Instant Classics

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey - the most eagerly anticipated event since Odysseus spied the shores of Ithaca - is almost with us at last. Mary and Charlotte have been exploring Homer’s epic over the last year in the Instant Classics Book Club, but if you’re time poor or just want a little refresher, then you’ll find the basics in this pre-screening primer. 

In the first half, they run through what actually happens in The Odyssey, as Odysseus, a twisty-turny man, makes his twisty-turny way back home. In the second, they pull out some of the big themes from the book - the problems of homecoming, post-traumatic disorder, the cost of war, growing up, fidelity, colonisation, and the thin line between so-called civilisation and so-called barbarism. This poem really does have everything, yet manages to be poetic and hugely entertaining while about it. In theory, it’s the perfect material for Christopher Nolan, who has long been fascinated with non-linear story-telling, the effects of war, and journeys. But whether he succeeds will be the subject of next week’s episode… 

Further reading

Charlotte and Mary usually quote from Emily Wilson’s translation of the poem (W. W. Norton, 2018), but another good recent translation is by Daniel Mendelsohn (Chicago UP and Penguin Classics, 2025). But there are many translations on offer which will not mislead – so do not get too anxious about getting the “right” one.

Approachable introductions to the poem include:

Barbara Graziosi, Homer: a very short introduction (Oxford UP, 2019)

Edith Hall, The Return of Ulysses (I. B. Tauris, 2012)

Elton Barker and Joel Christensen, Homer: a beginner’s guide (Oneworld, 2013)

Moses Finley, The World of Odysseus is an old favourite (reissued by New York Review of Books, 2002)

@instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube

@insta_classics for X

email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com

Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci

Producer: Jonty Claypole 

Video Editor: Jak Ford

Theme music: Casey Gibson

 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mary and Charlotte welcome Professor Maria Wyke back on the show to talk about two of the most famous words in cinema: “I’m Spartacus!” Hollywood has always had an obsession with Ancient Rome. So much so, the Roman Epic - or sword-and-sandal - is a cinematic genre in its own right. Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier and a host of other stars, is perhaps the towering achievement. But what is Spartacus really about? 

It was adapted by Dalton Trumbo from Howard Fast’s 1951 novel. Both men had fallen foul of the House Un-American Activities Committee and were blacklisted from Hollywood. Their names were proudly displayed at the start of the film, marking the decline of the Committee’s influence on American culture. In some ways, the refusal by Spartacus’ slave army to betray their leader to the Roman authorities is a message about free speech and solidarity. The character of black slave Draba who defies white supremacist authority is also a statement on the Civil Rights movement. But the brilliance of Spartacus is that it defies easy interpretation and deliberately plays with themes and symbols - not least in the crucifixion scene at the end of the film. 

Mary, Charlotte and Maria move forwards a few decades to Gladiator - and argue the power of that film is the way it similarly seems to, but doesn’t quite, push a moral message. Gladiator 2 on the other hand… 

Further reading

Our wonderful guest Maria Wyke’s book Projecting the Past (Routlege, 1997) has a fascinating chapter on Spartacus

Howard Fast’s novel Spartacus, on which Kubrick’s film was based, is on the Internet Archive.

See also: 

A. Futtrell, “Seeing Red”, in Sandra Joshel et al. (eds), Imperial Projections (Johns Hopkins UP, 2001)

Martin Winkler, Spartacus: Film and History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007)

Martin Winkler, Gladiator: Film and History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004)

@instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube

@insta_classics for X

email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com

Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci

Producer: Jonty Claypole 

Video Editor: Jak Ford

Theme music: Casey Gibson

 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shortly after its formation, the United States of America initiated a building program for both state and federal governments, turning to Ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration. As Mary and Charlotte discover… In-between duties like writing the Declaration of Independence, acting as Minister to France and being President, Thomas Jefferson found time to make inspiration trips to study Roman architecture in France. Although he didn’t design the Capitol in Washington DC, he set the tone with his designs for Monticello (his Virginia home) as well as the University of Virginia and Virginia State Capitol. 

Over the decades, other influences gained greater prominence - whether nostalgic styles like the gothic or the modernity of Frank Lloyd Wright. But neo-classicism is on the rise once again. According to President Trump’s executive order Making Architecture Beautiful Again, ‘classical’ is the preferred style for federal buildings - in particular, the plan for a ‘United States Triumphal Arch’. 

Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:

Donald Trump’s executive order on classical architecture.

Edwin Heathcote, the architecture critic of the Financial Times, on triumphal arches and DC.

The DC Commission of Fine Arts have published the schemes for Trump’s arch: https://www.cfa.gov/system/files/meeting-materials/1-CFA-16APR26-1-EOP_DOI_Arch-pres%20%5BApr9%5D.pdf

The first scheme for the Navy Memorial, including the triumphal arch is shown here: https://escholarship.org/content/qt9r40k5hd/qt9r40k5hd_noSplash_87482e06371178d8fcd9bb449eb06f39.pdf

A useful website for Jefferson’s classical architecture: https://www.monticello.org/jefferson-and/architecture

The temporary triumphal arch in DC is pictured here: https://ggwash.org/view/40678/dc-once-had-its-own-arc-de-triomphe

The detailed history of triumphal arches, from antiquity to now, is the subject of Peter Howell, The Triumphal Arch (Unicorn, 2021)

Mary’s The Roman Triumph (Harvard UP, pb, 2009) discusses the Roman significance of these arches, and the incident with Pompey’s elephants.

@instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube

@insta_classics for X

email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com

Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci

Producer: Jonty Claypole 

Video Editor: Jak Ford

Theme music: Casey Gibson

 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last year, Mary spent nine months in Washington D.C. During this time, she became interested in visual iconography and real objects of Ancient Greece and Rome on display in the city’s museums and streets. In this episode, she tells Charlotte about her fascination with a sarcophagus in the Smithsonian collection, which was believed once to have held the remains of Emperor Alexander Severus. 

In the 1830s, a US navy commander based in the Mediterranean ‘acquired’ the sarcophagus in Lebanon and sent it back home with the suggestion it could be used as a tomb for President Andrew Jackson. This forced the question: was it appropriate for an American president to be buried in a Roman sarcophagus? On one hand, the USA liked to position itself as the inheritor of Roman values. On the other, Severus, who became Emperor after his cousin Elagabalus (a favourite of the show) was bumped off, was a despot, even if a comparatively benign one. The problem was heightened by the fact Jackson was frequently accused of acting like a ‘Caesar’. The conundrum of the sarcophagus went right to the height of the tensions - then as now - in the USA’s idolisation of Ancient Rome. 

As Mary reveals, there are many twists and turns to this story, which ends - bizarrely enough - with Peter Fonda’s Harley-Davison from the film Easy Rider. How are the two connected? Listen to find out! 

Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:

Mary wrote about this sarcophagus a few years back in the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/a-tomb-not-fit-for-a-president-11634356860 (it’s pay-walled, but the free bit gives you a great picture of a couple admiring it); and it was the object that book-ended her Twelve Caesars: Images of power from the ancient world to the modern (Princeton UP, pb, 2023).

See also, from the Smithsonian: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/andrew-jackson-populist-even-deathbed-180962124/

The Roman archaeology of the sarcophagus: J B Ward Perkins, “Four Garland Sarcophagi in America”, in the journal Archaeology for 1958.

Andrew Jackson (and his Caesarism) features in the first chapter of Margaret Malamud’s Ancient Rome and Modern America (Wily Blackwell, 2009)

@instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube

@insta_classics for X

email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com

Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci

Producer: Jonty Claypole 

Video Editor: Jak Ford

Theme music: Casey Gibson

 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In case you haven’t noticed… the USA is celebrating a special anniversary. Mary and Charlotte talk to one of America’s leading scholars of ancient Rome and its modern reception, Joy Connolly, about why so much of the struggle for independence deployed the words, images and sometimes actual clothing of the Ancient Romans. 

They discuss George Washington’s production of the tragedy of Cato in the revolutionary army and Joseph Warren’s donning of a toga to incite the rebels. They ask why the Declaration of Independence and Constitution drew so heavily on Roman writers like Cicero and Virgil, why Cincinnati was named after the authoritarian Cincinnatus, and to what extent the Republicans and Democrats resemble the classical ideologies they named themselves after. Most of all, the big question: did the Founders know that Virgil’s words e pluribus unum (out of many, one), which became a rallying cry for the merging of the colonies into one, actually came from a recipe for cheese spread? 

Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:

Joy has written about the use of classics in the revolutionary period and later in: “Classical Education and the Early American Democratic Style” in S. Stephens and P. Vasunia (eds), Classics and National Cultures (Oxford UP, 2010) and “Past Sovereignty: Roman Freedom for Modern Revolutionaries” in Basil Duffalo (ed), Roman Error (Oxford UP, 2017). You can read more about her work at ACLS.

There are many useful introductions to different aspects of the Romanness of the American Revolution. We have enjoyed:

C. J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics (Harvard UP, pb, 1995)

M. Malamud, Ancient Rome and Modern America (Wiley Blackwell, pb, 2008)

M. N. S. Sellars, “The Roman Republic and the French and American Revolutions", in H. Flower (ed), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic (Cambridge UP, pb, 2004)

More focussed on cultural influence than any directly political impact is W. L. Vance, America’s Rome (Yale UP, 1990)

An article on Joseph Warren’s toga.

A 1903 letter to the New York Times discussing the tracing of “e pluribus unum” to “Moretum”, the poem once attributed to Virgil that offers a recipe for herby, garlicky cheese spread.

@instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube

@insta_classics for X

email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com

Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci

Producer: Jonty Claypole 

Video Editor: Jak Ford

Theme music: Casey Gibson

 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices