Ancient Greece Declassified

Homeric scholar Olga Levaniouk on the intelligence and agency of Penelope in Homer's Odyssey, which is seldom appreciated, and the old debate over whether she realizes who the disguised beggar is.

Classicist Mary Bachvarova, author of From Hittite to Homer, discusses whether Homer was influenced by civilizations east of Greece, and the potential direct and indirect influences of the Hittites on the Greek epic tradition.

Harvard's Gregory Nagy and Brandeis' Leonard Muellner, both of the Center for Hellenic Studies, trace what anthropology reveals about the origins of humanity's oldest epic stories and the undying fascination with heroes.

Princeton's Andrew Ford discusses what vision of the world Homer's Iliad offers its audience and what specifically makes the poem an epic.

Archaeologist Eric Cline explains what caused the simultaneous collapse around 1177 BC of the Mycenaeans, the Hittites and most other Bronze Age civilizations.

With Richard Martin

Mythology expert Richard Martin on why the Odyssey has been considered great storytelling across millennia: episodes inherited from an oral tradition reaching back into the Bronze Age, woven together and ordered for maximum effect.

The finale of the Persian Wars saga: the aftermath of Salamis, Xerxes going home, the final battles at Plataea and Mycale, the Themistoclean Walls, and the exile and death of Themistocles.

In 480BC the Persian Empire invaded Greece, and Themistocles had a plan: the mines of Laurion, Athens against Aegina, the battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium, the Wooden Wall, and the Battle of Salamis.

The first of two episodes on the Greco-Persian Wars through the eyes of Themistocles: his childhood and the Athenian Revolution, democracy's early challenges, the demagogue, the Ionian Revolt, and Marathon.

Stanford archaeologist Ian Morris examines the economies and technologies behind the Greek victory over the biggest invasion force that had ever been launched, in the Persian expeditions of 490-479 BC.

With Eric W. Robinson

Historian Eric W. Robinson, author of the forthcoming Spartan Legend, questions how a small agrarian city-state rose to become the supreme power in ancient Greece.

Military historian Bret Devereaux of North Carolina State University explains why he thinks the traditional image of Sparta as an egalitarian society of warriors is a lie, following his viral article on bad history.

Historian Josiah Ober, author of The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece, on classical Athens against modern democracy, and his claim that for several centuries democracy and growth were normal for citizens in ancient Greece.

Military historian Adrian Goldsworthy asks how much of Alexander's success he owed to the work of his father Philip II of Macedonia.

Cognitive scientist John Vervaeke explores why Platonism and Stoicism, two schools of ancient philosophy, have seen a meteoric revival as more people in an increasingly hi-tech world turn to ancient wisdom traditions.

Host Lantern Jack and scholar Gina White move book by book through Plato's Republic, from the question of what justice is to the Myth of Er, in seventy-nine minutes.

With Doug Metzger

Doug Metzger of the Literature and History podcast argues that Aeschylus turned a bloody family feud into a new founding myth for Athenian democracy across seventy-five minutes.

A crosscast conversation with Simon E. Drew tracing where the notion of moral duty comes from, built around the book The Invention of Duty.

Seventy-five minutes on book one of the Republic, following Cephalus, Polemarchus and Thrasymachus as each tries to define justice, while Thrasymachus challenges Socrates and praises injustice.

Seventy-three minutes with psychotherapist Donald Robertson, author of How to Think Like an Emperor, on whether Marcus Aurelius was the enlightened ruler that books and films make of him and whether his brand of Stoic philosophy still applies today.

University of Chicago philosopher Gabriel Richardson Lear explains book six's Theory of Forms and Plato's vision of the Good as the ultimate source of human knowledge.

Cognitive scientist John Vervaeke offers a radically different take on Plato's Theory of Forms, which philosophers today often dismiss as a failed pre-modern account of knowledge, and ties it to recent debates about the nature of intelligence.

With Ben Morison

Princeton philosopher Ben Morison unpacks the allegory of the cave from book seven of the Republic, which the episode introduces as one of the most famous passages in all of western philosophy.

Georgetown classicist Claire Catenaccio on the evidence for ancient music, the Song of Seikilos, the aulos, the popularity of Euripides' new music, and what his songs sounded like, with three songs over 2000 years old.

Works through book eight of Plato's Republic, where tyranny is presented as the inevitable next step in political evolution after democracy.

Psychoanalyst and philosopher Jonathan Lear tests Plato's tripartite model of the soul from book four of the Republic against modern psychology.

Opens an eleven-part series arguing the Republic was shaped by Plato's own experience of civil war and the collapse of Athenian democracy.

Doug Metzger, host of the Literature and History Podcast, on when novels first arose, the four genres of ancient novels, Callirhoe, Daphnis and Chloe, Heliodorus' Aethiopica, Lucian, and Greek versus Roman novels.

With Emily Greenwood

Yale classicist Emily Greenwood on Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War, a study of the struggle between democracy and oligarchy whose popularity has surged amid recent polarization.

André Laks, co-editor of the nine-volume Loeb edition of early Greek philosophical fragments, traces philosophy's first stirrings to the Presocratics twenty-six centuries ago.

Robin Waterfield, author of the first full English biography of Plato, traces his relationship to Socrates and Aristotle and the founding of the Academy.

Rachel Barney, professor of classics and ancient philosophy at the University of Toronto, on book 2 of Plato's Republic: whether the fear of God is necessary for morality, and how to educate people to value and practice justice.

Covers Glaucon's speech defending injustice and Adeimantus' case against pro-justice arguments before Socrates answers with the city-soul analogy in book two of the Republic.

Princeton's Melissa Lane, author of The Birth of Politics, examines stasis, Greek for political polarization, its causes, and the solutions ancient thinkers offered to prevent it.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex, on Plato, Socrates and the legacy of Greek philosophy, and questions her book tackles: why Socrates was killed and why philosophy emerged in Greece.

Stanford historian Caroline Winterer traces how the American founders drew inspiration from ancient Athens, the Roman Republic and Carthage in crafting a new republic.

Papyrologist Raffaella Cribiore, author of Gymnastics of the Mind on Greek education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, on what the archaeological evidence from Egypt can tell about schools, students and teachers.

Stanford's Rush Rehm traces tragedy's origin to late sixth-century Athens, asking whether its birth alongside democracy in that city was a coincidence or a deeper connection.

Every ancient written trace of Atlantis comes from a single author, Plato, in his late dialogues Timaeus and Critias, sequels to the Republic.

Classicist Edith Hall traces how Athenian comic theater, invented after the city's democratic revolution, attacked prominent individuals who were usually in the audience and humiliated politicians like Pericles and Cleon.

Thirty-three scholars and archaeologists, from Edith Hall to Ben Morison, each name one ancient figure they would want to meet if time travel were possible.

Philosopher Peter Adamson tests the popular claim that Aristotle's authority delayed Western science for two thousand years until Copernicus and Galileo overturned it.

Poet and translator Alicia Stallings unpacks Hesiod's Works and Days, home of the Prometheus and Pandora myths, as a guide to living justly in a harsh world.

Classicist Andromache Karanika traces how Sappho, writing around 600 BC, survived a millennium of celebrity before her nine volumes of songs were nearly lost.

Sheffield philosopher Angie Hobbs examines book three's question of who keeps Plato's ruling class of guardians from becoming an unaccountable regime themselves.

Princeton classicist Barbara Graziosi, author of The Gods of Olympus, discusses the meaning of sacrifice and whether atheism existed in ancient Greek religion.

A crosscast with the Classical Wisdom Speaks podcast, in which its host Anya Leonard, founder of classicalwisdom.com, interviews the show's host about the new book The Invention of Duty: Stoicism as Deontology.

Angie Hobbs returns to unpack Plato's theory of mimesis from the second half of book three, that art and objects shape the health of the soul.

With Matt Simonton

Second half of the conversation with Matt Simonton, author of Classical Greek Oligarchy, on the institutions ancient oligarchic regimes used to hold onto power.

With Matt Simonton

Arizona State historian Matt Simonton, whose Classical Greek Oligarchy won the 2018 Runciman Award, explains how oligarchy first arose as a form of government.

King's College London's MM McCabe, author of Plato's Individuals, discusses the philosophical dialogue as a literary form and as a practice between people, and what makes Plato's dialogues worth reading.

Four discoveries that extended historical knowledge into the mythical past: Champollion's Rosetta Stone, Grotefend's cuneiform breakthrough, Schliemann's dig for Troy and Ventris' decipherment of Linear B.

Classicist Zina Giannopoulou revisits Plato's Symposium, the dialogue that coined platonic love, to set the record straight about a misunderstood concept and Plato's radical theory of love.