Ancient Greece: City and Society

Gillian Shepherd examines the so-called Dark Ages after the fall of Mycenaean civilisation, and the 8th century changes in overseas contact and the Greek alphabet that earned the period the name Greek Renaissance.

Gillian Shepherd traces 7th and 6th century Athens, when the Agora emerged as its administrative and commercial heart, through three upheavals: the reforms of Solon, the tyranny of Peisistratos and the rise of democracy.

Gillian Shepherd traces the fall of the Peisistratid tyranny and the reforms of Kleisthenes, using the Agora and the Pnyx as evidence for a government that gave power to an unusually wide section of the population.

Gillian Shepherd looks at classical Athenian burial customs, arguing cemeteries offer evidence for population, diet, social divisions, religious beliefs and cultural practices, though not a direct reflection of the population.

With Heather Sebo

Heather Sebo examines three Athenian tragedies centred on women, Aeschylos’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Medea, where women appear strong and powerful against vain, weak men.

Gillian Shepherd examines Greek attitudes toward slaves: terminology, how slaves were treated, debates about the justification and morality of slavery, and the idea of the natural slave.

With Rhiannon Evans

Rhiannon Evans analyses the lyric poetry of Sappho, a woman from Lesbos born in the later 7th century BC, whose verse shows love for individuals of both sexes.

Gillian Shepherd compares two Greek slave systems, chattel slavery in Athens and the helots of Sparta, then examines the numbers, work and economic role of Athenian slaves.

With Rhiannon Evans

Rhiannon Evans examines Herodotus’ ethnography of the barbarian ‘other’, his accounts of the Egyptians, Scythians, Amazons and Persians, arguing they reveal more about the Greeks than about the others.

Gillian Shepherd examines images of women on 5th century BC Athenian red-figured pottery, asking whether they confirm, expand upon or confound the limited textual evidence for women’s lives.

Gillian Shepherd looks at the Athenian law courts, where huge juries tried private cases and civic legislation, at the archaeological evidence for selecting juries and conducting trials, and at other features of Athenian life the Agora reveals.

Gillian Shepherd examines how Greek art depicted the ‘other’, from historical Persians and Scythians to mythological centaurs and Amazons, and how such imagery helped define Greek culture.

With Rhiannon Evans

Rhiannon Evans explores Plato’s Symposium, a conversation among leading thinkers of late fifth century Athens on love and sexuality, where Greek men could pursue both hetero- and homosexual relationships.

With Heather Sebo

Heather Sebo opens a series on women in ancient Greece, exploring the ideology, legislation and cultural practices shaping their lives, noting most evidence comes from Athens and was generated by men.

Gillian Shepherd surveys textual evidence for ancient Greece through two major 5th century BC historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, flagging the methodological issues in using their texts to reconstruct Greek history and culture.

With Heather Sebo

Heather Sebo shows how defeat in war meant every man, women and child became the property of the victors, anxieties the Athenian stage voiced through Euripides’ Trojan War plays.

Gillian Shepherd explores the wealthy classical Athenian economy through the nature of coinage in ancient Greece and the silver mines of Laurion, source of the famous Owl coins of Athens.

Gillian Shepherd examines the ancient Greek symposion, a ritualised, elite male drinking party that could host sexual encounters beyond marriage, from hetairai to pederasty, using archaeological and textual evidence.

With Sarah Midford

Sarah Midford asks whether Greek history had any impact on the modern world, examining how Greek literature, art and architecture moulded Western society and were also manipulated by it.

With Heather Sebo

Heather Sebo compares the Panathenaia, Athens’ state festival honouring the goddess Athena, with the mystery cult of Demeter based at Eleusis, showing how festivals structured the Greek year.

With Heather Sebo

Heather Sebo looks at the Dionysia, a spring festival honouring Dionysos with a dramatic competition at its centre, and traces its links to Athenian society, democracy and politics.

Gillian Shepherd looks at dating and excavating ancient objects, then at two cases combining archaeology and texts: the Arsenal at Pireaus, which stored rigging for the Athenian navy, and the reconstructed trireme Olympias.

With Heather Sebo

Heather Sebo contrasts women’s lament with public orations for the war dead, reading Sophocles’ Antigone of 442 BCE against the replaceability argument in Perikles’ funeral oration in Thucydides.

With Heather Sebo

Heather Sebo examines Herakles and Theseus, Athenian heroes renowned for ridding the world of monsters, showing how their myths could be manipulated to reflect the priorities of 6th century and democratic Athens.

With Heather Sebo

Heather Sebo examines Aristophanes’ Frogs, where Dionysos first plans to bring Euripides back from Hades but ultimately chooses Aeschylus, the poet judged most likely to encourage patriotism in a military emergency.

Gillian Shepherd opens the series with the background of ancient Greece: geography, resources, political structures, chronology and modern terminology, setting the scene for this look at city and society in the Greek world.