History is how we have learnt to think about ourselves. It's not as though the Greeks and Romans are static entities out there to be discovered and translated. We make them speak, we talk to them, and they inform what we say.
Interpretation
History helps us understand our identities and influences our thoughts.
In this quote, Mary Beard emphasizes that history is not a mere collection of facts about past civilizations like the Greeks and Romans; rather, it is an active process of engagement where we interpret and communicate with historical figures. Our understanding of the past shapes our identity and informs our contemporary discussions, suggesting that history is dynamic and deeply intertwined with how we perceive ourselves today.
In practice
In a lecture about the relevance of history in modern society.
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.
What politicians do is they never get the rhetoric wrong, and the price they pay is they don't speak the truth as they see it. Now, I will speak truth as I see it, and sometimes I don't get the rhetoric right. I think that's a fair trade-off.
I'd quite like to be in Caligula's court - living in the back room somewhere and just being able to observe.
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.
There is no way, absolutely no way, that I would want people to stop reading the 'Odyssey.' But I want them to read it with their eyes open. To notice it and then to think what it says about us.
It wasn't until I got to Cambridge that I discovered active discrimination against women.
What is still more to our shame as civilized Christians, we debauch their morals already too prone to vice, and we introduce among them wants and perhaps disease which they never before knew and which serve only to disturb that happy tranquility which they and their forefathers enjoyed. If anyone denies the truth of this assertion, let him tell me what the natives of the whole extent of America have gained by the commerce they have had with Europeans.
You can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered.
There's a difference between making incremental improvements and making sweeping changes that take you away from your core values.
There's a way of life, there's a way of death. Which way are you on?
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
I don't believe we have a professional self from Mondays through Fridays and a real self for the rest of the time.
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