A guide to self-studying classics
+ suggestions of what to read/watch 🏺
I know it’s been a hot minute — I’ve been chewing on a few topics that I plan on flinging at you in the coming weeks — but I was hit with a rather insistent lightning bolt of inspiration when I read a recent piece by
which you can check out here:
It has blown up with good reason.
presents a wide range of information and suggestions in such a fun format, it’s just glorious. I dip a toe or two (occasionally a whole hoof) into art history but sweet lord I learnt a LOT. So please do check out her piece and her other writing and be aware that she gets ALL the credit for the structure of this newsletter.Now, as you may suspect, I have some controversial opinions when it comes to whether or not people should spend their time (and money) studying classics. The reality of the job market and overall lack of funding is not something that can be fixed with a can-do attitude and some well-timed TikToks. I do 100% agree with a point made by
when discussing the defunding of arts and humanities:“This defunding pushes the study of art [history] further behind the golden gates of privilege and elitism. But we, the ruthlessly curious, we persevere!”
We do indeed! Thanks to those already working in classics outreach, the sheer glut of fictional retellings of classical myths, Christopher Nolan throwing his oar in, and the behemoth that is social media in 2025, the riches of the classical world are now the most accessible they’ve ever been.
So whether you’ve keenly devoured Stephen Fry, you’re deep in the bowels of Aeschylus or you just want to know what the hell is up with Zeus, settle in for a multi-course menu whipped up by yours truly to sate your intellectual appetite 🥢
A classics tasting menu 🍽️
1) “L'Apéritif”: Head to a museum
This may seem obvious but we don’t want to bite off more than we can chew (I don’t want you slinking off before mains have been served). I’m sorry that my first suggestion involves you leaving the house but a museum visit is truly the best warm-up when it comes to casting your mind back more than one millennium. The great thing about classics, specifically classical art, is that it’s so damn ubiquitous, you’d be hard pressed to visit a museum that doesn’t have an old sculpture of Aphrodite rattling around somewhere.
If you’re in the US, you’ve got:
The Met
The Getty Museum
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (these guys dug out a particular pottery fragment for me as part of my masters thesis so they have my heart in perpetuity).
If you’re in Europe you can head to:
The British Museum (boo hiss)
The Louvre
ANY museum in Greece or Rome (I’d highly recommend the Cycladic and the Acropolis Museum in Athens and the Musei Capitolini in Rome).
The Regional Archaeological Museum: Antonio Salinas in Palermo is hard to beat because it has a fountain with turtles 🐢
- also recommended the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna so that’s very much on my list.
For Aussies:
The National Gallery of Victoria has some nice bits floating around…
But if you want the real deal, head to the Hellenic Museum in Melbourne.
If you’re unable to visit a museum in person, a bunch of them (the museums with 💸💸💸💸) have spectacular online collections:
🍇 Wine pairing: Bettany Hughes on the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World with Dan Snow.
2) “L’Amuse-bouche”: After the art and artefacts have got you thinking, where to next?
If you’re reading this, you clearly have an appetite for content that is a bit meatier than 8 seconds of clickbait. To help plug up your ears and protect you from the modern siren song that is doomscrolling, substitute TikTok and Instagram reels for their heartier counterpart, podcasts and YouTube videos.
For YouTube, I wholeheartedly recommend:
World History Encyclopedia — they’ve got a massive library of ancient history videos and they’re my first port of call when I need to brush up on a particular topic.
Dig It With Raven (this is for the archaeology aficionados, she recently made a video ripping into Joe Rogan which you can watch here).
Propylaea Productions — a shameless bit of self promotion but I did write and present a very unserious recap of Homer’s Odyssey, which I’d highly recommend if you want to get a gist of the plot (I fall off a paddle-board and deliver some lines underwater).
For podcasts, it’s hard to go past the #1:
Let’s Talk About Myths Baby — run by the inimitable and tireless Liv Albert, she has an episode on literally every single myth so check it out for a real treasure trove.
🍇 Wine pairing: KAOS on Netflix — Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, need I say more?
3) “L’Entrée”: I can hear your stomach RUMBLING.
You may not be emotionally or spiritually ready for the big tomes, but I think your palate has been suitably warmed up for some lighter fare. A lot of people have a LOT of opinions about the recent surge in mythology-based retellings — I’m currently pleading the 5th when it comes to all that but there are a select few that I really do think you should check out:
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes (her other work like Stone Blind and A Thousand Ships are more well-known but I maintain this lesser-known book published back in 2017 is the standout).
An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn — if you take anything from this newsletter, I hope it is this suggestion. It was recommended to my father by a dear friend of his, my father passed it to me, and I forced my partner to read it after we’d been dating for about a month (he cried on a train when he finished it). It is beautiful, moving, and one of the best books I have ever read.
If fiction isn’t really your thing, allow me to dish up some poetry:
The Poetry of Sappho — the one and only! I’ve linked an online translation by Gregory Nagy but people also go pretty wild for Anne Carson’s 2003 translation which you can find here.
Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters by Nikita Gill — she also posts a lot of her poetry on Instagram and has a new book about Hekate coming soon.
🍇 Wine pairing: Ancient Lyric and Lyra on Instagram — Bettina has a PhD in classics and actually SINGS ancient poetry like Homer and the Orphic Hymns. It’s just divine (pun very much intended).
4) “Le Plat principal”: it’s tome time!
Some of these are absolute mammoths BUT I promise I am not recommending anything that I have not trudged through myself.
Let’s start with the crowd pleasers:
Mythos by Stephen Fry — again, people have mixed feelings about this, but I think it’s a great place to start. Personally, I’m partial to his Troy retelling.
Sex on Show: Seeing the Erotic in Greece and Rome by Caroline Vout
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
Deep dives:
Messalina by
Venus and Aphrodite by Bettany Hughes
Bodily Fluids in Antiquity edited by Mark Bradley, Victoria Leonard, and Laurence Totelin — I am aware this is NICHE but god it is good.
The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet: Images of Wine and Ritual by François Lissarrague — somehow more niche but if you have any interest in Greek art, vase-painting, or the symposium please read it immediately. And then message me so we can discuss it.
The real deal:
The Odyssey and/or the Iliad translated by Emily Wilson — yes it is fabulous that she is the first woman to translate Homer into English but for our purposes I would say it’s just as fabulous that her Odyssey sticks to the original line count so it has some actual momentum.
Euripides’ Medea — I’ve linked an old translation but if you want to go down this particular rabbit hole read this.
Aristophanes’ Lysistrata
🍇 Wine pairing: Lore Olympus — a greek-mythology themed graphic novel that is available online (yes it has typos and yes it romanticises the rather harrowing story of Hades and Persephone and yes it is, at times, rather infantile but I stand by this recommendation. I have the box-set at home and it is a guilt-free pleasure).
5) “Le Dessert”: meme accounts
I truly swear by this. They are an excellent gateway drug. Here are my top three:
🍇 Wine pairing: this is a bit out of left field but have a look at Di Petsa, a particularly sultry fashion brand that takes its inspiration from classical sculpture/the whole wet drapery look.
If you’ve made it this far, how about your pour yourself an actual wine because you deserve it. I hope these far from exhaustive and wildly subjective suggestions have pointed you in a compelling direction. If you have your own recommendations, please share them in the comments 💛
The ivory tower of classics and academia gets toppled brick by brick (soon we will have AI Homer penning a third epic so god help us all but until then you’re stuck with me).
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There are so many great novels about classics these days. Circe, in particular, was great!
Love this! May I suggest Goddesses in Everywoman and Gods in Everyman, by Jean Shinoda Bolen? Once you start typing people according to their classical archetypes, it all starts to make a lot more sense