The Torments of Tartarus Are Here and Now

The poet Lucretius's major work is a six-book poem on epicurean philosophy and physics. Doesn’t sound exactly promising? But his contemporaries and poetic descendants RAVED about it, even Cicero, who is mean about everyone. Ovid says that ‘the verses of sublime Lucretius will die only on the day the world ends’. But the world nearly did end for his work because only one manuscript survived, lost for centuries, only to be rediscovered in the Renaissance.

‘Rock star mythologist’ and reformed stand-up Natalie Haynes is obsessed with the ancient world. Here she explores key stories from ancient Rome and Greece that still have resonance today. They might be biographical, topographical, mythological or epic, but they are always hilarious, magical and tragic, mystifying and revelatory. And they tell us more about ourselves now than seems possible of stories from a couple of thousand years ago. This is the eighth series (x 4) of the show and all the other episodes are available as podcasts on BBC Sounds.

Guests include Professor Llewelyn Morgan and Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK. Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery