Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

Latest Episodes:

Alexander in the East Oct 23, 2024

Rachel Kousser joins me in the Lesche to discuss Alexander III of Macedon's post-Persepolis campaigns in Asia (330-323 BCE), the subject of her recent book Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great.

About our guest

Rachel Kousser writes and teaches about Alexander the Great, the destruction of monuments in ancient Greece, and the representation of gender and power in the Mediterranean world. For her work, she has received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Getty Research Institute, and the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts. She’s published articles in Art Bulletin, American Journal of Archaeology, and Res: Archaeology and Aesthetics, as well as two books with Cambridge University Press. Rachel is currently the chair of the Classics Program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and a professor of ancient art and archaeology at Brooklyn College. She has a B.A. in Classics and Art History from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

Ancient texts

Polybius, Histories
Diodorus, Bibliotheca
Curtius, Historiae Alexandri Magni
Plutarch, Life of Alexander
Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri

Also mentioned

Brooke Allen, "Alexander the Great: Or the Terrible?" The Hudson Review, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 220-230.
Pierre Briant, The First European: A History of Alexander in the Age of Empire (translated from the French by Nicholas Elliott), Harvard 2017.
Michael Kulikowski, "A Very Bad Man: Julius Caesar, Génocidaire." London Review of Books, 18 June 2020.
Alexander scholarship by W. W. Tarn, Ernst Badian, and Brian Bosworth.

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Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!
Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius
This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: leschepodcast@gmail.com
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Athenian Drama in Sicily (Ferdia Lennon, GLORIOUS EXPLOITS) Oct 09, 2024

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Ferdia Lennon joins me in the Lesche to discuss his award-winning and bestselling novel, Glorious Exploits (UK Penguin Fig Tree/US Macmillan 2024), which is set in Syracuse in the aftermath of the Athenian invasion of Sicily during the Peloponnesian War.

About our guest

Ferdia Lennon was born and raised in Dublin. He holds a BA in History and Classics from University College Dublin and an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. Glorious Exploits is his first novel. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as a Book at Bedtime, was a Sunday Times bestseller and the winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2024. After spending many years in Paris, he now lives in Norwich with his wife and son.

Ancient texts

Plutarch, Life of Nicias
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Euripides, various tragedies
Aristophanes, various comedies

Also mentioned

Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit)
Karl Ove Knausgaard, Inadvertent
Mary Renault’s historical novels

Further reading

Kathryn G. Bosher, Greek Theater in Ancient Sicily. Cambridge 2021.
Kathryn G. Bosher, ed., Theater outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy. Cambridge 2012.
Emily Greenwood, "Thucydides on the Sicilian Expedition," in S. Forsdyke, E. Foster, and R. Balot, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides. Oxford 2017.

SPECIAL: Netflix's KAOS, with creator Charlie Covell Oct 03, 2024

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Charlie Covell joins me in the Lesche to discuss their hit Netflix show KAOS, a modern dark dramedic take on Ancient Greek mythology. The show, set in something like modern-day Crete (and on Olympus and in Hades), interweaves stories of Prometheus, the Olympian gods, Orpheus and Eurydice, Minos/Ariadne/Theseus/the Minotaur, and Caeneis.
Special thanks on this one to Mike Farah & Jess Sze.

About our guest

British creator-writer Charlie Covell (they/them) recently created the Netflix original series “Kaos” starring Jeff Goldblum, Janet McTeer, Nabhaan Rizwan, David Thewlis, and Debi Mazar, among others. The 8-episode debuted on August 29, 2024.
Previously, Charlie wrote the hit series “The End of The F***ing World” for Channel 4 in the UK (also available on Netflix). The series was praised for its writing, execution and subject matter, and has gone on to win a BAFTA TV Award, Peabody Award, and Royal Television Society Award. Charlie was also individually nominated for a British Screenwriters Award, BAFTA TV Craft Award, Royal Television Society Award, and Writers’ Guild of Great Britian Award. Charlie was also part of BAFTA’s prestigious Breakthrough Brits program and previously named one of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow.

Subject Communities of the Athenian Empire Sep 25, 2024

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Leah Lazar and Christy Constantakopoulou join me in the Lesche to discuss their work on the relationship between Athens and its subject communities (the "allies") during the fifth-century Athenian "empire" (ἀρχή). Leah has a new book out on the subject, Athens and Power in the Fifth Century BC; Christy’s monograph Dance of the Islands (a favorite of my Classical Greek History students) opened up new ways of thinking about the interconnectivity of the empire’s communities when it came out in 2007.

About our guests

Leah Lazar is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents in Oxford. She is part of the ERC-funded CHANGE Project, researching the monetary and economic history of Anatolia. In January 2025, she will be starting as a lecturer at the University of Manchester. Her first book, Athens and Power in the Fifth Century BC, came out this year with Oxford University Press.

Christy Constantakopoulou is a researcher in the National Hellenic Research Foundation. She was previously Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has published on the history of the Aegean islands, ancient historiography, Greek religion, and the Athenian empire. Her book The Dance of the Islands: Insularity, Networks, the Athenian Empire, and the Aegean World came out in 2007 with Oxford University Press (paperback 2010).

Ancient texts

Thucydides
Aristophanes, Babylonians (fragmentary) and Acharnians
The lapis primus of the Athenian Tribute Lists, 454/3 BC: IG I3 259
The 'Chalkis Decree', 446/5 (or 424/3?): IG I3 40
Decrees for Methone, 430/29–424/3 BC: IG I3 61

Also mentioned

Anthropologist Veena Das's work on "poisonous knowledge".
R. Meiggs (1972), The Athenian Empire. Oxford.
B. D. Meritt, H. T. Wade-Gery, and M. F. McGregor (1939-53), The Athenian Tribute Lists, Vols. 1-4. Princeton.
L. Nixon and S. Price (1990), "The Size and Resources of Greek Cities," in O. Murray and S. Price, eds., The Greek City.Oxford: 137–70.
R. Osborne (1999), "Inscribing Performance," in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne eds., Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy. Cambridge: 341–358.

The New Euripides Papyrus Sep 11, 2024

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Yvona Trnka-Amrhein and John Gibert join me in the Lesche to discuss their editio princeps of a newly-discovered papyrus (P.Phil.Nec. 23) containing lines from two of Euripides' fragmentary plays, Ino and Poluidos.
The publication, in ZPE, is currently only available in print. The ToC for the issue in which it appears is available here.
Information about the conference on 'The New Euripides' held at the Center for Hellenic Studies this past June is available here. Pre-prints based on the speakers' presentations are available here.
During the episode, there's mention of an upcoming (as of the day of this podcast's release) public conference on the new papyrus, which will be held at UC Boulder on Saturday, September 14th. Information about the conference is available here.

About our guests

Yvona Trnka-Amrhein is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder. She works on Greek literature of the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods, literary papyrology, the culture of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, and the reception of Greek narrative literature in Armenian historiography. Her current book project, Portraits of Pharaohs, studies the historical fictions of Greco-Roman Egypt. She co-directs The City of the Baboon Project at Hermopolis Magna in Middle Egypt.
John Gibert is Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder. He writes mainly on archaic and classical Greek poetry, especially drama. He is the author of Euripides’ Ion (2019) and Change of Mind in Greek Tragedy (1995), and co-author (with Christopher Collard and Martin Cropp) of Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Tragedies II (2004).
Ancient texts

Euripides, Ino and Poluidos; Medea, Hecuba
Plato(?), Minos

Also mentioned

Carrara, L. 2014. L’Indovino Poliido: Eschilo, Le Cretesi, Sofocle, Manteis, Euripide, Poliido (Rome).
Coo, L. and A. Uhlig, eds. 2019. Aeschylus at Play: Studies in Aeschylean Satyr Drama. BICS 62.2 (special issue).
Finglass, P. J. and L. Coo, eds. 2020. Female Characters in Fragmentary Greek Tragedy. Cambridge.
Johnson, W. A. 2004. Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus. Toronto.
Luppe, W. and Henry, W. B. (2012) 5131. Traged

Introducing Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas Aug 28, 2024

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Welcome to Lesche, a podcast on new books and ideas in the field of Ancient Greek Studies.
In each episode, we'll be talking to classicists about their latest contributions to the field.

We’re going to start by releasing two episodes each month, on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month. The first episode will debut on Wednesday, September 11.

You can find us on Instagram, @leschepodcast, or send us an email at leschepodcast@gmail.com

If you have an idea for a new book or topic you think would make for a good conversation, please reach out using this form.
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For more on the Song of Seikilos see:

M. L. West, Ancient Greek Music. Oxford, 1992, with modern musical notation on p. 301
A. D'Angour, "The Song of Seikilos: a Musically Annotated Ancient Greek Poem, in Antigone
E. Pöhlmann and M. West, Documents of Ancient Greek Music. Oxford, 2001. (The Song of Seikilos is dossier #90)