Mary Beard, the renowned Cambridge classics professor, has long been celebrated for her ability to bridge the ancient and the modern—often with a dose of irreverence and a pair of glittery socks. Now, at 71, Beard is once again in the spotlight with two new books: The Shock of the Old and Talking Classics. Both works challenge how we interpret the ancient world, urging readers to question comforting narratives and instead embrace the disruptive lessons history can offer.
Beard’s approach to the classics is anything but conventional. According to The Times, she is as likely to be caught reading Vogue as she is reciting Virgil, and her tutorials are legendary for their candor and wit. One student recalled a session with Beard lounging on a sofa, feet up, beginning, “So, Cicero. Bit of a twat wasn’t he?” This blend of humor and depth has earned her the moniker of “rock star scholar” and national treasure, making the ancient world accessible—and relevant—to generations of students and readers.
Her fascination with history was sparked at the age of five, when a British Museum curator handed her a piece of 4,000-year-old bread. “I never forgot it. It was that sense of wonderment at being eyeball to eyeball with an ordinary bit of the past,” Beard told The Times. This early encounter shaped her lifelong passion for exploring the lives of everyday people in antiquity, rather than focusing solely on emperors and generals.
Beard’s new books are, at their core, a manifesto for the importance of the humanities. In The Shock of the Old, she argues that studying ancient civilizations should not serve as a cozy blanket of nostalgia. Instead, it should challenge us, forcing a confrontation with uncomfortable truths—slavery, misogyny, and the violence that often underpinned societies we now romanticize. She writes, “Classics prompts you to rethink the present,” emphasizing that the lessons of the past are rarely straightforward or flattering to modern sensibilities.
This perspective is vividly illustrated in her discussion of Roman citizenship. In June 1963, President John F. Kennedy famously declared in West Berlin, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” drawing a parallel between American and Roman ideals of freedom. Yet, as Beard points out in her latest work, the phrase “civis Romanus sum” (“I am a Roman citizen”) appears only once in surviving Latin literature—and that moment, described by Cicero, ended in tragedy. The citizen Publius Gavius invoked his status to protest his treatment, only to be crucified by the corrupt governor Verres. As Beard notes, this episode serves as a caution against idealizing the past: “The plea of a Roman citizen was no guarantee of justice or humanity.”
Beard’s books also explore the recurring themes and structures of power that connect ancient Rome to today’s world. She resists simplistic comparisons—“What I bridle at is the idea that somebody can say – so what emperor is Donald Trump most like? That’s a good party game. But if you think it’s told you anything about Trump, or it’s told you anything about Nero, dream on,” she told The Times. Instead, she highlights how the mechanisms of authority, persuasion, and populism remain strikingly familiar. Julius Caesar’s direct communication with the masses, she observes, was a precursor to modern social media, bypassing traditional hierarchies to speak “to the people direct.”
Beard is particularly animated when discussing democracy. “We tend to think of fifth-century BC Athenian democracy as somehow very virtuous,” she explains. “In fact it is relatively short-lived, and it’s violent, and there are coups and assassinations. For me, if there’s a lesson it’s that democracy has always been something you have to fight for. It’s fragile, it’s work in progress and if you don’t stand up for it, you won’t have it.” Her message is clear: the past offers no guarantees, only warnings and prompts for vigilance.
Her teaching style reflects this ethos. Beard laments the modern obsession with grades, arguing that “being at university is about thinking harder than you ever thought before and it’s about making mistakes.” She admits to having pushed students to tears—not out of cruelty, but as a natural result of intellectual challenge. “It’s tough love,” she says.
Yet the field of classics faces its own existential threats. While Beard was writing The Shock of the Old, the University of Chicago announced it would discontinue postgraduate Classics admissions—a decision that, for Beard, signals the precarious position of the humanities in today’s educational landscape. “O tempora, O mores!” she might exclaim, echoing Cicero’s lament for changing times.
Beard’s willingness to confront uncomfortable realities extends beyond the classroom and the page. She has spoken candidly about the sexism and abuse faced by female public figures, including herself. Online trolls have targeted her appearance and age, but Beard often responds directly, even once writing a job reference for one of her abusers. “He was just a silly student whose anger had taken the form of misogyny,” she reflects.
Her personal history is marked by resilience. As a young graduate student, Beard was raped on a train to Rome—a traumatic event she has processed through her historian’s lens. “I came to make sense of it to myself. I’d retold the story in different ways and there was a kaleidoscope of different stories which kind of transcended the idea that it was simply … the exercise of male power over a vulnerable woman,” she told The Times. For Beard, finding meaning in experience—however painful—is a way of reclaiming agency and understanding.
Despite her stature, Beard remains grounded. A walk through Cambridge’s cemeteries with a reporter becomes an impromptu lesson in remembrance and the interplay of past and present. “It’s the mixture that remembrance brings that’s really exciting, the way the past is always with us but never with us,” she muses. Her affection for the ordinary, for the “wheeler dealers” of historic Cambridge, is as genuine as her excitement at spotting the graves of Nobel laureates and philosophers.
Ultimately, Beard’s work is a passionate defense of the humanities as vital to civic life. She bristles at politicians who dismiss humanities degrees as a waste: “That’s just stupid. The skills that humanities subjects offer you seem to me to be absolutely essential for civic democratic debate.” For Beard, the study of the ancient world is not about nostalgia—it’s about equipping society to grapple with complexity, ambiguity, and the enduring questions of human existence.
As the queen of classics continues her journey—both literal and intellectual—her message is simple but profound: the past is not a mirror, but a lens through which we can see ourselves anew, if only we dare to look.