you say goodbye and go home and you probably do the same thing next year - or try to, or they do it to you.

One person's barbarity is another person's civilisation.

If you ask me what is civilisation, it's little more than an act of faith.

If women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women?

A lot of people will always say, 'I really know nothing about the ancient world.' But there's lots and lots of things people know. Partly, they've been encouraged to think they're ignorant about it. In some ways, the job to do is show people that they know much more than they'd like to admit.

There's plenty of firm evidence for ethnic diversity in Roman Britain.

One of its most powerful weapons has always been 'barbarity': 'we' know that 'we' are civilised by contrasting ourselves with those we deem to be un-civilised, with those who do not - or cannot be trusted to - share our values.

The web is democratising and also the voice of people who don't think they have another outlet. And that voice can be punitive.

What is the role of an academic - no matter what they're teaching - within political debate? It has to be that they make issues more complicated. The role of the academic is to make everything less simple.

Whatever you say about popular culture, people like people who know things, who are experts, and it doesn't particularly matter what they look like.

Roman military tactics were much over-rated. All the clever ones had the same idea, which was to go round the back.

When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice.

What I find very interesting is, we're not enthralled by the ancient world, and we've escaped all kinds of ancient preconceptions and assumptions and prejudices. But, nevertheless, we still make that connection between authoritative speech and male speech.

I was 11 when I started Latin - not like boys, who start early at prep school. At 14, you had to choose whether to start Greek and drop German, but my mum made a fuss, and I took Latin, Greek, French, and German at O-level, which meant I didn't do much science.

My day job is working on Roman history and ancient Roman history.