Ancient Greece is all the rage this year as the UK gears up for Olympic fever and this year’s Hay Festival [www.hayfestival.com] is no exception. It is putting on a series of debates on classical Greece covering everything from Plato to heroisation and sex.
The idea for the series came after Professor Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, gave a very popular talk at Hay 2010 on how the Greeks would view contemporary democracy. He will be taking part in three of the 10 Greek Classics sessions this year.
On 7th June he will speak on the first panel on Herodotus, described in the Festival programme as “the Father of History, who pioneered the systems of ‘inquiry’ and holds a mirror up to our own concerns about East and West”. His fellow panellist is author and Cambridge alumnus Tom Holland.
The two are collaborating on a new hardback translation of Herodotus for Penguin so at least part of the focus of their session will be the translation process. “Tom is not a classicist. His degree was in English,” says Professor Cartledge, “but he has turned himself into a master historian and translator.”
Tom’s books include Persian Fire, the first world empire, battle for the West which draws extensively on Herodotus.
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Image: Herodotus Credit: Michailk via Creative Commons
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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