“When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice,” Beard writes.

Image Mary Beard Credit... Alex Welsh for The New York Times

“Women and Power” is a pocket-size book that comprises two of Beard’s public lectures. (In Britain she is a star, the most public of intellectuals, writing in high-profile outlets as well as tabloids and appearing regularly on TV and radio.) It arrives at a moment of heightened awareness of the silencing Beard describes. “Nevertheless, she persisted” has become a rallying cry, and the spectacle of Kamala Harris being repeatedly interrupted during Senate hearings prompted passionate conversations about how men talk over and belittle female colleagues. The book is a straight shot of adrenaline, animated less by lament than impatience and quick wit: “So far as I can see from a quick Google trawl, the only other group in this country said to ‘whine’ as much as women are unpopular Premiership football managers on a losing streak.”

Beard reminds us that histories of oppression are also always histories of subversion. “Ovid may have emphatically silenced his women in their transformation or mutilation, but he also suggested that communication could transcend the human voice, and that women were not that easily silenced,” she writes. She reminds us that Philomela, whose tongue was cut out after she was raped, wove a tapestry portraying the crime and her assailant. She tells the story of Fulvia, the wife of Mark Antony, who visited the corpse of Cicero, who had poisonously inveighed against her husband. She plucked the pins from her hair and stabbed them into his tongue. In both stories, the traditionally female activity (weaving) or adornment (the hairpin) is used to strike at the male monopoly over language — and in the case of Fulvia, “the very site of the production of male speech.”

It’s a tonic to encounter a book that doesn’t just describe the scale of a problem but suggests remedies — and exciting ones at that. One solution recommended by Beard — enacted by her, really — is to cheerfully stand your ground. Beard is active on Twitter, where she famously engages with the legion of trolls who pick apart her work, age and appearance. She refuses to quit social media despite abuse that has extended to death threats. “It feels to me like leaving the bullies in charge of the playground,” she wrote on her blog after recent attacks against her. “It’s rather too much like what women have been advised to do for centuries. Don’t answer back, and just turn away.” Beard responds, sometimes with fire, sometimes with kindness, sometimes with a bawdy joke. The men back down more than you’d predict and, sometimes, unexpected friendships are struck. One of her harassers took her to lunch to apologize. She later wrote him a college reference.