Art and building

Part of Ancient History Fangirl

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia was built of priceless hippopotamus ivory, tall as a three-storey building, and had to be oiled daily in the heat so it would not crack.

Part of Ancient History Fangirl

The third episode traces how the temple of Artemis at Ephesus was built, who burned it down, who rebuilt it, and what happened there beyond worship.

Part of Ancient History Fangirl

A giant statue supposed to depict the god Helios was once pictured straddling the harbor at Rhodes, holding aloft a torch, though some said it looked more like Alexander the Great, on an island full of pirates and smugglers.

Part of Ancient History Fangirl

Mausolus was once an extremely powerful man, yet today he is remembered mainly for the grandness of his tomb, commissioned by his wife, who was also his sister; his name in English now means all tombs.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

Deacon Harrison Garlick and Adam Minihan call Book 18 arguably the most philosophically dense book in the entire Iliad, discussing what the heart of Achilles teaches and how to interpret his shield.

Part of Ad Navseam

Wycherley's study of the agora shows it as more than a marketplace, a hub for politics and athletics, while nearly every Greek polis had religious shrines, gymnasia and stadiums.

Part of Ad Navseam

Lord Elgin removed the Parthenon marbles from Athens to his Scottish mansion, and they still sit in the British Museum in London while Lord Byron somehow avoids the same blame.

Part of Ad Navseam

In 1977 Manolis Andronikos revealed the royal Macedonian tombs at Aigai, likely holding Philip II, a find framed here with David Grant's research and Demosthenes' Second Philippic.

Part of The Ancients

With David Braund

Tristan Hughes and Dr David Braund explore the Amazons in ancient Greek culture through myths involving Heracles, Achilles and Theseus, presenting these warrior women as city founders, astronomers and festival creators far beyond their popular image.

Part of Ancient History Fangirl

Perhaps first written down by Herodotus sometime in the 400s BC, the list of Seven Wonders did not really get popularized until the 200s, and this episode traces its history through the centuries since.

Part of Greeced Lightning

Sara, Luke, and Sam open the Titans saga with 1981's Clash of the Titans, tracing Perseus and Andromeda through Ovid and Ray Harryhausen, plus ancient art, special effects, and Laurence Olivier.

Part of Ad Navseam

The episode credits the grid-pattern city, still visible in modern street plans, to Hippodamus of Miletus, who spread his design for the Greek city across Attica, Italy and Rhodes.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Fifth-century BC innovation in statuary in the round, stelai and architectural relief, from the Kritios Boy and Antenor's Tyrannicides to the Charioteer of Delphi, Myron's Diskobolos, the Doryphoros of Polykleitos and the Stele of Hegeso.

Part of Ancient History Fangirl

The Lighthouse of Alexandria, built under the Ptolemies in Egypt and known as the Pharos after its island, stood for about 1,600 years and came to represent light and learning, and darker meanings too.

Part of Ancient History Fangirl

With Liv Albert

Hadrian, the Roman emperor who commissioned Hadrian's Wall, combined an obsession with architecture and a passion for everything Greek to transform the city of Athens, as guest Liv Albert explains here.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With Seth Estrin

Seth Estrin, Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard, discusses Grief Made Marble, his emotion-based reading of Classical Athenian funerary sculpture, drawing on Euripides' tragedy Alcestis.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

Possible encounters between Buddhists and Greeks: the Milindapañha portrays Menander I as a Buddhist convert, Ashoka has his beliefs inscribed in Greek near Kandahar, and Gandharan sculptors turn Heracles into Heracles-Vajrapani.

Part of The Ancients

More than 2,000 years old, the Parthenon has served as temple, treasury, residence, church, mosque, gunpowder store and tourist site; Tristan Hughes joins Matt Lewis on the Echoes of History podcast to trace its long and fascinating story.

Part of The Ancients

With Tiziana D'Angelo, Kathryn Lomas

Paestum in southern Italy is home to some of the greatest ancient Greek temples; Dr Tiziana D'Angelo and Dr Kathryn Lomas guide Tristan Hughes from its Greek beginnings around 600 BC to takeover by Rome more than 300 years later.

Part of Echoes of History

With Tristan Hughes

Built atop the Acropolis in Athens during the 5th century BCE, the Parthenon's construction was completed just before the Peloponnesian War; Tristan Hughes guides Matt Lewis through its origins in embezzlement and its ruin in war.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With Patricia Kim

Patricia Kim, assistant professor at New York University, discusses her book on the art of Hellenistic queenship, tracing Pliny's account of Timochares' proposed floating statue of Arsinoe II.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Fifth-century BC painting on pottery, walls and wooden panels: vases by the Berlin Painter, Onesimos and the Niobid Painter, wall paintings by Polygnotos, Parrhasios and Zeuxis, the Tomb of the Diver, and the Pitsa Panels.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Adrien Delahaye

Dr Adrien Delahaye of the French School at Athens discusses how pottery in ancient Sparta served storage, shipping, moral lessons and more, tracing its use through the Archaic and Classical periods.

Part of The Ancients

With Mary Beard, Charlotte Higgins

Professor Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins join Tristan Hughes to ask how the Romans borrowed, adapted and sometimes rivalled Greek culture, and what they admired and rejected, from temples and theatre to politics and philosophy.

Part of Ancient Greece: Myth, Art, War

Dr Gillian Shepherd surveys vase painters of the 6th and 5th centuries BC, for whom the Trojan War was a very popular subject, including scenes that do not appear in any literary version of the myth.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

The construction, history and significance of the Parthenon, Propylaia, Temple of Athena Nike and Erechtheion, buildings that glorified Athens and served as political propaganda, and that many later considered the symbol of Classical Greece.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

With Osmund Bopearachchi

Osmund Bopearachchi on Gandharan art, credited with the first known depictions of the Buddha in human form, whose artists borrowed Hellenistic designs and mythological figures to tell the Buddha's story.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With Verity Platt

Verity Platt, professor of Classics and History of Art at Cornell University, discusses her new book Epistemic Impressions, tracing ancient image-making through Herodotus's account of the seal of Polycrates and Pliny's Natural History.

Part of Ancient Greece: Myth, Art, War

Dr Gillian Shepherd examines the extravagant building programme on the Acropolis, most famously the Parthenon, begun after a gap of over 30 years following the Persian sack of 480 BC.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

A sightseeing tour of Alexandria in its heyday under the Ptolemies, founded by Alexander in 332/331: its cosmopolitan population, art and architecture, scholars, and monuments like the Lighthouse of Pharos and the Library.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Archaic innovation in the 7th and 6th centuries BC: Orientalizing, Korinthian, black-figure and red-figure vase painting, kouros and kore statuary and reliefs, and Doric and Ionic temples, treasuries and stoas.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With Sam Holzman

Sam Holzman, assistant professor at Princeton's Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, discusses bilingual Ionic column capitals in his book Retrospective Columns, tracing the style through Vitruvius's de Architectura and the architectural drawings in Stuart and Revett's Antiquities of Athens.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Olympia Bobou

Dr Olympia Bobou, a classical archaeologist specializing in Greek sculpture at Aarhus University, discusses how sculpture changed and developed across ancient Greece over time.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Louise Hitchcock

Dr Louise Hitchcock of the University of Melbourne discusses architecture on the Greek islands during the Bronze Age, including the islands of Crete and Santorini.

Part of Ancient Greece: Myth, Art, War

Dr Gillian Shepherd surveys basic Greek sanctuary and temple design before focusing on the sanctuary of Zeus Olympios at Olympia, home to the Olympic games and lavish temples, treasuries and sculpture.

Part of History Unplugged Podcast

With Bettany Hughes

The Seven Wonders include the Temple of Artemis, the Statue of Zeus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse at Alexandria, alongside the pyramids of Giza and Babylon's Hanging Gardens; guest Bettany Hughes traveled to each site.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Fifth-century BC temple building outside Attika: Aphaia at Aigina, Zeus at Olympia, Hera II at Poseidonia, Victory at Himera, the Valley of the Temples at Akragas, the unfinished temple at Segesta, and Apollo at Bassai.

Part of Spirits: Mythology, Legends, & Folklore

The episode credits Hephaestus for pottery and cool jewelry and so much more, covering how the Greeks did him dirty and how he is cooler than listeners knew.

Part of Ad Navseam

The eighth-century BC Dipylon Vase has every inch of its surface covered, with a funeral scene dominating it, and the episode asks what drives a culture toward that fear of the empty space.

Part of The Ancients

With Maeve McHugh

Located on the Acropolis in Athens, the Parthenon is the unofficial 8th wonder of the ancient world; Tristan and Dr Maeve McHugh explore the mastermind behind its construction and the iconography of the building.

Part of The Ancients

With Ellie Mackin Roberts

Hera, wife and sister of Zeus and goddess of marriage, royalty and women, is typically characterised as the jealous, vengeful wife despite archaeological evidence she was a pre-Greek deity pre-eminent to Zeus; Dr Ellie Mackin Roberts uncovers the truth.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Louise Hitchcock

Professor Louise Hitchcock of the University of Melbourne, in a fourth appearance, discusses Minoan palaces, villas and other residential buildings, in settlements advanced for the time, with labyrinthine architecture in the palatial buildings.

Part of The Ancients

With Michael Higgins

The last monument added to the Seven Wonders, the Lighthouse of Alexandria was one of the tallest man-made structures in ancient history and the only guiding beacon along 900km of Mediterranean coast; Michael Higgins traces its collapse 1500 years later.

Part of Ancient Greece: Myth, Art, War

Dr Gillian Shepherd traces the black and red figure vases made in Athens between the seventh and fourth centuries BC and exported across the Greek world, reading their scenes of warfare and women for evidence of daily life.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Carl Knappett

Professor Carl Knappett of the University of Toronto discusses Palaikastro, a Minoan urban centre on Crete that lasted more than two millennia and may never have had a palatial building.

Part of The Greek Myth Files

R. Scott Smith surveys the Gorgons and their mortal member Medousa through early poetic and artistic depictions, discussing Ovid's telling of the story and an interview with UNH professor Paul Robertson.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Jane Masséglia

Dr Jane Masséglia of the University of Leicester discusses how the Hellenistic period brought greater variety and diversity to art in the Mediterranean, and turns to the eastern part of the Basin.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit

With Nick Malkoutzis, Georgia Nakou

Greek journalists Nick Malkoutzis and Georgia Nakou explain the decades-long debate over the Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles, in the British Museum and campaigned for by Greece since the 1980s.

Part of The Ancients

With Carla Ionescu

The Ephesian Artemis, the great mother goddess, is characterised in statues by a vest of bee hives, or breasts, or bull scrotums, depending on interpretation; Tristan and Dr Carla Ionescu discuss her connections to other divine female figures.

Part of HistoryExtra podcast

With Caroline Vout

Caroline Vout tells Elinor Evans that behind the marble busts and sculptures imagined for ancient Greek and Roman bodies lies the flesh and blood reality of pleasure, pain and flaws in life and death across ancient Greece and Rome.

Part of Chronicles of Ancient Greece

Episode two covers Cycladic culture across Santorini, Naxos and Mykonos in the Early Bronze Age, the marble figurines, a typical day around 3000 BC, and the downfall of Cycladic culture.

Part of Chronicles of Ancient Greece

The episode travels to Crete for the Minoan civilization, its palaces, frescoes, bull-leaping rituals and maritime trade, and the myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinth, asking what caused its downfall.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

The Attalids of Pergamon, founded by the eunuch Philetaerus, are the first Greek monarchy outside the Successor Kingdoms and sponsor buildings and art celebrating them as defenders of Greek civilization against the Galatians.

Part of The Ancients

With Judith Barringer

Among the Greek world's most important religious sites, the sanctuary at Olympia arguably entered its golden age in the 5th and 4th centuries BC; Professor Judy Barringer discusses surviving art from the Temple of Zeus to Nike of Paionios.

Part of The Ancients

With Milinda Hoo

A theatre, gymnasium and colonnaded courtyard houses are hallmarks of an Ancient Greek city, found in Ai Khanum in present-day Afghanistan; Milinda Hoo takes Tristan through the structures, and part two asks whether it can count as a Greek city.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit

With Islam Issa

Islam Issa, professor at Birmingham City University, explains how Alexandria went from a vision in Alexander the Great's mind to a global capital of knowledge, with its Lighthouse and Great Library.

Part of Spartan History Podcast

The episode describes the predominant Bronze Age Greek civilisation behind Agamemnon, a Mycenaean or Homeric Achaean, covering architecture, religious and burial practices before his doomed return from Troy.

Part of Kings and Generals

The Minoans of Crete build palaces at Knossos and Phaistos, dominate Aegean sea trade, inspire the myth of King Minos and the Labyrinth, and leave behind the mysteries of Linear A.

Part of The Ancients

With Andrew Erskine

Erected in celebration after the people of Rhodes defended the island against Alexander the Great's successors in 304 BC, the 108ft statue of Helios stood for only 50 years; Tristan and Professor Andrew Erskine delve into its legacy.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit

With Steve Kershaw

Classical historian Steve Kershaw joins Dan to explore how the Acropolis, with its festivals honouring Athena and the Parthenon, became a symbol of democracy, power and devotion, and how Lord Elgin sent huge chunks to Britain.

Part of The Ancients

With Judith Barringer

Ancient Olympia's importance stretched far beyond being the birthplace of its namesake sporting festival; Professor Judy Barringer shines a light on Olympia's early history, known about thanks to both an extraordinary amount of surviving archaeology and vital ancient literary accounts.

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The episode reads real 1-star TripAdvisor reviews of the Parthenon and explains how accurate they are, asking whether the Acropolis is full of old people and whether this 'ugly' place is really a tourist trap.

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The first episode on looted Greek antiquities, spanning antiquity to modern times, covers the Parthenon, Athena's statues on the Acropolis, the Temple of Zeus, Delphi, Delos, and the 'St. Mark's horses' in Venice.

Part of Garner's Greek Mythology

Greek pottery carries unexpected themes about how gods and heroes are depicted, including the strange effigies of the god Hermes, presented here unlike any Hermes met before.

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The final episode on looted Greek antiquities describes helping repatriate a Greek artifact, how Americans looted Cyprus, enchanted Thessalonica statues, and the smuggling network of museums and dealers involved.

Part of Garner's Greek Mythology

Hephaistos, known to the Romans as Vulcan but to the ancient Greeks as the fire-god, turned his disability into a genius that wowed gods and men, his workshops full of robots called automatons, while Zeus called on him for thunderbolts.

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio)

The Ionic frieze and its evolution from a decorative band to storyboard, then the many similarities between the Parthenon frieze and the Apadana reliefs, the Parthenon and Apadana, the Acropolis and Persepolis, and Athens and the Persian empire.

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The second episode on looted Greek antiquities, spanning antiquity to modern times, covers the Parthenon and Elgin, the 'Venus de Milo,' Nike of Samothrace, the Temple of Aphaia in Aegina, and the Temple of Apollo Epicurius, Greece's first UNESCO site.

Part of Garner's Greek Mythology

The Muses, nine goddesses and daughters of Zeus, lit the fire behind every masterpiece 3,000 years ago and inspired artists and scientists alike; Pythagoras, the father of mathematics, credited them with many of his innovations.

Part of Garner's Greek Mythology

Pygmalion, King of Cyprus, carved a statue of a beautiful woman and prayed to Aphrodite for a woman as beautiful, but instead the goddess breathed life into the statue itself, which stepped off its base and into his arms.

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio)

A lekythos at the Art Institute of Chicago reflects the refined aesthetic of late Archaic and Classical Athens, alongside Exekias's black-figure amphora The Suicide of Ajax in Boulogne-sur-Mer.

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio)

Ionian Greek artists carried ideas between Persia and Greece; the transitional Harpy Tomb at Xanthos in Lycia sits alongside the Persian sites of Susa and Persepolis in tracing that exchange.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Christopher asks what Epaminondas of Thebes looked like, noting the strangeness that statues or busts of the general have not been found, and wondering whether that traces back to Alexander razing Thebes to the ground.

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio)

An Orientalizing period pyxis at the Art Institute of Chicago, with Near Eastern influence on developing Greek civilization, the strategic importance of Corinth, the Temple of Artemis at Corfu and the famed Lion's Gate of ancient Mycenae.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

In April 1900 Greek sponge divers find a 2,000 year old wreck off Antikythera, and a century of expeditions yields bronze statues, glassware, and the Antikythera Mechanism, the world's oldest surviving analog computer.

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio)

The Gorgon Medusa's roots and evolution appear in the Bronze Age Minoan Snake Goddesses, the Polyphemus Amphora, the Nessos Amphora, and the Temple of Artemis at Corfu.

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio)

The history, artistry and mythology of the Hellenistic Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles, through Hesiod and Pliny the Elder, the Colonna Venus, the Venus de' Medici, the Aphrodite Braschi and the misnomer of the Roman copy.

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio)

A marble youth from ancient Athens, the so-called Metropolitan Kouros of about 590 to 580 BC, shows how the early Greek kouros type borrowed directly from Egyptian statuary.

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio)

The origin, construction and sordid history of the Parthenon frieze, and a new imperial Athens that seeks to model herself, her Periclean Acropolis and the frieze after her once-formidable enemy, Persia.

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio)

Ancient poets Hesiod and Ovid supply the Gorgon Medusa's lineage and curse, and her children Pegasus and Chrysaor, alongside Perseus, Poseidon, Athena, Pindar and the Theogony.

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio)

The fish plate, an often-overlooked curiosity among ancient Greek ceramics, and the 4th century BC appetite for fish that blossomed as a culture phenomenon, an art form and an obsession rich with sexual innuendos and double-meanings.

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio)

Praxiteles sculpted Apollo Sauroktonos the Lizard Slayer, with later marble and bronze copies housed in the Vatican, the Louvre and elsewhere, its hidden meaning a struggle between Apollo and the serpent Python.

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio)

Artwork from the Orientalizing and Archaic periods and the climate that gave rise to Greek sculpture, with Greece's contact with Egypt during the Saite Dynasty, the Greek colony of Naukratis and Egyptian and Near Eastern influences.

Part of Echoes of History · History Hit for Assassin's Creed; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Holly Nielsen, Benjamin Hall

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast · The three centuries between Alexander and Actium

Part of New Books in Ancient History · Scholars on their new books, interviewed by a peer; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Adrienne Mayor

Part of Tides of History · Patrick Wyman's survey of the deep past; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of The Greek Myth Files · A podcast on all things Greek myth, scripted and narrated

Part of Myth Madness: A Mythology Podcast · Myths from around the world; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio) · Art and culture of the ancient Mediterranean; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio) · Art and culture of the ancient Mediterranean; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Ancient Art Podcast (audio) · Art and culture of the ancient Mediterranean; only the Greek episodes are indexed