Instant Classics

In 430 BCE, Athens was hit by a terrible plague that ultimately claimed around a third of the population. All the social niceties we associate with Ancient Athens collapsed. Citizens turned on one another. The dead were left unburied. Mary and Charlotte both recount and question the ‘facts’ of the epidemic as told by historian, eyewitness and plague survivor Thucydides. 

Thucydides’ account is remarkable in that it aligns with the emerging science of medicine in ancient Athens by focusing on the symptoms and natural causes rather than framing it as  divine retribution from the gods. Yet, for all this, the truth is hard to pin down. We still don’t know what exactly the plague was. And Thucydides’ claims to be an objective historian are undermined by the way he presents the plague as a possible response to Athenian arrogance and hubris. 

Yet for all the gaps, we see many of the social characteristics of epidemics that have recurred throughout history. Social collapse, finger pointing, moralising, and arguments about which ‘truth’ to believe. 

Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:

Thucydides describes the plague in his History 2, 47 - 55  Plutarch describes Pericles’ death from the plague in his Life of Pericles 38.

There are plenty of translations of Thucydides available online. But NB one of the most often used (a nineteenth-century version by Richard Crawley) is also one of the least reliable. 

Thucydides, Apollo, the Plague and the War, Lisa Kallet, The American Journal of Philology, Fall 2013, Vol. 134, No. 3, pp. 355-382 (an interesting article in which Kallet casts doubt on the purely objective, scientific account Thucydides purports to give of the plague)

A Plague Like no Other: Beyond the Buboes in Thucydides' account of the Plague of Athens, by Pere Domingo, Paula Prieto, Lluis Pons, Clinical Microbiology and Infection, May 2025 (a useful round-up of the latest medical thinking on the Athenian plague)

J Longrigg, ‘Death and Epidemic Disease in Classical Athens’ in V Hope and E Marshall, Death and Disease in the ancient city (Routledge, 2000)

Emily Greenwood: https://yalereview.org/article/thucydides-times-trouble (a classicist reflects on the Athenian plague and Covid)

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Producer: Jonty Claypole 

Video Editor: Jak Ford

Theme music: Casey Gibson

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Think Roman food and we imagine extravagant banquets involving rare delicacies. There’s some truth in this, but only for the few. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte ask: what did your average Roman eat? 

Cooking at home was only for the very rich - you had to have not only a kitchen, but the staff to manage it. For this reason, most Romans ate on the hoof or at fast food outlets. In Pompeii, for instance, there is surviving evidence of many such establishments: places where citizens could access a pre-cooked meal straight away. 

While we know that most Romans ate out, and the sorts of places where they ate, until recently there was very little evidence showing what such establishments served. Modern archaeological techniques are starting to provide answers through the analysis of excrement in Roman lavatories. Comparing the evidence from lavatories in Herculaneum and modern day Scotland, a faeces - sorry, thesis - emerges of people surviving on whatever the local countryside could provide - varying dramatically from region to region - with a few luxury imports for special occasions. 

 

Forget dormice and think cabbage. Lots of it. In myriad ways. 

Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:

There is a good overview of the Herculaneum cesspit here: https://www.cambridgeamarantus.com/topics/topic-vi/63/63-evidence

And detailed scientific analysis here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11457-018-9218-y 

For a brief account of the menu at an ordinary Pompeian bar, see: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/fast-food-joint-pompeii-served-snails-fish-and-wine-new-finds-suggest-180976651/ 

Cato’s On Agriculture – complete with its praise of cabbage – can be found in English translation here.

And some information on the Bearsden latrine analysis

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Producer: Jonty Claypole 

Video Editor: Jak Ford

Theme music: Casey Gibson

 

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When we think about Roman food, most of us imagine wealthy citizens stuffing their faces with rare delicacies while reclining on their sides and taking occasional breaks to use the vomitorium (urban myth alert). In this two-part special, Mary and Charlotte cut through the fermented fish sauce to look at what the Romans really ate. And no, the vomitorium was not a place where they made themselves vomit. 

In this first episode, Mary and Charlotte look at posh food, beginning right at the top - in the imperial palace. Happily, there are some stories of jaw-dropping extravagance, including Elagabalus (a fave of the show) hiding pearls in the rice as a surprise for his guests. And the favourite dish of the Emperor Vitellius involved pike liver, peacock brain, flamingo tongue and lamprey sperm - all mixed together. But just as many emperors favoured a martial diet and household economy. Augustus - a snack guy - boasted about his ascetic preference for with cheese, figs and bread. Tiberius was criticised by the elite for serving leftovers. 

You can never trust anecdotes about the emperors, but most of the stories have a plausibility when you read them alongside a surviving cookbook - Apicius’ De re culinaria. Here we find out about garum - or fermented fish sauce (which Mary thinks is less disgusting than it sounds), animal wombs, dormice as well as a lot of vegetarian dishes (more to Charlotte’s taste). 

Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:

Emperors’ reported eating habits are discussed in Mary’s Emperor of Rome (Profile pb, 2024) 

You can find a complete (rather lumpy) translation of Apicius online here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29728/29728-h/29728-h.htm

Several modern writers collect some of Apicius’ recipes and adapt them for “the modern kitchen”: eg John Edwards (Rider pb, 2009),  Sally Grainger (Prospect pb, 2015) and Andrew Dalby (British Museum pb, 2012)

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Producer: Jonty Claypole 

Video Editor: Jak Ford

Theme music: Casey Gibson

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Mary and Charlotte talk to Tom Holland, co-host of the Rest is History. As well as being a podcasting megastar, Tom is a brilliant historian of Ancient Rome. His books include Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic,  Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age and his recent translation of Suetonius’ The Lives of the Caesars. 

In the first half of this episode, Tom talks about why Suetonius, with his interest in court gossip and trivia, is the historian for the current age. In the second half, he talks about his lifelong fascination with the Romans - from discovering the Asterix books as a boy, the poetry of Catullus as a teenager, and how writing a series of novels about vampires led him to write Rubicon. 

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@insta_classics for X

email: [email protected]

Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci

Producer: Jonty Claypole 

Video Editor: Jak Ford

Theme music: Casey Gibson

 

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If you were to go back in time to 15 February in Ancient Rome, you might see marauding packs of naked men surging through the streets. If you were particularly unlucky one of them might whip you with a piece of goat skin. This was the Roman festival of Lupercalia. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte ask: what on earth was all this about? What did Lupercalia mean to the Romans? And what was the real purpose of any festival to the Romans? 

Despite its mind-boggling oddness, Lupercalia is better documented than many other Roman festivals. This is partly because the Romans themselves didn’t know really what it was about. Lupercalia was something that seemed to have always been celebrated, but opinions varied - then as now - as to what it meant. The wolfiness of lupercalia, and the suggestion the ritual began in the cave where Romulus and Remus were believed to have been suckled, implies it may have been a way for the Romans to connect with their murky origins - an example of the city performing its own past. But even this is contested. 

One thing is clear: despite the date, Lupercalia had nothing to do with modern Valentine’s Day - unless, of course, your idea of romance is running naked through the streets flailing a piece of animal skin…

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Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:

The Lupercalia is one of Roman religious festivals discussed in Mary’s book, with John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome (Cambridge UP pb, 1998) volume 2 (with translation of the main ancient texts, including a section of Pope Gelasius’ pamphlet).

Mary also discusses how to understand Roman festivals more widely in her chapter in C. Ando (ed.), Roman Religion, Edinburgh Readings in the Ancient World  (Edinburgh UP, pb, 2003).

Shakespeare’s Lupercalia is in his Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2

Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci

Producer: Jonty Claypole 

Video Editor: Jak Ford

Theme music: Casey Gibson

 

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