Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics

Dec 27 2024 38 ep. 27 mins 2.2k

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics Podcast artwork

Natalie Haynes takes a fresh look at the ancient world, creating stand-up routines about figures from ancient Greece and Rome.

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Saturnalia

Dec 27 2024 27 mins

No togas today please. Natalie celebrates the mid-winter festival of Ancient Rome, Saturnalia. According to Catullus, it's the 'best of days'. Expect cross-dressing, sweets, drinking games and the wearing of special pyjamas. Oh and anarchy and jokes. Sounds a bit like a Christmas pantomime? Not surprising, according to veteran pantomime dame André Vincent, who traces the origins o

Tacitus

Aug 12 2024 27 mins

Tacitus is the great historian of imperial Rome. His writing is beautiful, unsettling, extraordinarily persuasive. We know many of his likes and dislikes about people and politics, but facts about his personal life? Not so much. His memoir of Agricola tells us much fascinating detail about Roman Britain: that it's an island (the Roman fleet sailed all the way round, just to check),

Aesop

Aug 05 2024 27 mins

Aesop is probably the most famous author from antiquity, judging by the ongoing sales of his fables about animals. It should be easy to do a show about him, thinks Natalie. But it turns out that everything we know, or think we know about Aesop, is contradicted somewhere. He may have been Thracian, Phrygian or Ethiopian; mute - or talkative; clever, provoking and possibly blasphemou

Artemis

Jul 29 2024 27 mins

Natalie stands up for the goddess Artemis. She's a predator, a hunter, an archer. Goddess of wild creatures, the moon to her brother Apollo's sun, she's not averse to the odd human sacrifice. And if you forget her in your prayers, she's liable to send a really big pig to dig up your orchards.'Rock star mythologist’ and reformed stand-up Natalie Haynes is obsessed with the ancient

Aphrodite

Jul 22 2024 27 mins

The Greek goddess of love, sex, desire and beauty, Aphrodite is mostly depicted naked and/or wet. And depending on your age and taste, that could be by Botticelli, Bananarama or Lady Gaga. Born from the sea foam, you can still visit her rock in Cyprus, where there's always a crowd of tourists. No one is immune to her charms, says Hesiod. In fact we can all learn from Aphrodite's st

Hesiod

Jul 15 2024 27 mins

Natalie stands up for the prize-winning Greek poet, cataloguer of gods and author of a flatpack wagon manual, Hesiod. She's joined by Professor Edith Hall and poet Alicia Stallings.Hesiod is highly regarded by the ancients for his sublime poetry, and he won a prize for his Theogony, a detailed account of the origins of the gods. He also wrote a farming manual, including the wagon-b

Cleopatra

Jul 08 2024 27 mins

Natalie Haynes returns with a new series of sparkling stories from the ancient world which shed light on the world today.Cleopatra was a brilliant politician, a ruthless leader and a massive brain-box, who spoke nine languages. The Queen of Egypt had charisma to burn, but she probably didn't look like Elizabeth Taylor. Her intelligence and magnetism were more than enough to attract

Livia

Dec 20 2023 27 mins

Livia was the first Empress of Rome, a faithful wife, excellent friend and trusted advisor. So why is she still best known as a serial killer?Natalie is joined by guests Dr Emma Southon and Professor Llewelyn Morgan to discuss the life of Livia. Her marriage to the Emperor Augustus (Octavian) was a love-match. They were both married to other people when they first met, but that did

Athene

Dec 12 2023 27 mins

Athene is charismatic and bloodthirsty, goddess of wisdom, war and...handicrafts. Owl-eyed Athene is not interested in love, although she is very fond of the hero Odysseus and gives him a leg-up whenever she can. War is Athene's thing, the bloodier the better. She's perfectly happy to humiliate and degrade her enemies, including the feisty and talented weaver Arachne, who challe

Demeter

Dec 05 2023 27 mins

Natalie tells the powerful and painful story of Demeter's fight to get justice for her daughter Persephone. Hades conspires with his siblings Zeus and Gaia to abduct Persephone and force her to live with him in the underworld as his wife. Many versions of this story are sanitized for children but the original is not. It is clear that Persephone is tricked and trafficked, that she h