So I introduce to you Dr. David Butterfield.

Thank you, Dan, for such a generous and kind introduction.

Needless to say, it's one of the great pleasures of my life to have you as a colleague and indeed to be able to spend my time speaking in a community such as this.

We might take it for granted, thinking that this kind of gathering, talking about these sorts of things happens everywhere, every day, but I can tell you factually it is rare to be in a community that has such a shared sense of mission and curiosity as Rolston.

That word curiosity is one to keep in mind because it's going to be a major theme in what I have the pleasure of talking about today.

As you can see, hopefully you have a piece of paper in front of you.

If you don't, there are some at the back.

which you could approach this

Why do you think you've seen that renewed interest in the classics?

Good question.

I mean, there's two.

Yeah, keep them coming.

The first part, the sort of premise of your question needs a few words before the main answer.

Classics has been seen as elitist and elite for at least 150 years, but arguably centuries.

In a sense, it is elite, but by elite, we're simply using the French word, which is the equivalent of English select.

And I think it's basically, it gives a code for living as what a lot of these young men feel a particularly manly mode of being is.

Why do you think you've seen that renewed interest in the classics?

Good question.

I mean, there's two.

Yeah, keep them coming.

The first part, the sort of premise of your question needs a few words before the main answer.

Classics has been seen as elitist and elite for at least 150 years, but arguably centuries.

In a sense, it is elite, but by elite, we're simply using the French word, which is the equivalent of English select.

And I think it's basically, it gives a code for living as what a lot of these young men feel a particularly manly mode of being is.

Like what?

Well, for a start, we are attempting to tell the tale with historical realism.

This is a thing Nolan has been very clear about in his interviews about the level of research that he, his wife, who actually is a trained classicist, uh, and the team have, have, have gone into in order to recreate what we might think a pure tale of fantasy.

But for the Greeks, it was meaningfully real.

It was a depiction of their own world in the second millennium BC, in the late Bronze Age.

Their heroic ancestors, who, yes, were able to engage with the gods and with various monsters and so on, but they were seen as their forefathers.

So there's a serious attempt made in the film to depict what a civilization might have looked like at that moment just before it actually did collapse, the Bronze Age collapse in the 12th century.

David, before we head on over to Substack where you answer questions from our supporters, tell everybody again where they can find your work, and of course, more about Ralston as well.

Mm.

That means males-over the age of 20 who've done their two years military service and people who have Athenian parents initially just fathers but then father and mothers citizenship was restricted and therefore it doesn't mean children doesn't mean slaves it doesn't mean visiting foreigners so when we talk about the people in classical Athens we mean all of the males over 20 who are full Athenian citizens however not allowing slaves not allowing women not allowing children to have political power is the norm cross-culturally in almost all of the world in all of world history so it is in sixth century bc they weren't they weren't as woke as we might want them to exactly yeah exactly the greek for woke is is not it's not known as yet um so within that scale which is maybe 20 30 40 000 athenian citizens power was not only made available to citizens but they were compelled to be part of it so just to go back to cleisthenes who if you're interested is 508 507 that's when this suddenly happens he realizes that although athens is a city it's surrounded by lots of villages which are part of broader athens and these people have very different interests in the world some live on the coast and they're interested in maritime affairs some are landholders who live in the countryside and some are urban traders and he treats those three categories as separate blocks before that period there had been four different tribes which athenians belonged to but those tribes had their own political sort of ethnographic links they were voting blocks really they were ghettoized so out of nowhere cleisthenes decides he's going to make up 10 new tribes the four are gone he's going to make up 10 new tribes they're going to be named just after athenian heroes and each of those tribes is going to have a mixture of coastal urban and rural people within it random mixture which means no emerging tribe is tied to any historic power block it's like you're randomly put in a new team is you're a new set of football teams are invented and you're told that you're now a lifelong supporter of this one so people had to rub shoulders with people who historically might have been their enemies and people whose interests did not exactly align with their own so there was a fundamental reset of how athenians viewed one another and how they voted but it gets more extreme than that any citizen was liable to be part of the workings of government so the assembly ultimately decided what should be laws whether people should go to war and the assembly needed 6 000 people to gather together if you were in athens doing your thing as a male citizen wandering around talking to socrates whatever it may have been on the day of the assembly a group starts to approach you with a long rope and that rope is covered in wet red paint and the rope comes closer and closer towards you and it starts to surround you and you're being corralled to head towards the penics to engage in the assembly and do your duty of democratic voting if the rope touches you and you have red paint on you you were trying to flee your democratic duty and you will be punished so male citizens were corralled literally into the act of of pursuing democracy the really ingenious thing cleisthenes did was not just to force citizens to be engaged in democracy it was slowly and by gradation to remove the obstacles for normal citizens to have power they were twofold one was wealth it's all well and good saying we've got to spend our day voting on the future of athens but if that means you can't do your actual job where you're earning money to feed your family well it's not very attractive and in fact you need some leisure to be democratically active well over the course of the fifth century various reformers introduce pay first to those who attend the council of 500 then to those who do jury duty and then finally to people who attend the assembly you get a good day's pay by the end of the fifth century for doing your democratic duty so that breaks the aristocratic stronghold over democracy anyone regardless of their means could spend their days as a democratic citizen the second and this is this is really shocking uh was to remove elections you would think that asking the people their democratic will as to who would be best placed to decide what we should do is a good system you could look at the merit of what people have done you could judge on that basis you could choose people who are known to you for their skill set and elect them the problem was the problem that cleisthenes wanted to combat was that money would corrupt elections people would campaign they would bribe and people who really wanted the office and had the pockets to pay for it would get it so what do you do if you want to get rid of elections you go for random lot your name will be picked out of the hat and that may mean you end up on the council you may say okay there's 500 people on the council i can probably keep my head down no the 500 people on the council over the 10 months of the the athenian year each group of 50 from each of the 10 tribes for one month have to live together in a special building and they're in chargeWorse than that, each day a random name of those 50 is chosen, and whoever's name is chosen is the epistates, and that guy is running the whole show.

If war is declared, that guy has-

Individual results may vary based on studies of topical and oral minoxidil and finasteride.

When I made the decision a, a couple of years ago, most people, friends, family, colleagues, thought I was mad.

But actually, it, it was one of the most rational decisions I've ever made, and certainly don't regret it at all, uh, as things stand.

And the calculus was really down to the direction of travel of the university.

What I'm about to say, uh, is all true, but it's tied in particular to the humanities and the social sciences.