Instant Classics

With Jonty Claypole

Jonty Claypole joins Mary and Charlotte to trace how George Chapman's 1590s translations of Homer influenced Shakespeare, and how the Odyssey later shaped novels by Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift.

Mary and Charlotte return a week after Christopher Nolan's premiere to fault the film for cutting Nausicaa and the Gods, and for making Odysseus reluctant to lie, unlike Homer's Odysseus.

Mary and Charlotte trace Helen of Troy through Christopher Marlowe's line about a face that launched a thousand ships, Shakespeare's reply, and modern versions by Margaret Atwood, Pat Barker and Natalia Haynes.

Euripides staged the Cyclops as a satyr play in the 5th century BCE, and Apollonius of Rhodes drew on the Odyssey's scope for the Argonautica, the tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece.

With Mary Beard, Charlotte Higgins

Mary and Charlotte give their instant verdict on Christopher Nolan's Odyssey the morning after its premiere, with a headline scorecard naming winners such as Samantha Morton and losers such as the Gods.

Mary and Charlotte examine Helen through Homer's Iliad, where she watches Paris duel Menelaus, and Virgil's Aeneid, where she becomes a hate figure and focus of Aeneas's murderous fantasies.

With Emily Wilson

Mary and Charlotte track Cassandra, the Trojan princess cursed never to be believed, through Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid, from her Trojan Horse warning to her death at Mycenae.

Mary and Charlotte offer a pre-screening primer on Homer's Odyssey ahead of Christopher Nolan's adaptation, covering homecoming, post-traumatic disorder, the cost of war, growing up, fidelity and colonisation.

Mary and Charlotte follow Helen's journey home from Troy after Menelaus spares her, through a stop in Egypt to Sparta, where Telemachus, son of Odysseus, arrives asking after his father.

Mary and Charlotte trace Helen's origins to Zeus disguised as a swan forcing himself upon Leda, her marriage to Menelaus, and the Judgement of Paris, who chose among Hera, Athena and Aphrodite.

With Emily Wilson, Daniel Mendelsohn

Mary and Charlotte compare modern Odyssey translations by Emily Wilson and Daniel Mendelsohn against older classics like E. V. Rieu's, and advise listeners to work with whatever translation they already have.

In 430 BCE a plague hit Athens and killed about a third of the population; Thucydides, historian, eyewitness and survivor, recorded its symptoms in line with the emerging science of medicine, not divine retribution.

Mary and Charlotte decode the Parthenon, built as a temple to Athena in the middle of the 5th century BCE in only fifteen years, using enslaved and free labour.

Sophocles wrote Antigone in the mid-5th century BCE, staging King Creon's order that the body of the rebel Polynices lie unburied, and Antigone's defiance in burying her brother.

Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos in the 7th century BCE, and only one of her poems, the Hymn to Aphrodite, survives in its entirety today.

Mary and Charlotte examine Greek theatre festivals in Ancient Athens, from military parades and hymn singing to processions of unmarried girls, orphans and large phalluses, and ask if women could attend.

Mary and Charlotte discuss Parrhesia and isegoria in Ancient Athenian democracy, noting one Athenian state warship was even named Parrhesia after the principle of frank speech.

Mary and Charlotte cross the River Styx to explore the Underworld through Charon the Ferryman, Hades, Persephone, and journeys made by Orpheus, Theseus, Hercules and the princess Psyche.

Mary and Charlotte ask who Athena really is, tracing the origins of the phrase under the aegis and explaining where Nike shoes got their name from her mythology.

Mary and Charlotte share stories of Ancient Greek espionage born from rivalry with the Persian empire, including secret messages hidden in women's earrings and tattooed onto an enslaved person's head.