Confronting the Classics Quotes

“La verità è che i Classici sono in declino per definizione [...] La sensazione di una perdita imminente, il perenne timore che gli studi classici stiano per scomparire per sempre è ciò che [...] conferisce a queste discipline l'energia e la tensione di cui ritengo siano ancora intrise.”
― Mary Beard, Fare i conti con i classici

“All too often, even the most glamorous rebels are just as unappealing, under the surface, as the imperialist tyrants themselves.”
― Mary Beard, Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations

“Yet historians still start their books with a ritual lament about 'the sources' and their inadequacy. The lament is not entirely insincere (though it is something of a self-constructed problem): the sources often are inadequate for the particular questions that historians choose to pose. But that is part of the ancient-historical game: first pick your question, then demonstrate the appalling difficulty of finding an answer given the paucity of the evidence, finally triumph over that difficulty by scholarly 'skill'. Prestige in this business goes to those who outwit their sources, prising unexpected answers from unexpected places, and who play the clever (sometimes too clever) detective against an apparent conspiracy of ancient silence.”
― Mary Beard, Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations

“London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books or the Times Literary Supplement”
― Mary Beard, Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations

“recognize phrases”
― Mary Beard, Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations