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
They're hammed up in the sources so that they're over the top and unbelievable.
I sometimes try to read these and to say, look, there is a temptation to think that this is all very funny.
But this is Nero.
This is a woman being killed by her son.
This is matricide.
And it's entered the Nero tradition as a kind of, oh, do you know how Nero tried to kill his mum story?
And there is a terrible little bit of tragedy in The Collapsible Boat because one of Agrippina's servants is with her.
And she goes into the water too.
And she thinks the best way to save herself, because she doesn't realise it's a trick, is to say, I'm Agrippina, save me.
Save me, save me.
And of course, that gets her murdered.
The crew come over and they kill her.
It's insane.
The story is, again, that he invents the idea that she was trying to kill him and gets rid of her.
Yes, it's self-defence.
Exactly.
And so she is stabbed by... And it is said that he then goes and looks at her body while drinking a glass of wine.
Just occasionally, I think we ought to... I like to remember Mum.
I think that she was... 100%.
Not...
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