In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies continue the conversation of last episode and dive into Sophocles' complicated and compelling play Antigone, which, as its name suggests, centers around the daring, snarky heroine, Antigone, daughter of the recently disgraced and exiled Oedipus. We discuss everything from the role of women in tragedy, the purpose of the half-removed, often strange choral odes, and the even more perverse relationships between Creon, Ismene, Antigone, and Haemon unraveling in the wake of Oedipus' tragic downfall, whose ripples are still wreaking havoc in the lives of his incestuously-born children.

In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies take a closer look at Sophocles' most well-known trilogy, centered around the tragic, infamous hero Oedipus, who is destined to kill his father and sleep with his mother. In Part 1 of this episode, we discuss Oedipus Rex, breaking down the most important themes and moments, like the roles that blindness and fate play in both larger and smaller ways, or the act of Oedipus gauging out his eyes with his wife/mother's brooches. Tune in to dissect the perverse but perennial fascination that has so closely clung to this tragedy and the reasons why we still talk about it today.

In this episode, the Dead Language Ladies discuss whether Cicero is a bad friend in light of the roughly 1000 letters that survive written by and to Cicero--many addressed to his dearest friend Atticus--during the final decades of the Republic and its ultimate fall at the hands of infamous Romans such as Mark Antony, Caesar Augustus, and Lepidus. Listen in to learn about the friendships, enemies, and political maneuvers of the great Roman orator, and decide for yourself whether Cicero played by the rules of Roman amicitia, or if his "friendships" were one of the heralds of his murder.