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Rome of antiquity is important. Ignoring the Romans would not be merely a blind eye to the long-ago past, for Rome helps us to this day to delineate our way of making sense of our world and ourselves, from sublime theory to vulgar comedies. After two thousand years, Rome is still the basis for the culture and politics, literatures and the sense of the world and its place in the world.

— Mary Beard SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2017)

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More quotes by Mary Beard

This is a dangerous myth if we think we are better historians than our predecessors.

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2017)

It’s not easy to make women fit into a structure that is initially encoded as masculine: what needs to be done is to change the structure.

Women & Power: a Manifesto (2017)

Greek men didn't all look like this. And indeed, this guy, his musculature is actually physically impossible. What these are are images of a kind of perfect version of Greek masculinity.

Shock of the Nude (2020)

It’s a "high-end" power in the traditional sense and linked to the image of the "glass ceiling", which not only places women out of power, but imagines pioneers as successful superwomen who only a few vestiges of male prejudice prevented them from reaching the top.

Women & Power: a Manifesto (2017)

Roman society incorporated those who were mostly excluded in the ancient world, most obviously, women... They didn't have any formal political rights in Rome

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mary Beard (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.