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Wednesday, July 17th, 2024
| Time | Event |
| 8:00a | How Rome Began: The History As Told by Ancient Historians
Much attention has been paid to the fall of the Roman Empire, by everyone from august historians like Edward Gibbon to modern-day observers wringing their hands over the fate of the United States of America. But as every Rome enthusiast knows, that long collapse constitutes just one chapter — or rather, a series of chapters at the very least — of a story with much more to it. And as with any story, nobody can hope to understand how it ends unless they understand how it begins: hence the new Voices of the Past video above, “How Did Rome Begin?” If you’re at all familiar with Roman mythology (or if you, like me, played Centurion: Defender of Rome growing up), you’ll have seen the image of the twins brothers Romulus and Remus being nursed by a giant she-wolf, la Lupa Capitolina, on the banks of the Tiber river. According to one version of events, Rome was founded by Romulus on April 21st in 753 BCE, after he killed Remus and named the Eternal City-to-be after himself. What relationship this dramatic tale has to historical events is a matter of scholarly interest, but Voices of the Past’s investigation has a wider scope, beginning four and a half centuries earlier with the fall of Troy as told by Homer, one of the many sources cited along the video’s two-hour historical journey. To make vivid the conditions under which Rome arose, the video closely examines the ruins of the ancient world while quoting the words of historians who lived under the actual Roman Empire, like Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. While they may come with certain embellishments, and even fabrications, these texts together offer a coherent narrative of Rome’s rise, which in this video stretches to eight turbulent centuries. Its final chapter opens in 387 BC, with the storm of Rome’s sack by the Gauls quickly gathering. For Roman citizens at the time, it would have seemed that their long-established city had met its end. Little did they know, it still had — if not an eternity — centuries and centuries still to go. Related content: Hear an Ancient Chinese Historian Describe The Roman Empire (and Other Voices of the Past) The History of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Minutes: A Primer Narrated by Brian Cox Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. |
| 9:00a | Simone de Beauvoir Explains “Why I’m a Feminist” in a Rare TV Interview (1975)
In Simone de Beauvoir’s 1945 novel The Blood of Others, the narrator, Jean Blomart, reports on his childhood friend Marcel’s reaction to the word “revolution”: It was senseless to try to change anything in the world or in life; things were bad enough even if one did not meddle with them. Everything that her heart and her mind condemned she rabidly defended—my father, marriage, capitalism. Because the wrong lay not in the institutions, but in the depths of our being. We must huddle in a corner and make ourselves as small as possible. Better to accept everything than to make an abortive effort, doomed in advance to failure. Marcel’s fearful fatalism represents everything De Beauvoir condemned in her writing, most notably her groundbreaking 1949 study, The Second Sex, often credited as the foundational text of second-wave feminism. De Beauvoir rejected the idea that women’s historical subjection was in any way natural—“in the depths of our being.” Instead, her analysis faulted the very institutions Marcel defends: patriarchy, marriage, capitalist exploitation. In the 1975 interview above with French journalist Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber—“Why I’m a Feminist”—De Beauvoir picks up the ideas of The Second Sex, which Servan-Schreiber calls as important an “ideological reference” for feminists as Marx’s Capital is for communists. He asks De Beauvoir about one of her most quoted lines: “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.” Her reply shows how far in advance she was of post-modern anti-essentialism, and how much of a debt later feminist thinkers owe to her ideas: Yes, that formula is the basis of all my theories…. Its meaning is very simple, that being a woman is not a natural fact. It’s the result of a certain history. There is no biological or psychological destiny that defines a woman as such…. Baby girls are manufactured to become women.” Without denying the fact of biological difference, De Beauvoir debunks the notion that sex differences are sufficient to justify gender-based hierarchies of status and social power. Women’s second-class status, she argues, results from a long historical process; even if institutions no longer intentionally deprive women of power, they still intend to hold on to the power men have historically accrued. Almost 50 years after this interview—and 75 years since The Second Sex—the debates De Beauvoir helped initiate rage on, with no sign of abating anytime soon. Although Servan-Schreiber calls feminism a “rising force” that promises “profound changes,” one wonders whether De Beauvoir, who died in 1986, would be dismayed by the plight of women in much of the world today. But then again, unlike her character Marcel, De Beauvoir was a fighter, not likely to “huddle in a corner” and give in. Servan-Schreiber states above that De Beauvoir “has always refused, until this year, to appear on TV,” but he is mistaken. In 1967, she appeared with her partner Jean-Paul Sartre on a French-Canadian program called Dossiers. If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newsletter, please find it here. Or follow our posts on Threads, Facebook, BlueSky or Mastodon. If you would like to support the mission of Open Culture, consider making a donation to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us continue providing the best free cultural and educational materials to learners everywhere. You can contribute through PayPal, Patreon, and Venmo (@openculture). Thanks! Related Content: An Animated Introduction to the Feminist Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir Simone de Beauvoir Speaks on American TV (in English) About Feminism, Abortion & More (1976) Simone de Beauvoir Tells Studs Terkel How She Became an Intellectual and Feminist (1960) Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy on Finding Meaning in Old Age Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Washington, DC. Follow him at @jdmagness |
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