Please note that due to the software, not everything recorded in this transcript will be accurate

Reading Classics

Media – Horrible Histories

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s not Hey Hey It’s The Monkees — for those of you who’ve even heard that song. It’s a knock-off by Horrible Histories, rewritten to deliver a surprisingly informative song about Greece’s great philosophers — Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the gang. In one way or another, the thinking and writing of these figures continue to shape our world today. That’s why we call them the Classics. There are people who hate the very idea of the Classics. For some, the word conjures images of dusty tomes and stale ideas, written in indecipherable Greek or Latin. Irrelevant. For others, we can see the value, perhaps — but it all feels a little boring. It was Mark Twain who famously wrote that a classic is “something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” Still others dislike the Classics — the very concept — because they reckon it’s borderline racist: why privilege the thoughts of some dead white guy (assuming Plato was whitish) over the wisdom of, say, the Aboriginal Dreamtime? Why call Aristotle ‘classic’ and African ancestral cosmologies not classic? I think the answer to all these complaints is actually quite simple. This particular thousand-year collection of texts — Greek and Roman writings from roughly 800 BC to AD 200 — shaped the Western world more than any other intellectual tradition … perhaps with the obvious exception of the Bible. In fact, it’s probably a mistake to play the pagan classics off against the biblical tradition. After all, it was Christians who preserved Greek and Roman literature. And those classics, in turn, shaped — in no small part — the way Christians read, argued, and even articulated their own sacred texts. The classics matter in their own right. But they matter in a special way if you’re interested in Christianity. If you remember our Dante episode, there’s a reason Dante made the Roman poet Virgil his guide out of hell (the inferno), through purgatory, and almost to Paradise. I’ve just returned from six weeks of research in Oxford. And one of the things I’ve always loved is the way the oldest part of the Bodleian Library is arranged. You enter the Lower Bod and first pass thousands of volumes devoted to Greek and Roman literature — the Classics — and then, without any obvious boundary marker, you suddenly find yourself among thousands of biblical commentaries and ancient and medieval Christian writings. I’ve always taken that old catalogue system as a metaphor: the Classics and the Bible are cousins. More than that — the ideas and longings of the pagan classics find their fulfilment in traditional Christian theology. So what follows is a crash course in the Classics: why they mattered to Greeks and Romans, why they mattered to Christians, and why they still deserve their title — the Classics. I’m John Dickson and this is Undeceptions.

Undeceptions theme

John Dickson (Studio)

My guest today is Dr Nadya Williams, a historian and author with a Phd in Classics from Princeton University. She is the books editor at Mere Orthodoxy, and a contributor to Christianity Today. She’s also the author of several books of her own, including Christians Reading Classics. We had her on the show in episode 112 when we discussed the intersection of culture and Christianity in the ancient world. This episode, we’ve invited her along to explain everything you need to know about the classics.

 John Dickson:
Excellent, excellent. Um, Nadya, can we be super boring to begin, uh, and tell us what do we mean when we say the word the classics?

Nadya Williams:
You know, that’s not a boring question. That’s one, uh, that’s one that gets people really riled up. So, um, to go back to like my own academic background, um, I majored in the classics. Like I knew I wanted to study Latin and Greek, and so I went to the department of. Classics and majored in Latin and Greek and as an undergrad and then went to get a PhD in the classics, and I always knew it to mean Latin and Greek. And then years later, as a homeschooling mom, um, we started homeschooling and we learned about. When we heard of classical homeschooling and joined a co-op, and I was really surprised to learn that people, there did not mean Greek and Latin things that for them classics were just kind of good education, like good, solid liberal arts. And it was kind of like, okay, well that’s nice, but where’s the OG classics? So, um, so it’s been fascinating for me to navigate those two worlds from my academic training, but also as a homeschool mom and try to tell homeschoolers, it’s like, but you need, yes, the other classics are great. You need the originals. Especially if you’re Christians.

John Dickson:
So we mean, uh, the ancient Greek and Latin writings that that’s, you know, at, its at its simplest form. Um, some bristle, you know, from a more skeptical point of view at, at the word classics because uh, they would say there’s a kind of racialist. Western civilization, therefore white nationalist, uh, uh, force or connotation in that word when there’s lots of other brilliant literature that should be the equal of, uh, Plato.

Nadya Williams:
Yeah, there’s this reluctance that’s a very modern reluctance and very recent one I would emphasize to, uh, value judgment. Uh, so whenever I’ve written, uh, anything about ranking books that, like, some books are better than others, people get really angry. Like, I get a lot of angry mail when I, uh, whenever I say like. Certain books are just better than others. And with the classics, we get to the original value judgment. And really, I’m gonna stand by this and say, you know, if 2000 years of worth of readers have said these books are remarkable, uh, unparalleled. And are valuable for everyone to keep reading, then maybe we should like not be arrogant and say we know better. Um, and that’s, you know, that goes along with like so many other, um, phenomena of this like contemporary age, you know, like mistrusting institutions and so on. But that’s the thing, like I think we should trust tradition on this if that many readers, millions of readers over over two millennia have said. These books are special. I think there’s, their judgment is worth listening to.

 John Dickson:
This, this very new critique coincides with, uh, a great drop off in anyone reading the classics. Um, you know, and it came the other way. That is, I think people stopped reading them and then just dismissed them after they stopped reading them. But anyway, we, we can stop there. How were you awakened  to the classics? Take us back to your childhood.

Nadya Williams:
Yeah. Um, I was in elementary school and my parents had a massive library and um, this was back in Soviet Russia, uh, before we immigrated and all of that. But, um, I came across this really beautiful, like, big book, like one of those books that has a special cover and it’s, there’s just like something almost like mystical about it. And, uh, nobody told me I couldn’t touch it, so I like pulled it off the shelf and opened it and it was. A translation from Hungarian, a collection of Greek and Roman myths, and also like summaries of. Um, epic poems, tragedies, like everything, you name it. Basically like a collection of classics, uh, translated into Russian from Hungarian and it was just really well done. I don’t even remember like, was this book intended for kids or what? Maybe it wasn’t, I don’t know. But I loved it. And the stories just really. Stuck with me and spoke to me. And so years later when we moved to the United States and I was starting 10th grade and I saw that Latin was an option, uh, I jumped at the opportunity to take it.

John Dickson (Studio)

What Nadya discovered, in learning Latin — and then Greek — was a world of literature she’d never encountered before. The Iliad — betrayals and bloodshed at Troy. Virgil’s Aeneid — the epic tale of a Trojan hero whose journey would one day lead to the founding of Rome. And many more besides. Different genres, different voices, different aims — and yet, again and again, these authors circle around the same underlying questions and longings.

John Dickson:
Of course many, um, of the classical writers that, that, um, we we’re going to talk about are preoccupied with finding permanence, something stable, something long lasting in a world that they felt was just transitory and, and fleeting. Can you tell us about this longing for eternity, which is the sort of way you, you put it in your book, and particularly take us to Homer. Uh, how do you, how do you detect a longing for permanence in Homer?

Nadya Williams:
Yeah, and it’s interesting to put it in those terms like longing for permanence. ’cause I don’t know if even that’s exactly what they realized they were looking for, but it started with a quest for I mortality. Every epic hero wants to live forever, and every epic hero from Gilgamesh to Achilles and so on figures out at some point. I’m gonna die. And in the case of Achilles, he realizes he will die young. 

John Dickson (Studio)

Achilles is the central warrior of Homer’s Iliad — the greatest fighter on the field, but hardly a moral hero. From early on he knows his fate: two lives are open to him. He can live long and die forgotten, or fight at Troy, die young, and win undying fame. Achilles chooses glory. Later myth added the detail that his mother Thetis tried to make him invulnerable by dipping him in the River Styx — leaving only his heel exposed. Oops.  Homer doesn’t tell us that bit, but he does show us the choice at its heart: a short life, traded for immortality of name.

Nadya Williams:
And he kind of has a choice. Um, he could, uh, live to old age in obscurity, or he could die young and win everlasting glory, and he chooses the glory. Uh, so for Homeric Heroes and really other epic heroes across antiquity, there is this fascination with winning. Glory because that will allow them to live forever in everybody’s memory. And that’s what epic poems do. Uh, I mean, to some extent it’s kind of funny because on the one hand we can make fun of Achilles and say like, dude, really, like didn’t you want to, I don’t know, like have a nice farm somewhere on this, on the seaside and like, get married, raise kids. Like all the good stuff, the good life. Uh, and for Achilles, like none of it even seems to compute. Everything goes back to I want glory. That’s something that reaches, I argue to in our most desires that we have, we really do have a desire for eternity. This like Gods shaped void that we all carry. And for Achilles, it manifested in this dysfunctional way. Uh, but the point is there’s a glimpse of truth there. And the Homeric epics show that glimpse of truth and the fact that they continue to speak to people, still speak to people today, to those who will read them. Uh, that shows the power of that desire.

John Dickson:
So do you read The Iliad and The Odyssey as endorsing, uh, this basic perspective that the only way to really live forever is through reputation? That is, um, talked about for centuries. Hmm.

Nadya Williams:
I think the epics are kind of tortured about it, uh, because it seems like Homer. Um. Well, and, and we should say like, there’s no one homer, uh, and all of that. It’s like,

John Dickson:
That’s too deep.

 Nadya Williams:
Too deep. I know, but like for the, for the sake of easily basic conversation, like Homer  doesn’t, um, doesn’t want to endorse that. And that’s why he shows really complex characters. And by the way, that’s part of the beauty of the epic. The characters are not one dimensional. Like, this is the thing I’m for, and that’s. It, what we see is a lot of struggle, just emotional, deep, real human feeling. Um, and that’s what makes them so appealing.

Reading

Achilles glared at him and answered, “Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out and through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall and glut grim Mars with his life’s blood. Put forth all your strength; you have need now to prove yourself indeed a bold soldier and man of war. You have no more chance, and Pallas Minerva will forthwith vanquish you by my spear: you shall now pay me in full for the grief you have caused me on account of my comrades whom you have killed in battle.”

Homer – The Illiad

Nadya Williams:
So on the one hand, these are epics about wars. If there was no Trojan War, there would be no I or Odyssey. And yet at the same time. There is the realization that war is always tragedy, which is why Athenian tragedies later on really pick up on that, and the Trojan War becomes one of the big myths that gets unpacked over and over again on the Athenian tragic stage. Yes, war produces heroes, but at what cost? Do we? Do we want to pay that cost? And is there something better? That’s always the question lurking in the background. Like, is there another way? And of course, neither Homer nor the Athenian Ians have an answer to that, but they’re longing for that answer. And I mean, as Christians, we can say, yes, there is a better way.

John Dickson (Studio)

Glory — being remembered by generations to come, perhaps forever — was a central value in Greek culture. Some writers, like Pindar, turned that longing into a profession. He became a highly sought-after poet by preserving the fame of others, composing victory odes for aristocrats and athletes — especially champions of the great Panhellenic (the ‘all Greek’) games. 

John Dickson:
Were athletics, uh, a softer form of the same longing, you know, the sort of, the glory of winning something. Thinking of the, the poems of Pinda.

Nadya Williams:
Absolutely. I think so. And that’s, um, and that’s why, uh, there is such a fascination with bringing in the myths also. It’s like, here’s a real human being who just won an Olympic contest or some other major contest, and we’re going to compare them to the gods. Except we’re going to say like the world, not quite, we’re not going to offend the gods by saying the humans are just like you. But, um, but there is this sense of like. This is about as good as it gets if you’re human.

Reading

Charioteer of the thundercloud with untiring feet, highest Zeus! Your Seasons, whirling to the embroidered notes of the lyre’s song, sent me as a witness of the most lofty games. When friends are successful, the noble immediately smile on the sweet announcement. Son of Cronus, you who hold Aetna, the wind-swept weight on terrible hundred-headed Typhon, receive, for the sake of the Graces, this Olympic victory-procession, this most enduring light of widely powerful excellence. For the procession comes in honor of Psaumis’ chariot; Psaumis, who, crowned with the olive of Pisa, hurries to rouse glory for Camarina. May the god be gracious to his future prayers, since I praise a man who is most eager in the raising of horses, who rejoices in being hospitable to all guests, and whose pure thoughts are turned towards city-loving peace.

Pindar – Olympian Ode

Nadya Williams:
And of course with athletics there’s always that like reminder lurking in the background. Like, you are gonna grow old. Like that’s great. You could run, um, your two laps around the track super fast this year. Uh, give it a decade or two. And you know, like those knees are not gonna hold up.

John Dickson (Studio)

Another way of achieving glory — of being remembered — was through writing history. Herodotus of Halicarnassus is often called the father of history. He broke with tradition of writing heroic poetry and instead told the story of the Persian Wars in expansive, curious prose. His Histories is a great, wide-ranging experiment — even if it’s not always as accurate or critical as we’d expect from a modern historian.

Reading

Then Cyrus [the Persian king], having perceived that Croesus [the king of Lydia] was a lover of the gods and a good man, caused him to be brought down from the pyre and asked him as follows: “Croesus, tell me who of all men was it who persuaded thee to march upon my land and so to become an enemy to me instead of a friend?” And [Croesus] said: “O king, I did this to thy felicity and to my own misfortune, and the causer of this was the god of the Hellenes, who incited me to march with my army. For no one is so senseless as to choose of his own will war rather [than] peace, since in peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.”

Herodotus – Histories

John Dickson (Studio)

Now compare that with another great Greek historian, Thucydides. Like Herodotus, he wanted his work to last — in his case, a history of the Peloponnesian War (basically, the Athenians versus the Spartans) — but he had no interest in colourful storytelling. You might even say he set out to be deliberately unentertaining. He looks down on those who make history a romantic fantasy (perhaps a little swipe at Herodotus)

Reading

The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.

Thucydides – The Peloponnesian War

John Dickson (Studio)

But classical literature isn’t just poetic myth on the one hand and war stories on the other. Greeks and Romans were intensely moral in their own way. They were deeply concerned with what it meant to be a good person, though, sadly, they usually meant a good man. In fact, our word virtue comes from the Latin virtus — pronounced wirtus — meaning “manly excellence.” More on that after the break.

Media – Black Adder

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s Rowan Atkinson’s Edmund Blackadder trying to explain to the incredibly thick Prince of Wales — played by Hugh Laurie — that plays aren’t real. That episode of Blackadder the Third is set in a time when people genuinely believed (and feared) that theatre could shape public morality. Classical Greek writers shared the belief — though not the fear. Many of them thought public entertainment played a vital role in forming the character of citizens. Sort of “you are what you watch” — but in a positive sense. The idea persists today, with governments funding public broadcasters like the BBC, PBS, and the ABC to ensure culturally valuable programs survive even when they’re not profitable. (Yes, I know public broadcasters are controversial!!!) That’s essentially what the Greeks did. Playwrights like Aeschylus and Aristophanes produced state-sponsored performances that refreshed civic values, uniting citizens around shared stories they could laugh at, argue over, and reflect on together.

Reading

“Whoever willingly sings a victory song for Zeus, he shall gain wisdom altogether — Zeus, who sets mortals on the path to understanding, Zeus, who has established as a fixed law that ‘wisdom comes by suffering.’ But even as trouble, bringing memory of pain, drips over the mind in sleep, so wisdom comes to men, whether they want it or not. Harsh, it seems to me, is the grace of gods enthroned upon their awful seats.”

Aeschylus – Agamemnon

John Dickson (Studio)

The chief architects of Greco-Roman ideas of virtue were the philosophers — literally, the lovers of wisdom. Once the tools of logic were in place, philosophy tended to organise itself around three big areas: physics — what the natural world is like; metaphysics — why it’s like that at all; and ethics — how we ought to live. Socrates in the late 5th century BC famously described himself as a gadfly, stinging Athenians into discomfort with questions about reality and morality. His top student was Plato, and Plato’s top student was Aristotle — the holy trinity of pagan philosophy … if that’s not a blasphemous way to put it.

 John Dickson:
I wanna move to Plato and Aristotle, um, because I sometimes see people online, I’m not sure if you see this as well, who say stuff like ‘Plato and Aristotle discovered nothing that hasn’t been contradicted by modern philosophy or modern science. They’re, they’re useless.’ I’m thinking you don’t agree with that?

Nadya Williams:
I mean, it’s yet again complicated. So I do have, uh, some issues with Aristotle, especially as a woman, uh, because some of the stuff he said, um, about, uh, well, like women as defective men and so on, and also like about medicine has actually set back medicine in the western world for like a thousand some years. So, this is not to say that Plato and Aristotle were always right and should be sanctified because I do see people online also say that like, there’s the other extreme. It seems like there’s no middle ground about Plato and Aristotle. People go crazy either in like one direction or the other. And I would, uh, I would encourage people to read them for who they are. And for where they are. So think about where they’re writing, what they’re trying to do, and why it was revolutionary and really remarkable. There’s so much that’s worth admiring. And by the way, they’re not the same. Like Plato and Aristotle disagreed with each other on a whole bunch of things, which also sometimes gets kind of conflated and alighted in, um, uh, facile quotations out of context,

 John Dickson:
Sure. But what would you say is lasting in, let’s just stick with Plato for a second. What sort of lasting insights or revolutionary thoughts did he have?

Nadya Williams:
The importance of public discourse in a democracy, that people should be able to talk about difficult questions together, not at each other, yelling like past each other, but together unpacking them. And there’s also this comfort with not finding absolute answers. So I think that’s really wonderful that Plato is comfortable with this. Like we can debate difficult questions as people.

Reading

“Well this is the point I was making, that we need to come to an agreement on whether we shall allow the poets to compose narratives for us by using imitation, or allow them to imitate in some cases but not in others, and the sort of cases we envisage, or, indeed, not allow them to imitate at all. I get the sense, said [Adeimantus], that you are considering whether we shall admit tragedy and comedy into our city or not. Perhaps, said [Socrates], and perhaps even more than these. In fact, I don’t know yet, but we should go in whatever direction the wind of the argument carries us.”

Plato – Republic

John Dickson:
Aristotle?

Nadya Williams:
For Aristotle, I think he is the father of the liberal arts. This is someone who, um, not always perfectly, but taught and wrote about every single discipline taught in the modern university. It’s really astonishing. Like, don’t talk, don’t ask me to talk about economics, be or math, because it’s gonna get ugly quickly. But the point is, he did, and again, he didn’t do it perfectly, but what he shows is the value of the liberal arts and a thorough education in everything. It’s okay to dabble in every single discipline. It’ll make you a better human being, a better citizen.

Reading

All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness, they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.

Aristotle – Metaphysics

John Dickson (Studio)

The classics begin with the Greeks, but the Romans quickly take them up — and run with them. Rome inherited Greek culture and saw itself as its culmination, the final act of the Mediterranean story. Rome’s champion authors include Marcus Tullius Cicero, the greatest orator of the Roman Republic — and arguably of Roman history. Cicero was a formidable lawyer and politician, whose speeches made him powerful enemies. In the end, he was executed on the orders of Mark Antony for words that cut too close to the bone. Then there’s a man better known for his generalship and dictatorship than his prose: Julius Caesar. While campaigning in Gaul, Caesar wrote his commentarii — polished war reports published back in Rome — the ancestors of modern war journalism. They didn’t just record his victories; they kept his political influence alive while he was away from the capital. Today, the commentarii are usually printed together in a single volume, under the modern title Caesar’s Wars. In their different ways, both Cicero and Caesar believed that words, not swords, would ultimately shape society. Hold that thought in mind because the later Christians would run with it. 

John Dickson:
The cliche about the Romans is that they’re just all into their orgies and blood sports. But you helpfully point out that they were also obsessed with being a good man, and, and they usually meant man, but, um, being moral, there’s a whole moral and virtue literature. Can you tell us about that?

Nadya Williams:
Yeah, the Romans really believed, uh, that. It mattered what kind of person you were, and especially in difficult times, it seems like the harder the times, the more people lean on this. Like we need virtuous people. And that’s so relatable. Um, to, I mean, even like right now, uh, the virtues discourse, that’s really like, uh, it’s been fun to see so many books on the virtues come out just in the last, like couple of years, uh, and more in the pipeline. I think that’s important. Whenever something is wrong, whenever we feel like something is not right, um, there is this question of like, ‘What kind of people are we?’ And Michael Ware has, um, leaned on this a lot and he’s talk, uh, in talking about American politics, that if we are better people, we would have better politics. Like we are the kind of, uh, like what we see, what, what we get is what we are. 

John Dickson (Studio)

Just a quick note to say to our non-American friends that Michael Wear is the founder of The Centre for Christianity and Public Life, and the author of The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life. His insight goes back to one of the American founding fathers, John Adams, who in 1798 said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Michael Wear’s project is about enhancing the public understanding of the importance of morality and spirituality for the health of the nation. Back to Nadya…

Nadya Williams:
And, um. It seems like, and uh, for Michael, this very much comes back to the gospel. Like, if we are formed by the gospel, we would have politics that are formed by the gospel, uh, which we don’t right now, obviously. But the whole point is, um, the Romans already saw a version of that, and we see that first in the Republic, like Livy writing, kind of this exemplary history.

John Dickson (Studio)

One more brief interruption… Livy was a Roman historian who wrote history as moral example. His great work, Ab Urbe Condita — “From the Founding of the City” — retold Rome’s story so readers could see which lives were worth imitating, and which were not. Nadya’s also about to mention Tacitus – the greatest of imperial Rome’s historical writers –, and he wrote with the same moral aim.

Nadya Williams:
The idea that you can have examples of virtue and they should show you – what kind of people should you be? What kind of citizens should you be? But then under the Empire, people like Tacitus really leaned in on this and saying, um, in times of bad emperors, the most important thing you can do is be a good person.

Reading

It is characteristic of human nature to hate those you have harmed: but in truth [Emperor] Domitian, though irritable by nature, and as unrelenting as he was secretive, was mollified by Agricola’s moderation and discretion, who neither invited infamy and ruin through defiance or a foolish show of independence. Let those whose way it is to admire only what is rebellious, learn that great men can exist even under bad leaders, and obedience and moderation, if accompanied by industry and vigour, achieve that glory more often realised through dangerous actions, without benefit to the state, and an ostentatious end.

Tacitus – Agricola 

 John Dickson:
They also wrote biographies, right? I mean, you, you mentioned Tacitus. He, he, he wrote, uh, a biography of, uh, Agricola, uh, the Great Roman General, uh, uh, Suetonius, uh, wrote a lot of biographies, um, and. They have a moral purpose. Am I right that they weren’t just interested in the kind of historical biography like we are, but, but moral exemplars? Can you tell us a little about the biography, literature?

Nadya Williams:
Yes. So with biographies, you get examples of both good and bad. So a lot of times we think, oh, an example should be like, this is what I should copy. But a lot of Greek and Roman biographies are really like, here’s what you should not copy. And with Suetonius especially, uh, so biographies of the 12 Caesars are really like train wreck upon train wreck upon train wreck. But the whole point is it shows like, here’s how, like how did Rome get to where it is right now? Well, a lot of. Leaders Without Virtues did this. And, uh, that’s not a good thing. Now there’s also kind of this, um, entertainment aspect to it, and it gets back also to like the historical writing in the ancient world. There was this idea that you should be formed by it. You should learn something from it. And sometimes we forget that or kind of resisted in the modern world. So chances are like if you, um, in your high school or college history classes, your professor never said, um, things like, ‘Well, here’s the kind of person you should be or should not be based on what we’re reading this week’. But for the Romans, this very much was it. That’s part of the purpose of history and biography. You learn who the best people are, relatively speaking, and you learn who the worst are as far as the virtues go, and you figure it out from there.

John Dickson (Studio)

Probably the best example of this is the epic poem The Aeneid by Virgil. It was a bit of imperial propaganda commissioned by the emperor Augustus. According to Nadya, it’s so good, it’s the hands-down argument for learning Latin. Plus subscribers are about to find out why—thanks for supporting the show. For the rest of us, let’s turn to the other mainstay of classical literature. The art of the argument – rhetoric.

John Dickson:
Tell us about the rhetoric, literature of antiquity and, uh, what you think we can learn because it’s just not a topic we talk about anymore.

Nadya Williams:
Which is really unfortunate because part of the point that I make is like we actually have to use rhetoric all the time. We just don’t think of it as rhetoric and we don’t think of it as like needing skills because people always have to persuade somebody of something like you every single day. I guarantee like, just think about it today. You will have at least one, probably several, occasions when you have to persuade somebody of something. And it might be a minor something, but still, um, there are also large occasions, and so in antiquity, people really thought of rhetoric as a great science. There was a lot of like method to it. You had to learn to be a good speaker. There was so much that went into persuasion, like why do some speeches work for, uh,  in front of some audiences but not others. So like, you have to know, read the room, the original read the room argument and so on, which, um, Aristotle really unpacked.

John Dickson:
He wrote a whole volume on rhetoric didn’t he? That was a textbook. Right up ma till maybe just a couple of hundred years ago in universities. It was still the textbook.

Nadya Williams:
Yeah. And a lot of those skills are also transferable to writing. So like speaking good, public speaking, good writing, all of those things. Um, how do you present a good argument? And so I think about, um, about it in the book in terms of like words of power. And the power of words. Um, and there are so many different contexts starting with the courtroom, um, where you have to persuade someone. So in antiquity, you didn’t get a lawyer to, um, defend you or, you know, prosecute on your behalf. Uh, but you could hire a good speech writer to write the speech that you would then deliver in the courtroom. Um, in classical Athens. Um, and then in Rome you have people like Cicero who made his career as this fabled rhetorician.

Reading

How much further, Catilina, will you carry your abuse of our forbearance ? How much longer will your reckless temper baffle our restraint ? What bounds will you set to this display of your uncontrolled audacity ? Have you not been impressed by the nightly guards upon the Palatine, by the watching of the city by sentinels? Are you not affected by the alarm of the people, by the rallying of all loyal citizens, by the convening of the senate in this safely-guarded spot, by the looks and the expressions of all assembled here ?  Do you not perceive that your designs are exposed ? Do you not see that your conspiracy is even now fully known and detected by all who are here assembled? What you did last night and the night before, where you were and whom you summoned, and what plans you laid, do you suppose that there is one of us here who does not know? Alas! What degenerate days are these!

Cicero – The First Catilinarian Oration

Nadya Williams:
So people who spoke well could go far in politics, and that’s something like today, uh, I guess politicians get speech writers, which is something that I think the Romans would’ve found hilarious because like, if you were a good, uh, good politician, that’s like you write your own speeches, man, that’s, um, that’s part of your like. Part of who you are, how else would people know to judge you accordingly? So there’s just so much there, but also, the realm of romance. Um, and like that’s a situation that all of us will experience. Like at some point, um, you ask someone on a date, or you get asked on a date, or you, somebody asks you to marry them, like hopefully at some point. And that’s all of these things. Or, um, like the examples, with my kids, periodically they gang up and like come up to me and it’s like. Can we have pizza for dinner? It’s like, and you know, presenting the arguments like in favour of having pizza as opposed to, I don’t know, vegetables, but yeah.

John Dickson:
I, I would often say to my, my kids when they were very young, you know, they’d say, ‘Can I have this? I wanna do this, I wanna do this’. And, I would often say to them, ’cause I’d just, I’d just got on an Aristotle kick of reading his rhetoric and I said, well, look, you go away and come back with three arguments. If you come back with three arguments and they’re okay arguments, yes.

Nadya Williams:
Classist Dads are dangerous.

John Dickson:
Once one of my daughters actually produced a PowerPoint presentation and came back, sat down with the computer and gave a PowerPoint presentation why they should have something.

Nadya Williams:
Well see the rhetoric. I mean, that’s what it is. Like rhetoric still important.

John Dickson (Studio)

So far this has been a pretty male-heavy episode — largely because women are mostly invisible in classical literature … as they are in most pre-modern literature. There are exceptions, most famously Sappho, the Greek poet known in antiquity as “the Tenth Muse.” The nine Muses were the goddesses of artistic inspiration, so calling a real woman the tenth was a remarkable honour. Much of her work is lost, but what survives — especially her love poetry — is extraordinary. A little over the top, but extraordinary.

Reading

He seems as fortunate as the gods to me,
the man who sits opposite you
and listens nearby to your sweet voice
and lovely laughter.
Truly that sets my heart trembling
in my breast.
For when I look at you for a moment,
then it is no longer possible for me to speak;
my tongue has snapped,
at once a subtle fire has coursed beneath my skin,
I see nothing with my eyes,
my ears hum, sweat pours from me,
a trembling seizes me all over,
I am greener than grass,
and it seems to me that I am little short of dying.

Sappho, Fragment 31

John Dickson (Studio)

Like I said, a little over the top!! But there’s amazing agency in her work. Even so, women were largely excluded from public cultural life. They weren’t even allowed to attend Greek plays; all the roles were performed by blokes.

John Dickson:
I mean, you are a woman and you like classics, so is there anything in classical literature for women or from a woman’s perspective?

Nadya Williams:
You know, it never occurred to me like until I got to college and people started talking about like the gender aspect. ’cause for me it was just like, these are amazing stories. These stories. And I think like for a lot of people, these stories just appealed. Um, I think about classicists like Dorothy Lee Sayers who loved the classics and um, so it’s … on the one hand, yes. Um, I know a, a lot of times now we do look for women characters and so on and so forth, and want that interest. And perhaps there’s not as much of that necessarily in classics, although you do have powerful women characters. Um, in the starting, like with Homer, in the IDs, some of the most sympathetic characters and the Odyssey, some of the most sympathetic characters are the women. But, Ultimately, I think part of it is you are talking about a very male centered world, and it’s not until we get to the Christians that we start getting women writers who are just powerful, powerful women writers, like, uh, Perpetua, um, the author of just this stunning, um, passion narrative from that she wrote in prison awaiting martyrdom.

Reading

Tertius and Pomponius, those blessed deacons who tried to take care of us, bribed the soldiers to allow us to go a better part of the prison to refresh ourselves for a few hours. Everyone then left that dungeon. I nursed my baby, who was faint from hunger. In my anxiety I spoke to my mother about the child, I tried to comfort my brother, and I gave the child in their charge. I was in pain because I saw them suffering out of pity for me. These were the trials I had to endure for many days. Then I got permission for my baby to stay with me in prison. At once I recovered my health, relieved as I was of my worry and anxiety over the child. My prison had suddenly become a palace, so that I wanted to be there rather than anywhere else. One day while we were eating breakfast we were suddenly hurried off for a hearing. We arrived at the forum, and straight away the story went about the neighbourhood near the forum and a huge crowd gathered. We walked up to the prisoner’s dock. All the others when questioned admitted their guilt. Then, when it came my turn, my father appeared with my son, dragged me from the step, and said: ‘Perform the sacrifice-have pity on your baby!’  Hilarianus the governor, who had received his judicial powers as the successor of the late proconsul Minucius Timinianus, said to me: ‘Have pity on your father’s grey head; have pity on your infant son. Offer the sacrifice for the welfare of the emperors.’ ‘I will not’, I retorted. ‘Are you a Christian?’ said Hilarianus. And I said: ‘Yes, I am.’ Then Hilarianus passed sentence on all of us: we were condemned to the beasts, and we returned to prison in high spirits. But my baby had got used to being nursed at the breast and to staying with me in prison. So I sent the deacon Pomponius straight away to my father to ask for the baby. But father refused to give him over. But as God willed, the baby had no further desire for the breast, nor did I suffer any inflammation; and so I was relieved of any anxiety for my child and of any discomfort in my breasts. 

The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas

John Dickson (Studio)

We also have the account of Perpetua’s brutal execution, along with her friend and servant Felicitas, by means of a goring bull. But I’ll spare you that!! 

John Dickson:
Moving to the Christian era, um, I still come across the claim that when Christianity rose to prominence, Christians shunned and burned all the wicked pagan classics. I see you smirking at me there. I know that no classical scholar thinks this, but tell us why no one should think this: that Christians shunned and burned the pagan classics.

Nadya Williams:
I think the only way you can make that claim is if you don’t read any Christian writers. Because you read, read any of the church fathers, and you will see that they’ve been immersed in the pagan classics and they’re using them to make arguments about Christ. So,  I mean like … just people like Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, I mean, Augustine just like loved the classics and later on, Boethius. So the last great classical, writer, what he wrote was really just a survey of the Pagan classics. So I think the Christian writers really saw a power, saw those longings for God in the Pagan classics, and they were able to bring them together and say, this is powerful, this is beautiful, and this is fulfilled in Christ. So to use the example of Virgil’s Aneid. It becomes so popular with the Christians precisely because they can see longings that some start interpreting as allegorical. There’s a reason Virgil becomes the guide in Dante’s Inferno.

John Dickson:
I’m also reminded of the, um, Peter Brown comment in one of his many brilliant books. Peter Brown, the ancient historian from, uh, Princeton. He, he said, 90% of our classic literature we only have today because they were preserved by Christians. So the very fact that we have this pagan literature is because of the Christians.

John Dickson (Studio)

So, if Christians weren’t burning the classics, what were they doing with them? That’s up next…

Media – The West Wing

John Dickson (Studio)

Ahh — it’s been too long. Yes, our favourite president, Jed Bartlett from The West Wing, is back — reminding us that anything less than two thousand years old is basically television. Nice! But he’s making a serious point: to understand our world, you need to know what it grew out of. As Nadya mentioned, Saint Augustine thought the same. He loved the classics and trained as an elite rhetorician and teacher of rhetoric — but that didn’t mean he swallowed them whole. In his famous work, On Christian Doctrine, which was basically an instruction manual for Christian teachers,  Augustine makes the point that some things in the pagan classics are incompatible with Christian faith, but much of it is genuinely valuable. Pagans, he said, had discovered many true things about God’s world. It all comes down to how you read them.

Nadya Williams:
I think that’s where he gets into something that I’m trying to get in my own book, that it matters how you read. When you read the Pagans, you still need to remember you’re a Christian; you’re reading them as a Christian. And so whenever Augustine looks at the bad stuff, like the things that he realises, ‘You know, maybe we don’t need this’, he’s realising that he’s looking at it with Christian eyes. So it’s, it’s not as much like what we read, although it matters what we read. We want to read good things. And with the classics, that’s definitely like they’ve stood this test of time, but we still need to remember who we are when we read the Classics. So, um, it gets back to the examples, um, that the Roman biographers and historians like. Why are the virtues important for us it’s not enough just to say like, well, you can be a good person for your own sake. Like, this is a self-improvement project. What we can say rather, is we are redeemed by Christ, and this means a lot. It means everything.

John Dickson:
You mentioned Boethiuis. Maybe give us a little, uh, insight into who Boetheus is?

Nadya Williams:
Yeah, so we think, if you think of Homer as the beginning of classical literature, Boethius is the last writer who is described as a classical writer after Boethius, um, everything like we, we think of the medieval world. So he’s this like book and, uh, late antiquity. He was a prominent. Politician until, uh, some court intrigues, got him imprisoned and then executed. But while awaiting execution, he wrote the consolation of philosophy, which became this incredible classic bestseller, if you will, to use in anachronistic term, but. He wrote this incredible book that’s a survey of Greco-Roman literature. So what happens is he’s, um, he describes himself sitting in prison kind of feeling really sorry for himself, which is understandable because he was unjustly accused and all of that. Um, and. This vision appears to him. The lady philosophy, just a shining, glorious, angelic figure, and she has this dialogue with him. It’s like this Socratic dialogue in prison between a Christian philosopher and lady philosophy who embodies like all of the wisdom of Greek and Roman philosophy.  Presented through Christian lens, and so together they have this conversation about wisdom, beauty, the meaning of life, like the meaning of who you are, doesn’t matter who you are as a person. Why is virtue important? And ultimately, he concludes the, the way the work concludes is that he feels consoled. Through philosophy, through wisdom, knowing that, okay, if I am a virtuous person and if I am a virtuous person in Christ, that’s what matters the most.

Five Minute Jesus

Let’s press pause. I’ve got a five-minute Jesus for you. I said earlier that when you walk through Oxford’s old Bodleian Library, you first pass the Classics — thousands of volumes on Greek and Roman literature and culture. And then, almost without noticing a boundary, you find yourself surrounded by biblical scholarship and the writings of the early church. There’s an obvious chronology to that. The Greek and Roman worlds didn’t disappear; they morphed. The greatest thinkers of the early Christian centuries wrote in the same languages — Greek and Latin — wrestled with the same universal questions, but offered strikingly different answers. Ancient poets longed for immortality through fame — the hope that a name might live on when the body failed. Philosophers searched for virtue — a disciplined life that could withstand the chaos of the world. Historians tried to preserve meaning by memory, believing that if the past could be rightly told, the future might be rightly lived. The universe seemed ordered — governed by a logos, a rational principle. The pressing question was how to align one’s life with that order, here and now … and even beyond this mortal span. Some tried asceticism; others pursued pleasure. Some sought meaning in war; others in politics. And most people simply struggled to survive — hoping the gods might grant favours rather than disasters, and that, in the end, somehow, somewhere, their life would count beyond a final breath. What the classics longed for, Jesus announced. I can’t help but think of Greeks and Romans hearing for the first time these words:

“I have come that they may have life — and have it abundantly.” John 10

“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” Mark 8

“Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11

“Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Seek first the kingdom of God. Do not be afraid, little flock — your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” Luke 12

Meaning, ethics, eternal life, and, above all, divine favour – God’s kingdom as a gift – these fulfilled not just Jewish hopes but Greco-Roman longings, as well. Of course, many Greeks and Romans dismissed all of this as nonsense. But over time, the classical world came to embrace the Christian vision of the Good and the good life — not through force, as people sometimes imagine, but through the realisation that the great odyssey of the classics — that search for substance, glory, ethics, and even the favour of the gods — finally found its homecoming not in Achilles, Aeneas, Plato, or Caesar, but in Jesus Christ. You can press ‘play’ now.

John Dickson:
The gospels are often compared to the ancient Greco-Roman biography. How do you think they compare or contrast to a good, uh, Greek or Roman biography?

Nadya Williams:
I think the gospels combine a whole bunch of genres, so it’s not just a biography. Um, they definitely have elements of the, uh, Greek and Roman novel, for instance. Just a lot of this adventure, storytelling, rhetoric … there’s so much beauty there. But I do think describing them as a biography is in some ways true because we start with a birth and end with the death and resurrection of an individual. Of course, an obvious difference from a biography as readers would’ve realized in antiquity is usually a biography ends with death. These ones do not. There’s something really special that happens and you realize like, oh. Um, so just in that very, um, very way, uh, the gospels remind us like, this is not like any biography you’ve ever read. This is the biography of God.

John Dickson (Studio)

Nadya’s encounter with the Gospels changed everything for her. This classicist was intrigued by the combination of simple Greek language … that contained the most profound thoughts imaginable.

John Dickson:
Before his conversion, Augustine thought the gospels were simplistic and crass compared to Virgil and Cicero and Plotinus. Tell us about your first encounter with the gospels.Was that encounter a bit of a come down given that you’d been reading Theucidides, and all the others?

Nadya Williams:
So I don’t even remember when I first read them. Um, I, I don’t think they stuck out. And I think that kind of goes with Augustine’s point, but also the point of some modern scholars, they’re, they’re scholars of religious studies who are not believers who sometimes talk about the gospels or the Bible. It’s like, oh yeah. Yet, yet another work of literature like moving along here. And again, it matters how we read with what eyes we’re reading. So what I do remember is, uh, when I finally came back to the gospels at age 30, it just like struck hard. I am a Christian today because I read the gospels again in Greek, uh, at age 30, and it felt like reading them for the first time.

John Dickson:
In an airport. Am I right?

Nadya Williams:
In an airport.

 John Dickson:
With a long layover. Take us there. Take us there – what possessed you to pick up the gospels in Greek in a long layover … in Amsterdam is, am I right?

Nadya Williams:
I know. That’s, um, so this story started a few months before that when I was, um, first exploring Christianity and I was trying to figure out like, what is this, is this true? And just reading a lot, like everything I could get my hands on. And then I was, uh, at a conference, and coming back home. Um, I had a layover in Amsterdam, and I packed a copy of the gospels in Greek with me because, you know, you, you always bring books, uh, when you travel, but it was also, it was kind of eerie ’cause it was like the night bridging Saturday to Sunday. And here I am sitting in this like, quiet airport, uh, waiting for my, uh, plane early the next morning, just reading gospel after gospel and realising like, ‘This is true!’ But the thing is like, there’s. It’s like, there’s no way to explain this except God, like the Holy Spirit working and reading that, uh, reading the gospels and realising like Jesus really is who he says he is. This is true, and if this is true … oh man. Like I have a, there are some expectations, like there are things I have to do and the next Sunday I was in church for the first time. So like, and that’s it. That’s, I mean, that’s been the story of my life since then. But the whole point is how we read … it makes a difference. You can read the gospels like in a really just sort of basic way, um, without any context, and it might mean absolutely nothing. Or you read the gospel, and it just completely bulldozes you over and changes your life. And that’s, that’s something that is very much, um, a reminder that how we read matters. What eyes and hearts do we bring to it?

Reading

[Jesus said] “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” The Gospel of Matthew

John Dickson:
Do you think there are important things that you can get from the classics that you can’t get from scripture? That’s the first part of the question.

Nadya Williams:
I think so. Um, or at least they help you get these readings. The classics will help you get those same things from Christ, uh, from scripture in a, uh, in a better or clearer way perhaps. Um, I think about, I think a lot about how the earliest converts encountered the gospels, where they were coming from. They were coming from a world of pagan literature. If that is all you’ve ever read, and then you pick up the gospels for the first time, what is it gonna be like? And I think the gospel spoke to these people in a really powerful way, precisely because they had been immersed in Greco-Roman literature. The contrast with a world of cruel gods gave them something that really stood out, which we forget sometimes. I think, because we don’t, um, most people today who come to Christ, if they didn’t grow up in a Christian home, they’re not coming from paganism. They’re coming a lot of times from like nothing. And that’s where it’s not so striking. Suddenly the gospels don’t seem striking. If you come from like, well, I had a world of no Gods in my life, and now suddenly I have God. Um, okay. And perhaps for people like that, I would say reading the classics will help you see the wonder, the beauty, the incredible power of God’s presence in your life.

John Dickson:
What can you get from the gospels that you can’t get from the classics? Can you put your finger on, uh, on, on some of those thoughts?

Nadya Williams:
You see a God like no other in the Greco-Roman world. So if you read Homer or the tragedies, uh, or Ovid’s Metapmorphisis, what you see is Gods who toy with humans, gods who just, who have incredible power and are incredibly cruel. What you see in the gospels, what would have struck people? What we know struck people so powerfully is a God who says, I love you. I died for you.

Undeceptions theme