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Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics Podcast
Lucretius

Lucretius

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics vor 4 Jahren

Six-book epic poem on philosophy and physics? Don't mind if I do.

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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