
How a late-blossoming classics don became Britain’s most beloved intellectual - diodorus
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/30/mary-beard-the-cult-of
======
mturmon
What a writer, and what a speaker. See her if you get a chance. Rather than
dragging through some uninteresting confrontation with Taleb, spend that time
reading her review essays at _NYRB_ \-
[http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/beard-
mary/](http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/beard-mary/) . Some are subscriber-
only, but many are open.

~~~
iorrus
Seems to be mostly pretentious over written prose with little to say:

e.g. [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/01/12/do-classics-
have-...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/01/12/do-classics-have-future/)

------
unixhero
A great long read, and I had never heard of her!

But what does "don" mean on this context? It's repeatedly used, but not
explored or explained.

~~~
moopling
Each college has a don for each subject, who is responsible for all students
taking that subject within that college

~~~
rusk
Is that the same as the term "Dean" that's used elsewhere?

~~~
dm319
In my Cambridge college there is one 'dean' (not the same as the Master or
Mistress of the college - who is essentially the figure-head of the college) -
who is responsible for the students welfare. Any member of staff formally
associated with the college is a 'fellow'. Each speciality have 'tutors' and
'senior tutors' as well as one 'director of studies'.

Wikipedia says that a 'don' would apply to a 'fellow' or 'tutor'.

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MaxBarraclough
Mary Beard is "Britain’s most beloved intellectual"?

Not Brian Cox? Not David Attenborough?

Please let's keep HackerNews free of the media's usual hyperbolic nonsense.

~~~
Noos
C.S.Lewis probably has the best claim, and I thought they were referring to
him at the first.

~~~
dagw
Most people know Lewis as an author of children's books and probably wouldn't
really of him as an "intellectual".

~~~
arethuza
He was an Oxbridge academic (like his friend Tolkien) which I would have
thoughts qualifies him as an "intellectual" to most people.

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sien
Nassim Taleb on his interactions with Mary Beard:

[https://medium.com/east-med-project-history-philology-and-
ge...](https://medium.com/east-med-project-history-philology-and-
genetics/something-is-broken-in-the-uk-intellectual-sphere-7efc9a1f154a)

~~~
iainmerrick
Taleb isn't painting himself in a very flattering light with these attacks.
They're very weird and bitter.

And I can't tell what his actual point is! He furiously complains that the BBC
and Mary Beard are "bullshitters" but I can't figure out exactly what
corrections he wants made.

~~~
bergoid
> Taleb isn't painting himself in a very flattering light with these attacks.
> They're very weird and bitter.

This is his default style as a polemicist and it distracts indeed from the
points he is trying to make.

> And I can't tell what his actual point is!

The first 3 bullet points are his actual message. The rest is a reaction to
some preceding drama on twitter.

His point is basically that Africans were a statistically insignificant
subgroup among Romans in Brittain, and by adding them so prominently in a
short animated cartoon for school children (who hardly know anything about
antiquity) the BBC is performing historical revisionism.

He also casts doubt on the assumption that these Africans were black, pointing
out that Northern Africa was inhabited by Berbers and Phoenicians.

> He furiously complains that the BBC and Mary Beard are "bullshitters" but I
> can't figure out exactly what corrections he wants made.

He wants scientific rigor to prevail over political correctness.

~~~
foldr
We have no reliable evidence regarding what proportion of Roman Britain was
"black". We have good historical evidence that there were Romans present in
Britain who we'd these days describe as black (e.g. an Ethiopian soldier
garrisoning Hadrian's wall). For 101 reasons, the genetic evidence is not very
informative, and certainly can't be used to justify that claim that Africans
were a "statistically insignificant subgroup" (which by the way doesn't even
make sense as a statistical statement). As Beard points out, even _Norman_ DNA
is not very well represented in the modern population, and we know for sure
that plenty of Normans came over as a result of the Norman invasion.

~~~
patrickg_zill
In the depicted cartoon case of an Ethiopian that has a local Briton or Celt
wife, who has multiple children with her, there is the valid question of
seeing what is in the genetic record, though, wouldn't you agree?

The reaction, and Beard's answer, was specifically about the family shown and
not the narrow question of whether or not an Ethiopian conscript would have
ever set foot in Roman Britain.

~~~
foldr
I'm not sure why you assume he would have been a conscript.

There is no reason to think that a few interracial marriages in Roman times
would have left much of a trace in the modern genetic record. Surely no-one
would get so up in arms about a cartoon that showed a Saxon married to a
Norman, but we have no modern "genetic record" of this either. We know with a
reasonable degree of certainty that interracial marriages existed in Roman
Britain, often involving soldiers.

Talk about the "genetic record" might seem sciency sounding, but its really
the historical evidence that's much more informative in this instance.

~~~
patrickg_zill
I think we are not far from each other in what we understand... the issue
raised between Beard and Taleb seems to revolve around the meaning of
"typical" .

Beard seems to say, "it was possible that it could have happened, here are a
few Ethiopians for instance that we know were in Roman Britain, for example".

Taleb seems to say "typical means what is likely to have happened 50% or more
of the time; since there was no chance that Roman Britain had 50% of marriages
with children that involved Ethiopians/Berbers/etc. thus Beard is very wrong"

~~~
foldr
Beard's point is that we really have no idea what "typical" ethnic backgrounds
were for Roman families in Britain. There's just no reliable data, and it most
likely would have varied enormously between different parts of the country.

