Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Literature

Category: Lecture
Language: English
Keywords: Ancient Greek Literature Masterpieces
Course No. 2390 (36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture) Taught by David J. Schenker University of Missouri-Columbia Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley

All our lives, we’ve been taught the importance of the ancient Greeks to so much of the world that came after them, and particularly to our own way of living in and seeing that world. Mention politics, philosophy, law, medicine, history, even the visual arts, and we barely scratch the surface of what we owe this extraordinary culture. How can we best learn about these people who have given us so much; who have deepened and enriched our understanding of ourselves? We can look to modern historians for perspectives on the origins of their own discipline, and on the two thinkers, Herodotus and Thucydides, whose contributions to that discipline were immense. To political scientists for the links between the U.S. Senate and the councils of Athens. And to teachers of philosophy for insights to illuminate the deepest implications found in Plato. But there is an entirely different perspective found in another of their great legacies—the classic Greek literature that is still read today and that is still able to engage and enthrall us. Would we find that Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato might engage us in advanced levels of understanding when their works are examined as not only history or philosophy, but as literature, their words weighed and forms shaped as carefully as those of any poem or drama? Course Lecture Titles 1. Definitions, Boundaries, and Goals 2. Homer I—Introduction to Epic and Iliad 3. Homer II—Iliad, The Wrath of Achilles 4. Homer III—Iliad, The Return of Achilles 5. Homer IV—Odyssey, Introduction and Prelude 6. Homer V—Odyssey, The Adventures 7. Homer VI—Odyssey, Reintegration 8. Hesiod—Theogony and Works and Days 9. Homeric Hymns 10. Lyric Poetry I—Archilochus and Solon 11. Lyric Poetry II—Sappho and Alcaeus 12. Tragedy—Contexts and Conventions 13. Aeschylus I—Persians 14. Aeschylus II—Agamemnon 15. Aeschylus III—Libation Bearers and Eumenides 16. Sophocles I—Ajax and Philoctetes 17. Sophocles II—Oedipus the King 18. Sophocles III—Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone 19. Euripides I—Electra, Orestes, Trojan Women 20. Euripides II—Medea and Hippolytus 21. Euripides III—The Bacchae 22. Aristophanes I—Introduction to Old Comedy 23. Aristophanes II—Acharnians and Lysistrata 24. Aristophanes III—The Frogs and The Clouds 25. Herodotus I—Introduction to History 26. Herodotus II—The Persian Wars 27. Thucydides I—The Peloponnesian War 28. Thucydides II—Books 1–5 29. Thucydides III—Books 6–7 30. Plato I—The Philosopher as Literary Author 31. Plato II—Symposium 32. Plato III—Phaedrus 33. Rhetoric and Oratory 34. Hellenistic Poetry I—Callimachus and Theocritus 35. Hellenistic Poetry II—Apollonius 36. Looking Back and Looking Forward Format : MPEG Audio Format version : Version 1 Format profile : Layer 3 Duration : 29mn 53s Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 96.0 Kbps Channel(s) : 1 channel Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz Resolution : 16 bits Stream size : 20.5 MiB (100%)