TTC Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Literature

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

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?