Shadi Bartsch, a prominent Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago and translator of Virgil’s Aeneid, shares her unique insights as a half-Persian classicist. She discusses the cultural nuances in reading classics and the differences between Homer and Virgil’s realms. The conversation dives into the implications of Seneca's Stoicism, the relevance of Virgil for modern women, and the connections between classical texts and contemporary Chinese political thought. Bartsch also reveals her hopes for uncovering lost manuscripts and the cultural lessons we can learn from ancient history.
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insights INSIGHT
Visual History in the Aeneid
Virgil's Aeneid uses visual representations of history, like the Temple of Juno and the Gates of the Underworld.
These visuals often depict viewers misinterpreting the historical events, highlighting the constructed nature of history.
insights INSIGHT
Aeneid's Historical Vision
Virgil's Aeneid presents a forward-moving history, not a cyclical one.
The poem undermines the pro-empire narrative by showcasing multiple historical interpretations and Aeneas's flawed character.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Cross-Cultural Perspectives on the Classics
Shadi Bartsch's half-Iranian, half-Swedish background influenced her reading of the classics.
She noticed similar rhetoric used by opposing sides (like Greeks and Persians) to portray themselves as civilized and their enemies as barbarians.
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The Aeneid, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, is a monumental work of classical literature. It follows the journey of Aeneas, a Trojan hero, as he navigates from the ruins of Troy to Italy, where he is destined to found the city of Lavinium, a precursor to Rome. The poem is divided into 12 books, with the first six detailing Aeneas' wanderings and the second six describing the war in Italy against the Latins. The epic incorporates various legends and mythological elements, glorifying traditional Roman virtues and legitimizing the Julio-Claudian dynasty. It explores themes such as duty, fate, and the relationship between the individual and society, and has had a profound influence on Western literature[2][3][4].
The golden ass
Apuleius
The Golden Ass, also known as Metamorphoses, is a Roman novel by Apuleius that tells the story of Lucius, a young man fascinated by magic who is accidentally transformed into a donkey. The novel is filled with inset tales and explores themes of transformation and redemption. It is considered a precursor to the picaresque genre and has influenced many later writers.
The Satyricon
Petronius
The Satyricon, written in Latin, is a Menippean satire that combines prose and verse to depict the lives of three young men—Encolpius, Ascyltos, and Giton—as they engage in various outlandish and often perverse adventures in southern Italy during the mid-1st century AD. The novel is renowned for its vivid portrayal of everyday Roman life, exposing the vulgarity and pretentiousness of the wealthy. It includes the famous 'Cena Trimalchionis' (Dinner of Trimalchio), which satirizes the excesses and pretensions of the Roman elite. The work is considered one of the gems of Western literature and a precursor to the modern novel form[2][4][5].
Civil War
Mark Millar
Civil War es una historia que explora el conflicto entre dos grupos de superhéroes con diferentes ideologías. La trama se centra en la lucha por el control del gobierno y la regulación de los superhéroes. La historia explora temas de libertad, responsabilidad y la naturaleza del poder. La obra también presenta una crítica social sobre la vigilancia y la intromisión gubernamental. La historia concluye con un cambio significativo en el panorama de los superhéroes y el gobierno.
Plato Goes to China
Shadi Bartsch
This book examines the ways in which Chinese nationalist thinkers have utilized Greek classical texts, particularly in the context of China's modernization and political shifts. It highlights two distinct waves of engagement with these texts: one during the early twentieth century and another following the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. The book explores how figures like Plato and Aristotle have been interpreted to support or critique Western democracy and the Chinese socialist system.
A self-professed nerd, the young Shadi Bartsch could be found awake late at night, reading Latin under the covers of her bed by flashlight. Now a professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, Dr. Bartsch is one of the best-known classicists in America and recently published her own translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. Widely regarded for her writing on Seneca, Lucan, and Persius, her next book focuses on Chinese interpretations of classic literature and their influence on political thought in China.
Shadi joined Tyler to discuss reading the classics as someone who is half-Persian, the difference between Homer and Virgil’s underworlds, the reasons so many women are redefining Virgil’s Aeneid, the best way to learn Latin, why you must be in a room with a native speaker to learn Mandarin, the question of Seneca’s hypocrisy, what it means to “wave the wand of Hermes”, why Lucan begins his epic The Civil War with “fake news”, the line from Henry Purcell’s aria that moves her to tears, her biggest takeaway from being the daughter of an accomplished UN economist, the ancient text she’s most hopeful that new technology will help us discover, the appeal of Strauss to some contemporary Chinese intellectuals, the reasons some consider the history of Athens a better allegory for America than that of Rome, the Thucydides Trap, the magical “presentness” of ancient history she’s found in Italy and Jerusalem, her forthcoming book Plato Goes to China, and more.
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