Two Somerville alumnae have featured in a BBC Radio 4 programme about Spartacus, aired on 6 March.
The programme, which forms an episode in Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ series, hosted a three-person panel of academics. Two of the panellists were Somerville alumnae: Mary Wyck (1976, Lit Hum), Professor of Latin at University College London, and Theresa Urbinczyk (1979, Lit Hum), Associate Professor of Classics at University College, Dublin. The third panellist was Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and Classics Editor of the Times Literary Supplement.
The radio programme focused on the life and legacy of Spartacus, the first-century BC slave who led an uprising against Rome. It also looked at how Spartacus has since been lionised and romanticised by different groups at different times, among them nineteenth-century romantics and the 20th century filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, whose 1960 film starred both Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier.
The programme can be listened to on BBC iPlayer.