Digging deeper

With the life and literature of the whole ancient world spread before us for our pleasure, we classicists can be said to lead lives of unparalleled hedonism. But the secret is leaking out. The whole world seems to want a taste, and we cannot blame it in the slightest. History has its Schama, maths its Du Sautoy and environmental studies the grand-daddy of them all, the great David Attenborough. So who will risk themselves and their reputation in the hands of the producers with the 42-inch mentality to satisfy this growing appetite?

Bettany Hughes, our first female TV historian, is the doyenne of such ventures, fronting over the past 12 years highly seductive radio and TV programmes on everything from Sparta to Atlantis, from Buddhism and the Bible to Nefertiti and now Divine Women. She tells a terrific story with an enthusiasm that fires people with excitement about the past. If occasionally she comes up with slightly eye-watering assumptions and generalisations, that perhaps is the price a vivacious TV storyteller pays for providing the delectatio (‘delight’) which Romans regarded as a legitimate aim of history.

But enter now a new girl on the block, a bit of a street-fighter too, with her programmes on Pompeii and the Romans — Mary Beard, professor of classics at Cambridge and fellow of Newnham. Ancient history is a broad church, and I want to argue that her main purpose is to bring an important new dimension to the subject on TV. The 5th-century bc Greek historian Herodotus, called the ‘father of history’ by Cicero, will explain all.