6/8: 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
⏱️ 9 minutes
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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.
1835 Women of Rome pleading with a Roman general
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Did you know HGVs have four zones of limited vision around them? |
| 0:06.4 | If you're in one of these areas, you may not be seen by the driver. |
| 0:10.9 | These four limited vision zones are in front, behind and at both sides of the HGV. |
| 0:18.3 | So when you're driving around a HGV, don't linger around them. |
| 0:23.4 | Because they may not notice you're there. |
| 0:26.6 | Know the HGV zones. |
| 0:28.8 | National Highways. |
| 0:30.3 | I'm John Batchel, visiting with Daisy Dunn, the author of The Missing Thread of Women's History |
| 0:35.1 | of the Ancient World. |
| 0:37.0 | These Romans all know the Greek |
| 0:39.1 | stories. They know the Greek drama. The Greeks are very serious. The Roman theater is nowhere near |
| 0:44.4 | as serious. Rome likes farce. Rome likes comedy. Caesar has comic moments, but not recently. Caesar |
| 0:53.2 | defeats Pompey, and Pompey runs to Egypt, where his wife |
| 0:58.5 | tries to have a successful reunion with him. However, Pompey's murdered by a man who thinks he's |
| 1:04.4 | under orders to kill Pompey. Caesar mourns it, mourns Pompey's death, And then, because he's walked into Alexandria, which is the breadbasket of the Mediterranean, |
| 1:17.3 | he's in a palace and someone brings in a rug. |
| 1:21.4 | Yes, it's real true. |
| 1:22.9 | It's not a theater piece. |
| 1:24.4 | It's a rug. |
| 1:25.6 | And it's unwrapped before him. |
| 1:27.2 | And who emerges from the rug, |
| 1:29.7 | Daisy? It is a young Cleopatra. And she's Cleopatra the seventh. We have to remember there |
... |
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