BBC Radio 3: Greek & Latin Voices

BBC Radio 3’s new 12 week series The Essay: Greek and Latin Voices offers us an accessible modern guide to some of the foundation texts of Western culture.

The Essay: Greek and Latin Voices will be broadcast Monday to Thursday, 11.00pm-11.15pm, in six fortnightly blocs, one week with a Greek focus and one week with a Latin focus. The series focuses on the works of the major figures of Greek and Latin literature, philosophy, history and politics, including Thucydides, Euripides, Plato, Horace, Augustine, Tacitus, Juvenal, Cicero and Virgil.

Here's the link to the broadcast from January 14 on St Augustine available for a week. It contains an overview of Augustine's life and interviews with authors. The argument is that Augustine critiqued the classical world and his writings are a bridge to the modern period. Broadcasts on Augustine go on all this week. Tuesday January 15th broadcasts from Lambeth Palace with the Archbishop of Canterbury talking on Augustine as a person standing in the middle of a decaying society. Augustine's writings on the interior life, the formation of the self and human awareness, are quoted at length particularly the Confessions.