Mary Beard

In 1984, I returned to Newnham College at Cambridge University to teach after completing my Ph.D. there a couple of years earlier. Almost all of my colleagues in the university's classics department were men, and my office at the all-women's college was in the dorm.

One of the downsides of working in antiquity is that you don't have many female voices, but you certainly have a lot of male terror about the potential of women's power. It shows you very clearly that the most oppressive cultures tend to be afraid of those whom they oppress.

For whatever reason, some sorts of women's silence were broken by MeToo. This is the optimistic bit. And that will lead to a much more careful attention to women's voices.

Gender is a key marker of power and powerlessness. Most of the structures of how our world works are biased in terms of men.

I have always thought the women's movement traded too much on outrage and not enough on ridicule.

In general, I never think it is a good idea to try to recreate past successes. You have to strike out on your own, for better or worse.

My mother took me to the British Museum aged five. I had thought people from the past weren't as good as we were, and then I saw the Elgin marbles. Suddenly, the world seemed more complicated.

The building blocks of discrimination tend to be similar wherever you find them.

My day job is working on Roman history and ancient Roman history.

A lot of people will always say, 'I really know nothing about the ancient world.' But there's lots and lots of things people know. Partly, they've been encouraged to think they're ignorant about it. In some ways, the job to do is show people that they know much more than they'd like to admit.

We make two mistakes about the ancient world. One is to assume they were better than us - that, for instance, the ancient Olympics didn't involve money-making. The opposite mistake, and just as common, is to think our Olympics are much more civilised than ancient sporting competitions. Neither is true.

The history of art is not just the history of artists; it is also the history of the people who viewed art. And that wider perspective can help us see some of the reasons why the art of the ancient world should still matter to us.