Euripides' Bacchae - Creation, Content, Context

Series 2, Episode 4

Elton is a professor of ancient Greek things at The Open University. His first experience of the ancient world came in the mid 1980s in the form of the futuristic Franco-Japanese anime Ulysees 31 and the Jackanory Special: Odysseus, the greatest hero of them all, presented by Blackadder's Baldrick. A first-generation student at the University of Leeds, he went on to do a Masters at Ohio State and a PhD at Cambridge, and teach at Bristol, Nottingham, Reading and Oxford (Christ Church) before landing at the OU. He's now making a living from (still) reading the stories of Homer's epics, on which he has published a Beginner’s Guide (with Joel Christensen). He is also stubbornly the non-techie guy using digital methods and tools for exploring the forms of place in, and the spatial form of, the texts of Herodotus and Pausanias. In this role, he co-runs a global network called Pelagios, where people from academia, cultural heritage, and the creative industries get together to make information about the past more open and accessible to all, which perfectly aligns with the core ethos of the OU.