Star of Stage and Temple

It took quite an effort for a woman to capture attention in Ancient Greece. You could be a beautiful goddess or a savage monster but high profile career options for flesh and blood women were rather thin on the ground. So why has the name of Myrrhine survived for two and a half thousand years?

We can find her name inscribed on a gravestone in the dusty corridors of the Epigraphic Museum in Athens, painted alongside the gods on an enormous funeral vase in the National Archaeology Museum. And she appears as the most cunning of the Greek wives withholding sex from their desperate husbands in the Lysistrata- the best known and most performed of the Ancient Greek comedies.

So who was Myrrhine, how did she achieve her contemporary fame and why does she still speak to us from the stage today? Mary’s search takes her from the back streets of Athens to the peak of the Acropolis.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Anna Charalambou

Actors: Robert Wilfort as Cinesias and Laura Dos Santos as Myrrhine

Expert contributors: Nikolaos Papazarkades of the University of California, Berkeley, Nick Lowe from Royal Holloway University of London, Tulsi Parikh of the British School at Athens and Andronike Makres of the University of the Peloponnese

Special thanks to the British School at Athens, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Epigraphic Museum of Athens and the National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(20)

BONUS: Mary Beard on Homer's Odyssey

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, starring Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway is filling cinema seats around the world and is already a hot favourite for the Oscars. But what is it about this 3000 year old stor...

28 Heinä 13min

Martin Scorsese and the Godfather of Athens

Controlling the 2nd century city of Athens with their enormous wealth and intimate connections to the most powerful families in Rome were a local mobster, Herodes Atticus and his young Roman wife, Reg...

28 Heinä 28min

The Greengrocer Who Saved Democracy

Meet Gerys, a Bulgarian slave who sells fruit and veg in the marketplace of Ancient Athens. He’s been bought and sold, he’s done his time rowing warships for the Athenian navy but now he’s at the cen...

21 Heinä 28min

The Odyssey of Gamma 58

When the German archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, pulled a shining mask from the bone-dry earth of Mycenae he is said to have telegraphed the King of Greece with the words, ‘I have gazed upon the fa...

14 Heinä 28min

Courtroom Drama

From Marvel movies to presidential elections their powerful influence endures on our stories, philosophies and politics, but what it was it like to be an Ancient Greek? Scattered clues need to be gath...

30 Kesä 28min

Trailer

From Christopher Nolan blockbusters to presidential elections, their powerful influence endures on our stories, philosophies and politics, but what it was it like to be an Ancient Greek? Scattered clu...

16 Kesä 3min

The Wolf of Via Vesuvio

Lucius Caecilius Iucundus kept the economic wheels of Pompeii well greased. He was a middle man doing very nicely - part money-lender, part auctioneer, part banker, all hustler. Thanks to the eruptio...

11 Kesä 202428min