Professor Mary Beard
speaker
662 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 1 May
Professor Mary Beard’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 — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
But it absolutely fits the kind of the stereotype stories of Roman women who, when their sons are in position of power or their husbands, they are trying to control things themselves.
using rather kind of classic quotes, female wiles.
That is what he said.
That's not a story which is restricted to the Romans.
Well, you're not so far off.
What it shows is how easy it is to invent these stories.
Oh, OK.
Oh.
All our three main historical sources are pretty clear that Nero tries to and eventually does kill her.
Suetonius has the most possible attempt.
Suetonius records that there were...
three attempts to poison her, but like many Romans, she took a daily dose of antidote in order to protect her body against poison.
Yeah, it is.
It's like a proper silly... The next attempt is even more farce.
The idea is that...
He arranged for tiles to crash from the roof where she was sleeping, but she had been tipped off.
Now, you look at both those stories and you say they are both absolutely untestable.
And they're so over the top.
And she wasn't killed by them.
And they say, oh, yeah, he tried to do it, but she'd been tipped off.
Showing 381–400 of 662 · page 20 of 34
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