The BBC seminar format; only the Greek episodes are indexed

In Our Time

60 episodes indexed · 44 hours · BBC Radio 4

Periods · The Bronze Age, Archaic Greece, The Persian Wars, Classical Greece, Philip and Alexander, The Hellenistic world, Greece under Rome

Themes · Philosophy War Theatre The polis Religion

Misha Glenny and academics host seminar spanning history, philosophy, religion, science and culture, with Mondays drawing on Melvyn Bragg's archive; only the Greek episodes are included here, 60 of 1170, across seven eras and 45 hours.

Where to start. The earliest indexed episode is 'Mathematics and Platonism' (2001); 60 episodes of this show are in the section.

I feel like…

ThinkingAny

ideas, belief and how a polis was ordered

FeelingAny

stories, performance, art and ordinary lives

DoingAny

war and expansion

PeriodAny

when it happens

LengthAny

how much time you have

Minoans and Mycenaeans c. 3000 - 1100 BC · 5

48mThe Iliad In Our TimePodcast

The epic attributed to Homer tells of an episode in the Trojan War framed by the wrath of Achilles, who withdraws after being insulted by Agamemnon and returns only when his friend Patroclus is killed by the Trojan hero Hector.

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47mThe Bronze Age Collapse In Our TimePodcast

Many historians give the name Bronze Age Collapse to what appears to have been a sudden, uncontrolled destruction around 1200 BC, and the reasons for the changes remain open to debate.

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42mThe Minoan Civilisation In Our TimePodcast

With John Bennet, Yannis Hamilakis, Ellen Adams

In 1900 the British archaeologist Arthur Evans began excavating ruins at Knossos on Crete, uncovering a palace complex belonging to a Bronze Age civilisation that flourished for twelve centuries and reached its height three and a half thousand years ago.

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41mThe Trojan War In Our TimePodcast

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28mThe Odyssey In Our TimePodcast

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Dark Age and Archaic Greece 1100 - 480 BC · 1

51mSolon the Lawgiver In Our TimePodcast

The lower orders of society were ravaged by debt in Solon's Athens, to the point where some were being forced into slavery.

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The Persian Wars 499 - 449 BC · 3

54mThe Delian League In Our TimePodcast

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50mThe Battle of Salamis In Our TimePodcast

The Battle of Salamis halted the further Persian conquest of Greece, and further Greek victories the next year at Plataea and Mycale brought Persian withdrawal and the immediate threat of conquest to an end.

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42mThermopylae In Our TimePodcast

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Classical Athens and Sparta 479 - 386 BC · 3

54mThe Mytilenaean Debate In Our TimePodcast

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50mSocrates in Prison In Our TimePodcast

Plato's Crito and Phaedo describe the last days of Socrates in prison in 399 BC awaiting execution by hemlock, arguing in the Crito that escape would be wrong and in the Phaedo for the soul's immortality.

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48mPericles In Our TimePodcast

Pericles dominated Athenian politics for thirty years while its democracy strengthened and its empire grew and the Parthenon rose on the Acropolis, then in 431 BC gave a funeral oration before dying of plague within two years.

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Philip and Alexander 359 - 323 BC · 3

56mDemosthenes' Philippics In Our TimePodcast

In 4th century BC Athens, Demosthenes delivered speeches against Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, urging resistance before it was too late, speeches later imitated by Cicero against Mark Antony in Rome.

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47mAlexander the Great In Our TimePodcast

Born into the Macedonian royal family in 356 BC, Alexander the Great gained control of Greece and conquered the Persian Empire by defeating its king Darius III, spreading Greek culture and language into regions it had not reached before.

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46mThebes In Our TimePodcast

The Greek city of Thebes, home in myth to Heracles, Dionysus, Oedipus and Cadmus among others, was infamous for supporting Xerxes in the Persian War and was defeated by the rising force of Macedon at Chaironea in 338 BC.

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The Hellenistic Age 323 - 31 BC · 3

45mEuclid's Elements In Our TimePodcast

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42mThe Library of Alexandria In Our TimePodcast

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42mArchimedes In Our TimePodcast

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Greek Life, Thought and the Wider World across the centuries · 42

56mPlutarch's Parallel Lives In Our TimePodcast

Plutarch was clear he was writing lives, not histories, pairing famous Greeks and Romans to contrast and compare their virtues and vices side by side, a focus on great men's inner lives that fascinated Shakespeare.

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55mLysistrata In Our TimePodcast

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54mOedipus Rex In Our TimePodcast

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54mPlato's Atlantis In Our TimePodcast

Plato alone tells of the island of Atlantis, lost long before his time, across the Timaeus and the Critias, using the tale to test what an ideal republic might be and whether Athens could ever become one.

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54mAntigone In Our TimePodcast

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52mAristotle's Nicomachean Ethics In Our TimePodcast

Aristotle explored what happiness means and how to live a good life in his Nicomachean Ethics, addressed to the elite of Athens on the argument that knowing how to live well would let them rule others better.

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52mHerodotus In Our TimePodcast

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52mThe Bacchae In Our TimePodcast

First performed in Athens in 405 BC as the city faced defeat by Sparta, Euripides' tragedy has Pentheus, king of Thebes, torn apart by his own mother for denying the divinity of his cousin Dionysus.

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50mThe Antikythera Mechanism In Our TimePodcast

Researchers worked out that the Antikythera Mechanism was some kind of astronomical analogue computer, and detailed examination indicates that it showed the positions of planets, the sun and moon.

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50mPlato's Gorgias In Our TimePodcast

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50mAristotle's Biology In Our TimePodcast

While living by the Sea of Marmara and on Lesbos, Aristotle examined a wide range of life forms and recorded the development of the dogfish embryo, some conclusions such as the spontaneous generation of flies later proving wrong.

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48mPlato's Republic In Our TimePodcast

Writing around 380BC, Plato applied the question of whether it is always better to be just than unjust to both the individual and the city-state, imagining an ideal city that might be ruled by philosophers.

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47mStrabo's Geographica In Our TimePodcast

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46mZeno's Paradoxes In Our TimePodcast

Zeno of Elea, a pre-Socratic philosopher from c490-430 BC, argued against motion with paradoxes such as an arrow in flight moving at none of the points it occupies, and Achilles never overtaking a tortoise given a head start.

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46mSappho In Our TimePodcast

Owing to a series of accidents the bulk of Sappho's work was lost to posterity, though the fragments that survive give a glimpse of her poetry.

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45mThe Muses In Our TimePodcast

The Muses were Greek goddesses of poetry, song, music and dance, consistently linked to artistic inspiration despite varying in number and role across different accounts, raising for philosophers the question of how far a creative person shaped that inspiration.

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45mThucydides In Our TimePodcast

Thucydides wrote The History of the Peloponnesian War in the fifth century BC about a conflict in which he had himself taken part, arguably the first historian to attempt a rational, impartial and objective approach to his scholarship.

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45mAesop In Our TimePodcast

According to some accounts Aesop was a strikingly ugly slave granted the power of speech by the goddess Isis, remembered today as the supposed author of fables that remain among the most popular works of Ancient Greek literature.

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42mPlato's Symposium In Our TimePodcast

Written in the 4th century BC, Plato's Symposium sets a dialogue at a dinner party where Socrates and the playwright Aristophanes are among the guests speaking of Eros, giving rise to the modern notion of Platonic love.

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42mGalen In Our TimePodcast

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42mThe Amazons In Our TimePodcast

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42mEpicureanism In Our TimePodcast

Founded in Athens in the fourth century BC, Epicureanism held that everything in the Universe is built from atoms and void, and that the goal of human life is pleasure, which Epicurus defined as the avoidance of pain, not luxury.

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42mThe Hippocratic Oath In Our TimePodcast

A large body of work originally attributed to Hippocrates, the Hippocratic Corpus, cannot have been written by a single author.

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42mXenophon In Our TimePodcast

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42mAristotle's Poetics In Our TimePodcast

Written in the 4th century BC, Aristotle's Poetics is the first known work of literary theory, examining drama and epic poetry and analysing tragedy, and defends poetry against attacks by other thinkers including Aristotle's own teacher Plato.

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42mRhetoric In Our TimePodcast

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42mHeroism In Our TimePodcast

On the fields of Troy, according to Homer, Achilles told a fallen soldier he too had his death and strong destiny before killing him, prompting the question of how the Greeks defined their heroes in classical society.

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42mThe Examined Life In Our TimePodcast

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42mThe Delphic Oracle In Our TimePodcast

For over a thousand years between approximately 800 BC and 400 AD, Delphi on Mount Parnassus was the most sacred place in the ancient world, its Oracle consulted through a priestess called the Pythia believed to speak for Apollo.

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42mSparta In Our TimePodcast

Sparta was a ferocious opposite to cosmopolitan Athens, instilling military discipline in its young men through communal living while subjugating the Helots, yet it also produced poets, as Tyrteaus wrote marching songs and Alcman wrote choral lyrics.

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42mAristotle's Politics In Our TimePodcast

Aristotle developed a language of oligarchies, democracies and monarchies, and having witnessed his home town of Stagira destroyed by Philip of Macedon, he tried to establish a way of preserving a good society.

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42mThe Greek Myths In Our TimePodcast

The Greek myths, a collection of stories with a cast including mighty Zeus, Jason and the Argonauts, wily Odysseus, beautiful Aphrodite and the three-headed dog Cerberus, were constantly rewoven across centuries of Greek and Roman civilisation.

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42mSocrates In Our TimePodcast

Born in 469 BC into the golden age of Athens, Socrates so profoundly influenced philosophy that every thinker before him is simply known as pre-Socratic, though he refused to write anything down and left nothing in his own hand.

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41mNeoplatonism In Our TimePodcast

Neoplatonism, founded in the 3rd century AD by Plotinus, reinterpreted the works of the Greek thinker Plato and outlined a complex cosmology linking the human with the divine, headed by a power the Neoplatonists called the One.

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41mHeraclitus In Our TimePodcast

Heraclitus criticised the poets Homer and Hesiod as ignorant and separately accused the mathematician Pythagoras of fabricating claims.

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41mPtolemy and Ancient Astronomy In Our TimePodcast

In his Almagest, written in the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy proposed that the Earth sat at the centre of the universe and explained the motions of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars through uniform circular epicycles.

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41mPythagoras In Our TimePodcast

Pythagoras is probably best known for the theorem that bears his name, though it remains uncertain he developed it himself, and the Pythagoreans, who said they were his followers, held that number could explain the truths of the world.

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41mComedy in Ancient Greek Theatre In Our TimePodcast

In Aristophanes' The Birds, two Athenians sought a Utopian refuge and founded a city of birds christened, in 414 BC, 'Cloud Cuckoo Land'.

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28mGreek and Roman Love Poetry In Our TimePodcast

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28mStoicism In Our TimePodcast

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28mThe Oresteia In Our TimePodcast

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28mMathematics and Platonism In Our TimePodcast

To Pythagoras, numbers were mystical and were said to prove God, and to Plato the ideals beyond life's reality are found in mathematical perfections, immutable truth, and God again in numbers.

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