Ioanna Karamanou's award ceremony speech on Edith Hall
Your Excellency, the Ambassador of the United Kingdom in Greece, Mr Matthew Lodge, dear laureate, Prof. Edith Hall, dear members of the committee of the International Hellenic Prize, dear members of the Academy of Athens, dear colleagues from Greece and the United Kingdom, ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure and an honour to be able to say a few words about a classicist whose work I profoundly admire. For the members of the audience who are classicists, no introduction is really needed for Prof. Edith Hall. For those who are not classicists, it may suffice to say that Edith Hall is a star of modern classical scholarship.
Key areas of her scholarship include Greek drama and classical reception – being the co-founder of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama in Oxford—gender in scholarship, ecological issues in Greek myth, epic and tragedy, ancient ethics in the modern world, classics and social class. She has published more than thirty books, that include monographs, two excellent commentaries – the first on Aeschylus’ Persians and the most recent one on Agamemnon – and edited volumes, and has published widely in peer-reviewed academic journals, collective volumes, and newspapers, as well as collaborating with professional theatres as a consultant.
The laureate is a world-leading expert in Greek tragedy and its reception, among other fields of research. Her ground-breaking Oxford DPhil thesis Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (1989) delves into the concept of ethnicity and the ‘other’ in tragedy, arguing that theater was central to how Athenians defined their own identity by contrasting themselves with non-Greeks. Her monograph entitled Greek Tragedy: Suffering under the Sun (2010) is a comprehensive introduction to all extant tragedies, stressing the "democratic" character of the tragic genre, that aims at provoking intense emotional and philosophical debates. In her Theatrical Cast of Athens: Interactions between Ancient Greek Drama & Society (2006) she shifts the focus from ‘what the plays mean’ to the material reality of theatre, delving into the ways in which the physical act of performing and the types of characters portrayed interacted with Athenian society, testing the limits of Athenian identity.
Her research on classical reception includes Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660–1914 (2005), co-authored with Fiona Macintosh. This work explores how Greek tragedy was used in Britain as a progressive force, mirroring political upheavals and social shifts and often serving as a tool for radical thinkers and the aesthetic avant-garde. In a similar vein, her monograph on Tony Harrison’s radical classicism (2021) focuses on how the prominent poet and playwright Tony Harrison, who passed away a few months ago, used ancient Greek and Roman material to speak for the oppressed and the working class, thus proposing a politically charged engagement with antiquity that rejects the idea of Classics as a legacy for the elite. This concept similarly pervades her monograph entitled A People’s History of Classics (2020, co-authored with Henry Stead), which explores the deep engagement of the British working class with classical literature. Her interest in the intrinsic association of classical reception with cultural history also emerges from her Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey (2008) and her Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris (2013), that traces the cultural impact of this play from the ancient world through to opera, Goethe’s verse drama, postcolonial theatre and modern film.
Since 2022 the honorand is a Fellow of the British Academy, as well as being
the first woman to be awarded the Erasmus Medal of the Academia Europaea. She is now running a major ERC funded research programme on Aristotle’s writing styles.
Edith’s commitment to making classics more inclusive is unfailing. Her energy and determination to showcase the instrumentality of ancient ideas in the modern world also emerges from her re-introducing Aristotle’s wisdom as a guide for modern living (in her Aristotle’s Way) and from her recent activity of teaching ancient ethics and tragedy in English prisons. Her scholarship is defined by a commitment to uncovering the voices of marginalized groups and demonstrating the enduring relevance of ancient Greek thought in the modern world.
In this vein, Facing Down the Furies (2024), that well deserves this award, is a book about what classics may teach us today. Unlike earlier works in the field of suicide in ancient tragedy, such as Groaning Tears by Elise P. Garrison (1995), Edith Hall creates a narrative that is both personal and universal, in that her family saga is woven in between the macrocosm of Greek tragedy. The Furies, inherently associated with the archaic concept of the inheritable curse, impersonate the transgenerational trauma that is at the core of the book.
The author employs her personal memoir in conjunction with insights from Greek tragedy to explore the repercussions of a person’s suicide upon those left behind and its transgenerational impact. The book’s main argument lies in the wisdom and solace that Greek tragedy may offer to those who are profoundly bereaved. It is this concept that is set out in the book’s first chapter, whereas the second chapter that raises the question ‘who is damaged by suicide’ investigates the philosophical arguments on this matter from Plato and Aristotle to David Hume and Albert Camus. The author sides with Aristotle when it comes to the awareness of the grief that the suicide victim can inflict on their family members.
Nonetheless, Greek tragedy, which is the focus of the next chapters that form the book’s main part, is liable to offer more satisfactory answers than philosophy, by exposing the roles that are left unfulfilled, when one takes one’s own life, as well as lessening the isolation of those left behind through the tragic representation of pathos that is accompanied by empathetic acknowledgement. The fate of the author’s ancestors is paralleled to situations from Greek tragedy, and their repercussions on their closest kin are illuminated by tragic paradigms. The ‘heroic’ suicide performed by a man of honour, such as Ajax, and female suicides enacted in a state of despair, such as that of Evadne in Euripides’ Suppliant Women, of Phaedra in Hippolytus, and of Deianeira in Sophocles’ Trachiniae showcase the causes and the dire consequences of these acts on family and community, whilst their immediate aftermath gives everyone incentives for contemplation.
Yet the most articulate tragic voice is that of Theseus consoling his friend Heracles, who has killed his wife and children in a state of madness in Euripides’ Heracles. In the wake of utter guilt and shame, the hero finds no other way out than resorting to suicide. Theseus manages to talk him around by acknowledging the scale of his suffering, reminding him of how much he is needed by his kin and the wider community. By means of quiet listening and non-judgmentalism, Theseus’ ‘radical humanism’, as the author eloquently puts it, persuades Heracles to persevere in living, choosing endurance over self-destruction.
Edith Hall has offered us a forceful, compelling autobiographical account that is imbued with the gravitas and profundity of Greek tragedy, showcasing its therapeutic value. The deep, timeless resource of tragic exempla that she so articulately brings alive for us in her narrative gives scope for contemplation about the ways in which one may come to terms with personal and familial trauma. This book, which illustrates the healing qualities of Greek tragedy, yielding deep insights into timeless human experiences and making the past speak to contemporary challenges, is a vigorous and articulate case-study proving why classics still matter.
Ioanna Karamanou
Department of Classics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Athens (Cotsen Hall), 28 February 2026