1/8: The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World Hardcover - by Daisy Dunn (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 26 December 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Missing-Thread-Womens-History-Ancient/dp/0593299663
Around four thousand years ago, the mysterious Minoans sculpted statues of topless women with snakes slithering on their arms. Over one thousand years later, Sappho wrote great poems of longing and desire. For classicist Daisy Dunn, these women—whether they were simply sitting at their looms at home or participating in the highest echelons of power—were up to something much more interesting than other histories would lead us to believe. Together, these women helped to make antiquity as we know it.
In this monumental work, Dunn reconceives our understanding of the ancient world by emphasizing women's roles within it. The Missing Thread never relegates women to the sidelines and is populated with well-known names such as Cleopatra and Agrippina, as well as the likes of Achaemenid consort Atossa and Olympias, a force in Macedon. Spanning three thousand years, the story moves from Minoan Crete to Mycenaean Greece, from Lesbos to Asia Minor, from the Persian Empire to the royal court of Macedonia, and concludes with Rome and its growing empire. The women of antiquity are undeniably woven throughout the fabric of history, and in The Missing Thread they finally take center stage.
79 AD Pompeii women of Rome
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor. |
| 0:11.5 | The classical world. The new book, The Missing Thread, A Women's History of Ancient |
| 0:20.1 | Worlds. |
| 0:21.5 | This is Daisy Dunn, the author, |
| 0:24.1 | and she's done us all the favor of compiling |
| 0:26.6 | a list of women over several hundred years, |
| 0:30.7 | and in fact, a thousand years, |
| 0:33.0 | if you look at the reflections upon them, |
| 0:36.3 | at the turn of the BC- AD, a thousand years of women |
| 0:41.4 | in part contributing to the building of the Greco-Roman world, the one we live with here |
| 0:49.4 | in the United States and Europe lives with. The traditions of the Roman world are the |
| 0:55.2 | traditions of the Greek world, our emphasis on democracy. Well, women were there all the time |
| 1:00.7 | as mothers, as wives, and as schemers. And it's a joy to welcome Daisy Dunn to begin, of course, |
| 1:09.0 | with the Iliad, written by Homer, except for there's a story that was |
| 1:16.3 | started a long time ago, B.C.E. and continued into the 19th century and might still have |
| 1:25.2 | some merit. That is, that Homer was female. Daisy, congratulations, |
| 1:33.0 | Fantasia. Who was she and who we know her to be now? Good evening to you. Good evening. Well, thank you. |
| 1:41.3 | Fantasia is the woman who is rumored to be the originator of the tales of the Iliad |
| 1:48.6 | and the Odyssey. So there's this idea that springs up in the ancient world. It's written down |
| 1:55.3 | in some papyro, which I discovered later on, that she was this poet of a kind. And she came up with these stories, |
| 2:04.4 | she wrote them out, put them in a temple and trusted them to a temple, and that Homer actually |
| 2:12.1 | went and found her versions and then used them to compose the Iliad and the Odyssey. So in a sense, this makes Homer |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.