Spencer Klavan on the great works; only the Greek episodes are indexed
42 episodes indexed · 41 hours · Spencer Klavan
Periods · The Bronze Age, Archaic Greece, The Persian Wars, Classical Greece, Philip and Alexander, The Hellenistic world, Greece under Rome
Themes · Philosophy War Theatre Daily life Religion
Scholar and writer Spencer Klavan leads a tour of the great works of the West; only the Greek episodes are here, 42 of 300, 3 eras, 41 hours.
Where to start. The earliest indexed episode is 'Ep. 30: Greeks From the Ground and Persians From Heaven ft. Tom Holland' (2020); 42 episodes of this show are in the section.
I feel like…
ideas, belief and how a polis was ordered
stories, performance, art and ordinary lives
when it happens
how much time you have
Minoans and Mycenaeans c. 3000 - 1100 BC · 20
Odysseus throws off his disguise and wages war on the suitors who tore up his house, going almost too far until his son pulls him back from the brink.
Odysseus meets the shadows of the dead in Book 11 of the Odyssey, forcing him and Homer to confront the possibility that life ends in nothing but worm food.
Odysseus reaches Ithaca but still has one journey left, learning with the help of his nursemaid Eurycleia that war shaped him without erasing who he was before he left home.
The Odyssey opens with an empty space where Odysseus should be, and the story sets out to answer who he is, beginning with the moment Odysseus reveals his true identity to his hosts the Phaeacians.
The Odyssey picks up where the Iliad ends, tracing soldiers returning to society, and begins Odysseus' long journey home with his son Telemachus growing to manhood without his father around.
Achilles' murderous rage in the Iliad only makes sense inside an honor culture that seeks justice in a universe offering no guarantees, beyond any modern read of toxic masculinity.
Telemachus hears from Menelaus about his own fraught journey home, including an encounter with Proteus that led to the first news of Odysseus in years and brings his son hope.
Three women, Calypso, Nausicaa and Athena, walk beside Odysseus on his way back to Ithaca, each loving him without holding on as he recovers who he is after war and wandering.
The best scene in the Iliad shows Hector and Andromache on the wall, mourning honestly with those who suffer defeat and revealing what the poem says about polytheism among the Trojans.
Odysseus must choose between Scylla and Charybdis after a turning point among the dead, facing what he calls the saddest and most pitiable horror of all his suffering journeys at sea.
In Book 9 of the Odyssey, Homer swings from a peaceful vision of men living off their own vineyards and fig trees to the horror of the Cyclops eating people alive.
From Book 16 to Book 24, the Iliad closes with a study of Achilles, his companion Patroclus, and the rage, war and grief that leave the stage set for the Odyssey.
With a Ralph Fiennes Odysseus movie announced, the show finally returns to Homer, beginning today the whole story of the Homeric epics that it wanted to tell since episode one.
Odysseus gets re-acquainted with his furry friend and his long-lost son in a moving series of reunion scenes, learning that he also left much of himself at home and that his worst failures are not the last word.
With Helen abducted and the Achaean forces gathering for Troy, the episode sifts the myths, including the tale of the Achilles heel, from what Homer's Iliad actually contains about Achilles.
On the island of Aeaea, Odysseus must share the bed of the witch Circe, a trial that helps him find his way back into civilization after losing comrades to war.
The Iliad opens with the feud between Achilles and Agamemnon, a drama carrying the seeds of Greek culture from the terror of hubris to the achievement of city-states acting in coalition.
The Judgment of Paris, the story that started it all in the Homeric universe, is revisited to ask whether Paris could have navigated the situation any better than he did.
Spencer Klavan compares translations of the Odyssey passage summoning the dead in Book 11, weighing versions from the 1700s to today against his own attempt at the same lines.
This new series on translation opens by picking apart the first line of Homer's Iliad, using one short sentence to explore how translation works and what challenges it raises.
Dark Age and Archaic Greece 1100 - 480 BC · 1
Closing his series on Athenian democracy, Spencer Klavan tells the myth of King Erichthonius and the fraught relationship between Cleisthenes of Athens and King Cleomenes of Sparta, asking what it means to be equal before the law.
Greek Life, Thought and the Wider World across the centuries · 21
Closing the series on Plato's Republic, the episode covers its last and possibly most infamous book, where Plato calls for a total shutdown on artists and Spencer Klavan discusses Plato's challenge to art.
Reaching Book 7 of Plato's Republic, the series finally explains one of philosophy's most famous metaphors, the cave, and what Plato is saying about Athenian society, and about modern society as well.
Aristophanes, the genius of Old Attic Comedy, satirizes a declining education system in his play Clouds, raising the question of whether Socrates was part of the problem or part of the solution.
Drawing on Book IX of Plato's Republic, Spencer Klavan follows Socrates as he explores what it means to be tyrannical, enslaved to one's own desires, and how to avoid that fate.
In a culture that rewards power over truth, Spencer Klavan unpacks Plato's advice on statesmanship and philosophy, aimed at turning the mind toward the true, the beautiful and the good.
In Book V of Plato's Republic, Socrates follows his argument to its end, concluding the ideal city would need eugenics and sexual communism, while Spencer Klavan weighs the danger of snuffing out gut instincts.
In Plato's Apology of Socrates, the philosopher exposes self-styled experts as pretenders, the only man in Athens willing to admit his own ignorance, and willing to die for the truth.
The third book of Plato's Republic, where Plato saw to the heart of the matter: whoever wants a perfect state has to seize the means of artistic production, which is why that book has caused quite a bit of trouble.
Opening a three-part series on civil disobedience, Spencer Klavan covers Sophocles' Antigone and the philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience.
Aristophanes' comedy Assemblywomen imagines women running the world through the abolition of the family, the imposition of matriarchy and communism of everything including sex, all played for raunchy humor.
Asking whether the sins of the father fall on the son, Spencer Klavan opens a three-part journey through Aeschylus' Oresteia, the only surviving complete trilogy of Greek tragedies, seeking wisdom for today's debates over the history of racism.
With the sophist Thrasymachus dismissed, Book II of the Republic finds Socrates, Glaucon and Adeimantus on a project of imaginary civilization-building, a city of pure justice or just a totalitarian nightmare.
Concluding Aeschylus' Oresteia, the episode traces how the trilogy puts blood guilt to rest, turning the question away from what is owed toward how a person can go on living.
The journey through Plato's Republic reaches the book on excellence, where Spencer Klavan discusses the cardinal virtues and how to cultivate them.
Treating philosophy as a way of life, Spencer Klavan surveys the Hellenistic schools of ancient Athens, beginning with Stoicism and its roots in Greece before its later encounter with Christianity.
With Alex Priou
Classicist Alex Priou discusses his book on Plato's Symposium with Spencer Klavan, covering the true meaning of love, the limits of science, and the significance of prose style in philosophy.
Opening a long run of episodes on Plato's Republic, Spencer Klavan walks through the context and history of Book 1, asking whether all governments are really as good as each other.
The middle play of the Oresteia asks who Orestes is and what kind of man he will become, using the tragedy to raise questions about facing life's unfairness.
With Tom Holland
Epicureanism pictures atoms bouncing through an infinite void, a world without divine interference, and a life devoted to pleasure, and Spencer Klavan discusses and criticizes the teachings of Epicurus behind it.