Professor Edith Hall
speaker
337 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 13 Jul
Professor Edith Hall’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It's all without accountability.
They hardly ever get called to account.
So this is humans imagining, I think, through the gods, what life would be like.
if there was no payback time.
I love that.
It's highly relatable now.
It was highly relatable then.
Okay.
Many Greek men had to travel an awful lot.
They were a very warlike lot.
They were always off on expeditions and raiding parties, a bit like the Vikings.
They are away for the summer months, the sailing season, all the time.
And having a thoroughly competent wife who will look after your household was an invaluable resource.
He's away for 20, well, 19 years, but it's an experience that's integral to them all.
I've got a friend, former PhD student, whose husband was in the RAF, and she's written a whole book about Homer and army wives because these women who have to hold the fort.
What's very beautiful about the Odyssey, though, and I have to say this, of course, it's deeply sexist and it reflects the hopelessly sexist worldview of an archaic Greek peasant farmer in that he's allowed to have sex in every port, has a girl in every port or a nymph in his case.
But it's unique in ancient literature or almost unique in that Penelope's competence
And intelligence is celebrated.
That is really unusual.
In later Greek literature, women's intelligence is regarded with great suspicion.
Showing 181–200 of 337 · page 10 of 17
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