Top 44 Bettany Hughes Quotes

When she stepped out of that spumy sea Aphrodite was said to have brought fertility, flowers, life, light to a barren world. For centuries women and men went to her sanctuaries to seek her pity and protection. Her domain was originally not just lust, but lust for life.

History was invented as a tool, an engineered road down which human society could advance.

We’ve lived in our Victorian house for 20 years and the kitchen is the centre of family life – we don’t just eat here, we live here.

The technological revolution is itself a direct descendant of the Ancient Greeks’ historia, and the web is populated by young people who want to dive into the past.

I wrote my first history book when I was four. I still have it so I can prove it.

I think it’s ironic when Plato makes the learned woman Aspasia Socrates’ teacher, but I think women crop up more in the Platonic dialogues than they do normally in texts of the period, and in an un-hysterical way.

Buttressed by an acceptance of female wisdom in the sacred sphere from the beginnings of organised religion 12,000 years ago to late antiquity and beyond, key women used wit and the power of the word to change the world around them.

It’s become this sort of strange competition about who’s in the coolest place, who’s in the coolest street. Suddenly we’re having to engage with all those social pressures. It’s helpful, I find, as a mother and a teacher, to say you’ve always got a choice.

I’m horrified at the idea of intimidating someone. I think that’s the opposite of what we should be doing.

If the Halcyon days of a Mediterranean winter, god-blessed, were good enough for sublime kingfishers they should certainly have something to offer us all.

People tend to have a knee-jerk response to the word ‘philosophy’. You imagine it’s abstract and inaccessible.

The Nile has long nourished women and men alike. On the Nile and the magical, river-island Temple of Philae, Florence Nightingale was so inspired that she resolved to follow her calling in nursing.

Nefertiti is lovely, but we should use our wit and will to look beyond that beautiful face to discover and to enjoy a more satisfying narrative – the story of mankind, not just of man.

For some reason I have always lived my life trying to make things slightly harder for myself rather than slightly easier. I think that’s why I like the Spartans. I like the idea that you get much more satisfaction if you strive for it.

A lot of the clothes I wear on telly are second-hand.

It was drilled into me from an early age that nothing is certain and that you have to be incredibly careful and sensible with money. However, if you are lucky enough to have a little bit spare, you should also try to enjoy it.

Sophia – a mystical female presence whose appearance is only fleeting in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament – was clearly once a household name and a fixture in everyday lives.

The word ‘America’ probably didn’t appear in the Persian language until the end of the 18th century – but then with a documented past stretching back at least 5,000 years, the east had riches of its own.

It was this epic adventure and I had this mad idea that it would be interesting to follow the Greek hero Odysseus on his trail from what is modern day Turkey to the west of Greece. He took 10 years to do that and I took six months. I was on 27 different boats for 1,700 miles and I went to 13 different islands.

When you look at Istanbul, from Byzantium to the present day, it’s striking how it has always been a city of the people, with a political voice, right from its early classical history.

Taught by actor parents never to leave an awkward gap in the conversation I gabble out unsolicited responses to fill the voids.

I cannot write history unless I travel to the places where it happened. I spent a lot of time walking around the Eastern Mediterranean, going to all the shrines that Socrates would have worshiped at, going to all the battlefields that he fought on.

Territorial expansion demands warriors and, once population levels are stable, demotes the female role. Once religious empires have not just an idea but a territory to call their own, the soldiers of god are of more value than his handmaidens.

The point of doing TV is not to prove how clever you are, but to make other people realise how clever they are; and I think it’s the same with books.

Ancient Egyptian women had rights under the law. They could own land. Many were literate.

Europe’s leaders need to sit down with Socrates for a night; a life unexamined is not worth living. We have to remember that, as he says, the pursuit of wealth should never be at the expense of wisdom.

Forgiveness gives you a chance to be fulfilled rather than be eaten up with anger.

You’re a good presenter if you know your subject and you can communicate it with passion. Period. That’s all that matters on telly.

My best writing day starts with coffee from our local Cypriot cafe and a newspaper from the Tamil corner shop – they always ask what I’m up to, and why I haven’t brushed my hair – then a short, sharp walk. I think as I go.

We think the way we do partly because Socrates thought the way he did. His basic idea – that the unexamined life is not worth living – is what it means to live in the modern world, to develop ideas and ask questions.

Even the picturesque prehistoric settlements at Akrotiri on the Greek island of Santorini were an exercise in problem-solving; white-washed homes and town halls built with an anti-earthquake technology still employed today, 3,500 years on.

I cannot write about the past unless I go where history happened. Some make very good armchair historians, I’m not one of them. If you’re going to inhabit someone else’s world, the very least you can do is to spend a little time in it.

The ‘Middle Ages/Dark Ages’ were of course no such thing. Achievement in the Arabian crescent was sensational then.

Well Socrates is 70 when he dies. He’s been allowed to philosophise freely in the city for almost 50 years. He clearly was – genius is an overused word – but he clearly did have something of the genius about him.

Venus’s life story across 5,000 years reminds us not to trivialise the power of desire: the ancients were right to never underestimate its influence.

The massive grassroots success of movies such as Zack Snyder’s Spartan gore-fest ‘300’ demonstrates there is a vast appetite among 15-25 year olds to share in the experience of the long-dead.

Both my parents were professional actors, so I grew up in a household that had no real financial stability.

Socrates was tried in a religious court. He was condemned for disregarding Athens’ gods. If you look at the way he speaks at his trial, according to Plato, there seems to be a moment when he realizes this isn’t just a game.

Up until 1400BC, citadel settlements are stable. Goddesses – notably in charge of fertility and learning – have a crucial role to play. But as civilisation gets greedy and society more militaristic, these wise women are edged to the sidelines in favour of a thundering, male warrior god.

If I had my way there would be a philosopher sitting round the table on every committee and in every boardroom.

Aphrodite-Venus had become not a subject of adoration, but an agent of exploitation. From the moment Christian society perceived sex not as a gift of the goddess but a crime against God himself, women were believed to be the vessels of love’s malign power.

We’ve become embarrassed about asking ourselves the straightforward, simple questions that are actually the most relevent: what is it to be human? How can we steer a course between self-indulgence and self-denial and be the very best version of ourselves that we can?

Cricket’s in the blood – my dad loves it and my brother Simon played for Middlesex before becoming a radio and TV cricket commentator.

Economic, political and military intervention following the first world war is frequently blamed for current friction between east and west.