One might expect one of Britain’s most prominent classical scholars to celebrate Boris Johnson’s habitual references to the ancient world, but it seems Dame Mary Beard is unimpressed.
The professor and broadcaster said that she wanted to vomit whenever she heard the prime minister speaking Latin or Greek because it reinforced the misconception that the subject was just for “upper-crust Tories”.
Since surviving Covid-19 in April Mr Johnson, 56, who studied Classics at Oxford, has taken to quoting Cicero, the Roman statesman, while exhorting colleagues to protect the public. He is said to have told officials “Salus populi suprema lex esto”, or “the health of the people should be the supreme law”.
Asked what she thought of Mr Johnson’s tendency to sprinkle his
