The passage of knowledge between the Ancient World and today’s modern one, has not been smooth. In many cases only a fraction of what was once known has reached us today. Just seven out of around eighty plays by Aeschylus survive, seven out of the hundred and twenty written by Sophocles and a similar proportion of those by Euripides.
Often knowledge was lost at specific moments of conflict or tumult in the human story. In this episode of Travels Through Time the historian Dr Violet Moller takes us back to one of the most crucial years of all: 529, when the Roman Empire was in its latter days and a new Christian world was emerging.
Violet’s travels through the past takes us on a picaresque tour of this significant year. In Constantinople we see the last great Roman emperor. In Athens a “Golden Chain” of learning is about to be severed after many centuries. And on a rocky hill in central Italy, a new monastic order that will have a spectacular future, is founded.
Dr Violet Moller is the author of The Map of Knowledge, winner of the Royal Society for Literature’s Jerwood Prize. The Daily Telegraph called it “popular intellectual history at its best.”
Show notes:
Scenes:
Memento: A crate of books, saved from the Neoplatonic Academy
People / Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Dr Violet Moller
Producer: Maria Nolan
Editorial: Artemis Irvine
Digital Production: John Hillman
Titles: Jon O.
S.C. Gwynne: R101 – The World’s Largest Flying Machine (1930)
Peter Moore: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
[From the archive] Philip Hoare: Albert and the Whale (1520)
[From the archive] Bernard Cornwell: The Battle of Waterloo (1815)
Lady Hale: The Rights of Women (1925)
[Live] Flora Fraser: Pretty Young Rebel (1746)
Mike Jay: Psychonauts (1885)
David Veevers: How the World Took On the British Empire (1660)
Leah Redmond Chang: Renaissance Queens and the Price of Power (1559)
Andrew Spira: Botticelli, Perugino and Dürer (1500)
Serhii Plokhy: The Collapse of the Soviet Union (1991)
[From the archives] Craig Brown: Beatlemania (1963)
Honor Cargill-Martin: The Notorious Empress Messalina (48 AD)
Tom Whipple: The Battle of the Beams (1940)
Simon Winchester: Knowing What We Know (1924)
Rebecca Struthers: Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots and Watchmaking History (1572)
Luke Turner: Men at War (1943)
Amy Jeffs: Tales from Medieval England (1327)
Nicholas Orme: A Year of Great Promise (1480)
[From the archives] Jane Rogoyska: The Katyń Massacre (1940)
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