The Greeks and Romans have left behind so much: not just literature, but roads, vases, statues, and buildings. In today's episode, we use this "material culture" of the ancient world as an entry point for thinking about the word "opulent," which itself draws on a multiple words from Latin. To think through the notion of opulence, both ancient and modern, we consider a passage from Joan Didion's seminal collection of essays, The White Album.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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