This week, lovely Listeners, we bring you ... a third person! Yes, this episode you will have the pleasure of a voice that doesn’t sound exactly like Sarah and Abi’s. “What sweet relief!”, we hear you cry.
Let us introduce you to the third of our triumvirate (ooohhh – Roman joke), the final Musketeer, the other amigo, the last wise (wo)man, and the third (and only real) Grace in our trio: Ms Eden Wood.
We were lucky enough to meet Eden when we all studied together for our Masters, and we won’t let her go. She has volunteered herself (sort of) to be the guinea pig in our very first interview episode and we couldn’t be happier to have her join us, remotely, from Scotland.
Eden teaches Latin and Classical Civilisation in a Scottish secondary school and is doing all the hard work of getting kids into Classics. After some serious fan-girling, on Sarah and Abi’s part, you’ll hear all about how myth features in her teaching and why it’s important as a segway into more Classics for, in our case, LIFE.
For the most part, we’ll be chatting about HEROISM – a subject studied in the Highers Curriculum – so, for any students studying the same course: listen up, she offers some serious GOLD here. You’ll hear all about the difference between Greek and Roman heroes and why, let’s be honest, they would be NOTHING without the women in their stories.
And lest you need more convincing, we ask Eden why we need myth today. Buckle in for some serious talk about imperfect hero worship and the dangers of our perfection-driven society. Oh yeah. We can do real talk too.
The passage you hear at the beginning comes from a transcript of an interview The Guardian did with actor David Oyelowo about the film, Selma (see https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/01/david-oyelowo-selma-martin-luther-king-benedict-cumberbatch-interview for the full interview). The passage at the end is from Stephen Fry’s regent book, Heroes.
Artworks Discussed:
The Palaikastro Kouros, 15th Century BCE
Greek owl skyphos, c. 475-450 BCE
Greek bronze herm of Dionysus (known as The Getty Herm), c. 200-100 BCE
References:
Apuleius, Metamorphoses (aka The Golden Ass), 2nd Century CE, (includes the story of Cupid and Psyche)
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, 5th Century BCE
Euripides, The Trojan Women, 5th Century BCE
Florence Given, Women Don’t Owe You Pretty (2020)