A new podcast series featuring Armand D’Angour, Professor of Classics at Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Jesus College, aims to shine a light on the ancient world through expressions, stories and quotes from Classical literature that we use in our everyday lives.

It’s All Greek (and Latin!) To Me, co-presented by Armand and Jimmy Mulville – a comedy producer and Chairman of the charity Classics For All – explores the classical origins, authors and true meanings of well-known phrases such as ‘Carpe Diem’, ‘Eureka!’ and ‘platonic love’. The duo also investigate the literary works of Catullus and Homer, Aristophanes’ ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata, and the Greek mythological figure Narcissus.

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The first two episodes of It’s All Greek (and Latin!) To Me are available from today on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. ‘Carpe Diem’ looks at the origins of the Latin aphorism made widely-known to late 20^th century audiences through the 1989 film Dead Poets Society. In ‘Oedipus’, Armand and Jimmy delve into the story of the mythical Greek King of Thebes, and its connection to the Freudian theory of the Oedipus complex.

Armand says: “I looked for a Classics podcast that was seriously informative about classical literature, but had a light touch and connected classics to modern preoccupations. When I couldn’t find one, I decided to give it a go. Jimmy’s a keen classicist and an inspiring Chairman of Classics for All and to my delight, when I asked him to co-present, he jumped at the opportunity. The first series has ten episodes, and in the next series we’ll be inviting experts and celebrity guests to join us. Our aim is for listeners to get from the podcast ‘everything you want to know about Classics but have never dared to ask’!”

Later episodes in the series include:

August 13th:  Eureka!

August 20th:  Catullus

August 27th: Homer’s Iliad

September 3rd:  Narcissus

September 10th:  Satires

September 17th: Platonic Love

September 24th:  Sunt Lacrimae Rerum

October 1st: Lysistrata

To listen to the series, visit the It’s All Greek (and Latin!) To Me page on Spotify.

 

In addition to podcasting, Armand has written widely on ancient language, poetry and culture, and worked on numerous projects that aim to bring the classical world to life for modern day audiences.

His book The Greeks and the New: Novelty in Ancient Greek Imagination and Experience was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011, and a volume entitled Music, Text, and Culture in Ancient Greece (co-edited with Tom Phillips) was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. He has a particular interest in Greek music and metre, and versifies in both Greek and Latin (see Otium Didascali).

In 2004 he was commissioned to compose a Pindaric Ode to Athens which was recited at the Athens Olympic Games, and London’s Mayor Boris Johnson commissioned and performed his Greek Ode for the London Olympics 2012. In 2013-2015 he was awarded a Fellowship from the British Academy to reconstitute the sounds of ancient Greek music. The project resulted in many media appearances, (e.g. in the 2017 BBC4 TV documentary Sappho) and gave rise to numerous scholarly articles and public presentations. ‘Rediscovering Ancient Greek Music’, a 15-minute YouTube video that Armand presented with Barnaby Brown and Tosca Lynch in 2017, has been viewed online more than a million times. His book Socrates in Love: The Making of a Philosopher was published by Bloomsbury in March 2019. A discussion of the book (with Dr Penny Murray) may be viewed online here. His most recent book, How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking, was published by Princeton University Press in 2021.

More information on Professor Armand D’Angour can be found here.

It’s All Greek (and Latin) To Me is produced by Hat Trick Productions.