Ancient Greece and Rome in the Epstein Files

Land Acknowledgement: Pharos is researched, written, and published online at Vassar College, an institution situated in the homeland of the Munsee Lenape people. Please read more.

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Jefferey Epstein was a millionaire and child rapist, who was convicted in 2008 of procuring a minor for prostitution. He then died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking of children. In 2026, under pressure from even Republican lawmakers, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice began releasing Epstein’s emails and text message, photographs, and other documents — over three million pages in all — that detailed Epstein’s financial and social network, including his friendly relationships with many prominent men and women, including President Bill Clinton, former Harvard president Larry Summers, British royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Elon Musk, and President Donald Trump, who called Epstein a “terrific guy” who’s “a lot of fun to be with,” mentioning Epstein’s love of “beautiful women…on the younger side.” The Epstein files show that many of these people maintained their relationships with Epstein long after his 2008 conviction, and even continued to attend events Epstein hosted at his many properties, including his privately owned island in the U.S. Virgin Islands where he is alleged to have committed many sex crimes involving underage girls. 

Although media coverage has focused primarily on Epstein’s social network, the Epstein files also reveal much about Epstein’s politics and intellectual interests. To be sure, Epstein’s network transcended traditional political lines, but he maintained particularly lively correspondences with several right and far-right thinkers, including Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel, Yale Computer Science professor David Gelernter, and Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker. Racist pseudo-science and eugenics were among Epstein’s favorite topics, illustrating how misogyny and white supremacy go hand in hand. And as this Pharos guest article by UCLA’s Mo Basil Perkins (they/them) shows, the Epstein files also reveal Epstein’s deep fascination with Greco-Roman antiquity, making this notorious sex criminal a sobering illustration of how easily the prestige of “the classical” can authorize hatred and violence. –Curtis Dozier, Director of Pharos

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Content Warning: While a majority of the material discussed in this article does not concern explicit sexual assault, one example is graphic. Throughout, there is cursory discussion of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of children and other forms of abuse. I explicitly invite readers to take breaks, read in community, or skip material which may be triggering.

If Jeffrey Epstein read all of his emails, to judge from the nearly three million pages released in late January 2026,  he would have had much broader exposure to ancient Greece and Rome than the typical undergraduate student. No one reads every single email they receive. But, for example, if Epstein opened every one, he would have read about Maimonides, Heraclitus, Thucydides, Crassus, Aesop (2), Democritus, the Ludus Magnus and the Dacians. This is not to mention the references to the much more widely known Cicero, Caesar, Plato, or Homer. In his correspondence, Jeffrey Epstein used classical reference to seem cultured to his fellow elites. It is those elite connections that supported, hid, and financed his child sex trafficking.

Epstein references and cites the classical in daily life. Not only do three separate files spanning multiple years reference the movie Gladiator (2000), with his account purchasing it four times in a single day, but he recommends “Great Books” programs that focus primarily on classical works. Moreover, Epstein tasked his assistant with buying Seneca’s De Brevitate Vitae as a gift for multi-billionaire Mort Zuckerman, who remained a client of Epstein, long after Epstein’s first convictions of child sexual assault.

Epstein makes jokes with classical material. In a 2009 email to Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, his former partner, who helped to orchestrate Epstein’s sex trafficking operations, writes unprompted, “To take an oath, ancient Romans put a hand on their testicles. That’s where the word testimony comes from.” Epstein responds, correcting her, “you have it backwards. you were required to put a and [sic] on them to swear.. ( remember no bible. ) they were known as the little ( therefore the diminutive ‘ides’ [sic, likely a scanning error for “-icles”]) witnesses.. the _(little testifiers„ therefore ” testicles).” This email exchange begins to showcase the pervasiveness of Classical material in Epstein’s life. Classical citations emerge in unexpected places, outside of academic circles. He references ancient Greece and Rome in his closest relationships, when no one is watching. The most unsettling thing about this exchange is that the pair share this crude joke while sex trafficking children. Epstein and Maxwell attempt to elevate their vulgarity with the guise of intellectualism. 

It is his misogynist beliefs about women that affirm Epstein’s desired position of dominance over them. The ancient world has no shortage of sources which offer such beliefs in which Epstein tries to find justification. These beliefs allow him to reconcile the harm he causes through a value system he considers authoritative, one rooted in Greece and Rome. In a 2015 text exchange with someone whose name has been redacted, Epstein writes, “The scheming wife is a fixture of Roman history. As bad as the men are, the women are worse—ruthless, cunning, and often sex-crazed. Many of the stories that come down to us are difficult to credit; for example, before Claudius had his third wife, Messalina, whacked, she was reported to have held a twenty-four-hour sex competition with a hooker. (According to Pliny, she won.)” Epstein uses specific ancient sources to perpetuate misogynist stereotypes that justify violence against women. From what everyone knows about Jeffrey Epstein, it becomes abundantly clear that he does not see women or girls as people, no citation needed. A person cannot do what he did while respecting women. He finds affirmation for his belief in antiquity.

What skills and knowledge are considered intelligent have always been tied to violent systems

Epstein’s desire to control women’s bodies extends to those whom the average person would be reluctant to criticize, because of their own immense material power and wealth. When emailing Mette-Maritte, Crown Princess of Norway while she was a guest at his home, Epstein attempted to influence her diet and exercise routines. After pressing that she should “quit smoking, excercise [sic], could be surfing , yoga, dance, healthy eating,” Epstein turned to antiquity to legitimize his advice: “greek tradegys [sic] were only called such, because the characters had the power to change the outcome , but did not have the strength, you do… do it.” Epstein thought he understood what the Crown Princess of Norway needed, in respect to her body, better than she did. The Crown Princess responded to this only by saying that she won’t smoke in his house. Why does Epstein bring up Greek tragedy? Does the Crown Princess love Euripides? Epstein used this appeal, to what he considers authoritative, in order to convince his fellow elite. That authoritative image is a classical one. This conversation shows the distance Epstein expected classics to cover. Epstein used classical reference to position himself as an authority over a woman, even over royalty.

As often as Epstein made references to antiquity, those around Epstein also used Classics to signal their elite status. They follow Epstein’s example of classical citation when convincing him to offer both verbal and financial support. 

They also use reception of the classics when offering Epstein support. Jes Staley, former CEO of Barclays and official at JP Morgan appeared to offer Epstein support in 2015, writing that “the strength of a Greek army was that its core held shoulder to shoulder, and would not flee or break, no matter the threat. That is us.” This was just months before Virgina Roberts Giuffre would successfully bring charges against Ghislaine Maxwell. At this point, Staley had been to Epstein island, and Epstein had called him a good friend. Staley fashions Epstein into a Greek soldier seven years after the latter’s first convictions of child sexual assault. The metaphor is particularly appropriate, because Greek soldiers in antiquity committed sexual assault, abducted women, and trafficked them as slaves. One example all classicists come across is the younger Ajax’s rape of Cassandra. Ajax receives punishment for the assault’s location, rather than the violence itself. Beyond Ajax, many other Greek soldiers had the expectation of access to women’s and girls’ bodies as what they considered rewards for slaughter. Therefore, casting Epstein as a Greek soldier follows closely from these histories.

Epstein built environments, through classical architectural and design choices, where wealthy men could sexually exploit the women and girls they abducted with impunity

References to the classical continue, extending to support values of white supremacy. In 2014, an email sent by someone only identified as ‘jf’ discusses the much-debated fall of the Roman empire. Here, jf cautions, “Jeffrey if you remember your Roman history the moral character preceded the political fall,lf [sic] we are watching shows like naked dating and housewives of wherever in the next decade the Chinese and Indians are going to rule the world as we sit by watching naked pole vaulting very sad jf.” From other emails, we can identify the sender as Jonathan Farkas, husband of Somers Farkas, the United States’ current ambassador to Malta. Farkas espouses racism similar to that which informs Trump’s attitudes and policies toward Asia today. When he does, Farkas uses his incomplete knowledge of Roman history to justify his complaint about American moral degeneracy. He makes this complaint to someone I consider to be one of the most morally degenerate people of our times in an email sent more than half a decade after Epstein was first charged with sex crimes. That hypocrisy, however, might go unquestioned when a person believes ancient history to be an authority which sanctions their actions.

Joscha Bach, current AI researcher at the California Institute for Machine Consciousness, discussed and endorsed eugenics in his correspondence with Epstein. In 2018, he did so while invoking the classical: “It seems that Greece and Rome had a class society that allowed the upper classes to have more offspring than the lower classes, and larger social mobility based on IQ than our current arrangement.” Bach waxes poetic about classical civilizations, expressing nostalgia for a time when Greeks and Romans supposedly bred out stupidity. Measurement of IQ has long been a benchmark used to promote eugenics. Neither ancient Greece nor Rome had a concept of IQ. This said, what skills and knowledge are considered intelligent have always been tied to violent systems. These include white supremacy, ableism, and sexism. Classical texts’ survival to today often depended on their ability to serve dominant systems of power. Bach’s email demonstrates how ancient Greece and Rome might do this. After he references classical civilizations’ supposed supremacy, Bach asks Epstein for money. Epstein says yes. Classical reference to the end of elite supremacy is a rhetorical strategy that works on Epstein. It affirms his own position in society.

It is not only technocrats who sought funding from Epstein. UT Austin Classics professor Thomas Hubbard wrote a letter to Epstein in 2016, long after Epstein’s conviction for soliciting a child for sex, asking for funding for what he described as “a project of some contemporary import that I hope will be of interest to you”: a conference at which invited speakers would “critically examine” the “underlying ideological assumptions about sexual consent” in Title IX directives relating to investigations of rape on college campuses. Hubbard suggested to Epstein that investigations of rape under these directives had “prematurely terminated the careers of too many promising students.” According to Hubbard, Epstein did not provide funding. In 2020, Hubbard was required to retire as part of a legal settlement after he filed an employment discrimination suit against UT Austin and multiple libel suits against students who alleged he had defended sexual relationships between adults and minors in his lectures and publications.

Given what we now know about Epstein, there are a few classical references which read as more obscene than they first appear in context. For example, a book with a section on baby massage which Epstein owned contained a reference to Hippocrates under a section on “The Lover’s Touch: Massage and Intimacy”: “Sometimes, massage can just plain be sexy. Regardless of how therapeutic it is. Regardless of the fact that it was recommended centuries ago by ancient respectable guys like Hippocrates.” His massage room is where he enacted violence against so many girls. Another example: Epstein held an academic conference in the Virgin Islands, during which lauded academics visited his island. In the itinerary for the conference, Plato appears out of nowhere: “After Dinner Activities: ‘You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” — Plato’.” Knowing what we know now, what occurred on Epstein’s island, this quote creates a feeling of repulsion. Citing Plato is one strategy which brought people to the island, even if this quote appears nowhere in any of Plato’s works. 

The Plato quote in Epstein’s invitation foreshadows the classical art and architecture which  conference participants would encounter on the island. Photos show neoclassical columns on many of Epstein’s properties. Every single property displayed ancient artifacts or art with classicizing styles. For example, he commissioned murals of the muses on Mount Parnassus, was gifted first century Roman sculptures, and sought valuation for his own collection of antiquities.

The ancient world provided more than a source of insight into what he considered the true nature of women or the cycles of civilizational decay for Jeffrey Epstein. For him, it was one signifier of his superiority intellectually and stylistically. It was that elite standing which allowed him to commit violence at scale. We stand to witness that violence in another file which references antiquity. In 2019, the FBI received a call with graphic testimony about Epstein’s attempted assault fifteen years prior of a person whose name is redacted:

What Epstein did here is wrong, and no one should have to endure even the threat of sexual violence. The backdrop for Epstein’s disgusting breach of consent is classicizing. Epstein evidently feels empowered by what he would continue to use to protect himself from the consequences of his actions: the classical. These protections extend first from his wealth, derived in part from his investment in classical art and second from his network, derived again in part from his use of classical reference. Both material and social investments signal his participation in an elite ‘in-group.’ Epstein pointed to the classical, this signal of his elite status, to introduce the possibility of intimacy.

The fact that the stories in which these violations appear have been granted classical—and therefore perceived as prestigious—status allows Epstein to frame his violence as glorious or even merely natural. Depictions of naked women in neoclassical art most often invite the viewer’s dominance over the subject. The painting’s subject cannot reach out and hit any man ogling her. She cannot step away if her viewer pressed against her, as the anonymous survivor does above. Epstein built environments, through classicizing architectural and design choices, where wealthy men—senators, soldiers, gods, emperors—historically could sexually exploit the women and girls they abducted with impunity.  If he read Seneca, Pliny, and Socrates; if he watched Gladiator; and if he dealt in antiquities, then Epstein would know that. Epstein creates the expectation that the real, autonomous woman standing in front of him will remain as passive as the painting through his oblique comparison.

Between the trials which convicted Ghislaine Maxwell and the one which would federally indict him the following year, Epstein sold ancient Roman statues. Just prior to his 2019 indictment by the federal government, he moved to sell statues, Heracles and ones referred to as Roman boys, to Christie’s for 1.5 million. In 2018, he was also credibly accused again in Florida of sex crimes, settling at the end of the year. These settlements follow directly after his attempted sales. Epstein did not only gain social capital through ancient reference. He also materially profited. Epstein used Classics in this way to stall the legal consequences of his actions, to protect himself.

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Incalculable harm has occurred, but I am not without hope. Classicists are uniquely positioned to interpret the Epstein files, not only when they directly reference ancient Greece or Rome.

In form, the corpus is fragmentary, as so many of our historical materials are. There are significant and controversial redactions in the Epstein files. These break previously whole documents into pieces. Many hands have changed these texts, in part to hide the enclosed record of violence, not unlike the works we study. Our (classicists’) chosen profession centers the interpretation of texts which pose questions due to missing context. We will likely never know, for example, if the Crown Princess of Norway loved Euripides, but as classicists we have strategies to responsibly fill in those knowledge gaps. It is because I’ve read classical texts closely that I could figure out that jf was Jonathan Farkas. We can use our skills to make accessible and advance information a corrupt United States government neglects or purposefully conceals.

In content, this collection records systematic sexual exploitation, human trafficking, and gross demonstrations of imposed power. Greece and Rome flourished on foundations of sexual assault and human trafficking of enslaved people. I think, for example, of the Romans’ abduction and rape of the Sabine women, which gave Rome its second generation. That mass abduction and assault created Rome and Romans. I also think of Briseis. One of our most studied and celebrated texts, the Iliad, is about the theft and implicit sexual exploitation of an abducted woman. These dominant stories are not the only ones, and even they contain sometimes subtle legacies of resistance. The interpretations of them which are privileged in our classrooms and research therefore matter. We make choices every day that give predators greater or less access to ancient stories, figures, and events.

These files teach us that in infinitely many ways classics can be used in infinitely many ways to further hate and violence today. Epstein did this again and again. Popular culture has in some ways warped ancient Greece and Rome, through movies such as Gladiator (2000), to affirm white masculinity, particularly American and British masculinity. These men are represented as heroes, and the systems of colonialism and patriarchy they uphold are rarely questioned substantially. These are conscious and irresponsible interpretive choices. This said, they are also in line with recorded ancient beliefs and structures of power. As stated, Greece and Rome flourished on the basis of exploitation, human trafficking, and violence. Both civilizations achieved success by similar measures we as a society still employ today. They expanded their wealth, territory, and authority. Epstein was at times successful by these same measures. He clearly felt empowered by those classical figures who accomplished extensive violence and still today receive great praise from many.

Epstein was able to receive a valuation for his three statues for 1.5 million, because of the prestige associated with our subject matter. We can choose to further or disrupt those attitudes in our own work and communities. Of course, we benefit from classics’ distinction too, within our own institutions, when it comes time to defend the necessity of classics or seek research funding. 

These lessons are personal. At some point, in nearly every single one of our classrooms, there will be a student. He will, like Epstein, want to learn about the glorified ancient world in an attempt to justify his hatred, to make himself and his violence appear palatable and legitimate to those with material power. I think it is one of our jobs as classical educators to make that option repulsive. It is my cautious and critical hope that this archive can help us peer into one most glaring, contemporary, and extensive example of classical reception toward the ends of violence. When appropriate, we might use these files to engage classrooms in critical discussion and advance workplace protections regarding sexual violence in our departments and institutions. The pervasive nature of classical reception proves the necessity of both efforts. I hope reading this drives a recommitment to just scholarship and reciprocal, custodial care of ancient worlds. I would implore us to make harm explicit, to address it critically, and to challenge nostalgia for the ancient world.

By collecting this information and publishing it, with great conviction, I dedicate my labor to using these files to make my classrooms, departments, and publications places where consent is of paramount value and where survivors of all types of violence are believed. Without personal and community commitments, any scholarly engagements with this work are words on a page. Rooting around in this archive, redefining and interpreting materials, is violent and harmful work. Any publication must therefore match and supersede its violence with labor which counteracts systemic violence. I don’t have any ownership over this archive, which includes over one hundred instances of classical reception. In part, I am writing this article to find co-conspirators and accomplices to build projects and research around this archive, which I hope to one day soon make public in a format more accessible than the Department of Justice’s. If that work interests you, I invite you to fill out the form here.

Finally, I’d like to thank Vassar College, Professor Curtis Dozier, and Erin Ferencik for their generous support of this research. I’m glad Pharos can be this research’s first home.