Hello folks! My good friend Sophia Sarro is a fellow grad student in the Ancient Greek and Roman Studies program at Brandeis University. They are strongly committed to promoting scholarly engagement with the public and, for their master’s project, they decided to do something a little different; they’ve created a podcast about the history of fictional portrayals of the Roman emperor Claudius (ruled 41 – 54 CE), spanning all the way from his death to the present day, examining how portrayals of him have been shaped by their cultural and historical contexts, how they interpret him in different ways and convey radically different messages, and how they deal with major aspects of his life, including his disability.
Their podcast is titled “The Man, the Myth, the Pumpkin” and you can listen to it here. The first episode, which just came out yesterday, is about how the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (lived c. 4 BCE – 65 CE) portrays Claudius in his famous satire Apocolocyntosis Claudii or The Pumpkinification of Claudius, which he wrote not long after the emperor’s death. Sophia will be dropping more episodes of the podcast over the course of the coming weeks.
I’ve just listened to the first episode and I cannot recommend their work highly enough! Sophia has put an enormous amount of time and labor into making this podcast and it really shows. Their writing is excellent and witty, their research is thorough, and their dramatic reading is spot-on. The podcast is both educational and entertaining and I’m sure that those who enjoy my blog will enjoy it as well. I personally loved listening to every second of the first episode and I eagerly await the next one.