The polis

Mark Selleck works through the archaic and classical centuries in roughly forty minutes an episode, stopping to say which ancient author a claim comes from. A hundred and seven numbered episodes reach the Ionian War.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

The years 411 and 410 BC: the final treaty between Sparta and Tissaphernes, Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Thesmophoriazusai, Athens in civil war for the first time in nearly a century as the 400 overthrow the democracy, and factionalism bringing them down.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book II builds on Book I's link of virtue and happiness, asking how children are educated toward virtue and instilled with a sense of it, centring on judging the pleasure and pain that motivate behaviour.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book III opens with natural cataclysms and the emergence of early human communities, and turns to concord between the extremes of pain and pleasure and reason, education, proportion and a common sense of virtue among citizens.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

The years 426 and 425 BC: Athenian politics dominated by the demagogue Kleon, his feud with Aristophanes in The Acharnians and The Knights, the battles of Pylos and Sphakteria, and the brutal conclusion to the Korkyraean civil war.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book IV has the Athenian, Clinias and Megillus discuss virtuous leadership for the new colony's establishment, where the Athenian holds God, defined in Book X as Reason and the universe's origin, to be the measure of all.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

The Statesman's Visitor from Elea likens statesmen to herdsmen directing followers' souls, discussed alongside Robert Kennedy's 1966 Ripple of Hope speech and whether any natural separation exists between ruler and ruled.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski turns from Plato's Republic to Aristotle's Politics, covering assumptions about government and how revolutions, demagogues and dissension can undermine democracies, oligarchies and tyrannies.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Plato's Pod begins its series on the Laws with Book X's cosmology, where the unnamed Athenian argues the immaterial soul is older than physical matter and therefore the primary cause of all motion.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Johnathan Bi

Deacon Harrison Garlick, the Athenian Stranger, and Johnathan Bi open the Gorgias, where an inquiry into rhetoric between Socrates and Gorgias erupts into a war for the soul of Athens.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

The final meeting on the Laws covers Book XII's Nocturnal Council, guarding the virtue of Magnesia's citizens and leaders, and revisits Book X's claim that Reason sits at the very centre of the universe.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Wrongly convicted and facing execution in two days, Socrates tells Crito in Plato's dialogue that it is not right to take the laws into his own hands after benefiting from Athenian society for seventy years.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book VI has the Athenian, Clinias and Megillus design a mixed democratic and monarchical government for Magnesia, with every citizen choosing the Guardians of the Laws through rigorous vetting while Crete oversees the new colony's founding.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

In Book IX the Athenian, Clinias and Megillus address administering justice for evil acts in Crete's new colony, proposing reasoned preambles to laws and a doctor's treatment by education, with a death penalty warranted in certain cases.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Socrates prescribes number and calculation as the philosopher's first order of knowledge in the Republic, followed by geometry and astronomy, distinguishing the philosopher's reason from the Guardians' restricted, visible knowledge.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book I of the Laws argues for a constitution cultivating virtue in a new colony's citizens, unlike Crete's war-focussed constitution and the laws of Sparta, building on Book X's presentation of the universe's soul and Reason.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Passages 412(b) to 445(e) of the Republic cover Socrates, Adeimantus and Glaucon on the guardians and auxiliaries who protect the city, then the four virtues sought first in the city and then in the soul.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Season two opens on the Republic's allegory of the cave, simile of the sun, nature of the good and divided line at 502(d) to 521(b), recalling the question raised in the Theaetetus, whether man is the measure of all.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book VII of the Laws has the Athenian, Clinias and Megillus discuss raising Magnesia's children, from the harmony of laws with customs to how appreciating number and shape can reveal collective potential in the universe.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Socrates's claim that cities have no rest from evils until philosophers rule is examined alongside the guardians' founding myth, or noble lie, and how the soul finds knowledge of an eternal form like beauty.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book II of the Republic has Glaucon challenge Socrates to define justice without reference to outcomes, building a theoretical city and asking whether the Ring of Gyges would tempt anyone toward injustice.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Justin Brophy

Deacon Harrison Garlick and Fr. Justin Brophy finish Plato's Apology, discussing Socrates' defense at his trial, his thoughts on death and virtue, and the influence of Saint Justin Martyr.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Karl Schudt

Deacon Harrison Garlick welcomes Dr. Karl Schudt to discuss Book 3 of the Iliad, the story of Helen and Paris, Trojan politics, and the meaning of guest-friendship.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

The final session on the Republic examines Socrates's proof of the soul's immortality and the myth of Er, asking whether justice originates in the soul before the city and whether time is cyclic.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

The second half of Book I has the Athenian, Clinias and Megillus conclude that mastering pain and pleasure through self control and courage equips Magnesia's citizens both to govern and be governed.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

The second half of Book X sets out reason as the primary cause of the universe, and debates the death penalty for a citizen who, after every attempt at explanation and reconciliation, refuses to acknowledge reason as a god.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book XII of the Laws has the Athenian, Clinias and Megillus propose scrutineers who review but do not legislate, to oversee Magnesia's Guardians of the Laws and guard the colony against foreign influence.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book XI shifts tone from Book X to the Athenian's thirty-three laws on trade and property in Magnesia, including a harsh penalty letting any passer-by over thirty beat a seller who quotes two prices in a day.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

In Plato's Statesman the Visitor from Elea equates ruling with fabric-weaving, measuring the fabric to its mean between extremes, discussed alongside a legislator's vow that hate will lose.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski completes Plato's Republic, covering equality for women, communal child-rearing, the Allegory of the Cave, and how governments fall apart, and the Myth of Er.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski follows Socrates through Plato's Republic as government grows from its earliest organization into a state of luxury, with a tangent on the Laws of Lycurgus that influenced Plato and Aristotle.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Pavlos Papadopoulos

Deacon Harrison Garlick and Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos discuss Plato's Crito, set in Socrates' prison cell, exploring his refusal to escape and his debt of gratitude to Athens.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

Deacon Harrison Garlick, Dr. Frank Grabowski, and Thomas Lackey close Aeschylus' Oresteia with the second half of The Eumenides, where Athena conducts the trial of Orestes at the Areopagus, the Crag of Ares.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

In Book V the unnamed Athenian alone addresses Clinias and Megillus on the soul as master over the body, moderating pains and pleasures, and ends with the proposal that 5,040 is the ideal population of a community.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Concluding the Statesman, the Visitor from Elea describes a ruler who harmonizes courage and temperance, and the episode asks whether such a ruler should be constrained by older laws, alongside Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

Prof. Paul Cartledge on the Spartan mirage: education, political structure and military, the unique status of Spartan women, and later uses of Sparta, from the movie 300 to the French Revolution and North America.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

With Michael Fitzpatrick

James Myers and Michael Fitzpatrick relate the Republic, the Laws, the Statesman and the Meno to leadership, education, wealth and social cohesion in a technologically powered world of 8 billion people, seeking a path to the common good.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski reaches the Classical Age of Greece, sketching the role of Homer's epics in Greek culture: the self-identity of Athens and Sparta, the debt of tragedy to epic, philosophers' reactions and the development of myth into history.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

With Michael Fitzpatrick

Michael Fitzpatrick and the group conclude discussing Plato's Seventh Letter, where Plato never published his opinions so a soul's own thoughts must be born afresh, leaving the Meno's question of whether virtue can be taught unanswered.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Plato's Letters VI and VIII are read as a trilogy with Letter VII, where a good king is the servant of the laws and justice, and Letter VI calls on the Academy to befriend a king who respects reason.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Rhetoric as an art for the law courts and politics, the Sophists as lecturers traveling from city to city, the theories of Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Hippias, Prodicus and Thrasymachus, and synopses of four of Plato's dialogues.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

Deacon Harrison Garlick, Dr. Frank Grabowski, and Thomas Lackey open The Eumenides, the third play of Aeschylus' Oresteia, tracing justice's shift away from the familial blood avenger.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski surveys Greek history from prehistory through the Classical period, with an overview of Greek culture and a focus on Classical Athens.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

With Walter Bobbie, Bill Youmans

Broadway performers Walter Bobbie and Bill Youmans perform Plato's Crito, where Socrates awaits execution and decides against escaping the city, since that would be ungrateful to the city whose benefits he has enjoyed.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Life for the elderly, the liminal stage between life and death, funeral and burial rituals, the archaeology of the Kerameikos, the demosion sema and epitaphios logos in Athenian democracy, and funerary monuments from archaic to Hellenistic.

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 Spartan History Podcast

With Paul Cartledge

Professor Paul Cartledge closes the Lycurgan Sparta arc with a summary of the archaic period's societal, political and religious reforms, in a conversation that at certain points got extremely academic and specific.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski traces the evolution of Greek national identity from Herodotus and the Greco-Persian War through Hellenism, informed by the Trojan War myths retold by Apollodorus.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Plato's best known Seventh Letter recounts his experience teaching the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse and the philosophically minded Dion, with Plato succeeding with Dion and failing with Dionysius, a warning against rulers who do not practise philosophy.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

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.

Part of Our Fake History

Some ancient sources claim the Spartans were incorruptible, never took bribes and equally divided land among the elite Spartiates, while the city's most famous poet may not even have been from Sparta.

Part of Spartan History Podcast

With Paul Rahe

Professor Paul Rahe, whose book The Spartan Regime focuses on the archaic formation of Spartan institutions, goes briefly back to the Bronze Age, then through the Dark Age and into the early Dorian migration into Laconia.

Part of Young Heretics

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.

Part of Ad Navseam

Socrates describes an inner daimon that only seeks to drive him away from something, a voice the guys compare to the apostle Paul's conscience in Romans, within Plato's Apology.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Zena Hitz

Dr. Zena Hitz of St. John's College joins Dcn. Harrison Garlick to discuss The Clouds by Aristophanes, its critique of Athenian society, and its questions about education and piety.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

How Sparta worked: the diarchy, gerousia, apella and ephors, the so-called Lykourgan land reform, helots, perioikoi and Spartan women, the stages of the agoge, and why the system ultimately failed.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

The historian Thoukydides, the Father of Scientific History, then Athenian politics under Perikles: his clash with the conservative Thoukydides, and the attacks on him and his associates Pheidias, Aspasia and Anaxagoras.

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 Ad Navseam

In 415 BC, as Nicias opposes it, Alcibiades persuades Athens to invade Sicily, then faces accusations after the herms are mutilated and maybe even a drunken satire of sacred mysteries performed.

Part of Ad Navseam

The episode lays groundwork for Socrates' defence speech, asking how the reign of the 30 tyrants and his connections to great men like Pericles influenced it, and what the elenchus did for ethical teaching.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Peisistratos and his sons Hippias and Hipparchos: warfare, trickery and political marriages, public works, the Greater Panathenaia and Dionysia, and the end through Hipparchos' assassination, Hippias' expulsion and the ascendency of Kleisthenes.

Part of The Ancients

With Paul Cartledge

Was Athens truly the birthplace of democracy, and who gave a voice to the people? Tristan chats to Professor Paul Cartledge about the radical statesman Cleisthenes and ancient forms of political exclusion and ostracism.

Part of The Rest Is History

Tom and Dominic examine Oedipus, the mythic king of Thebes who murdered his father and unwittingly married his mother, asking whether the tragedy was based on a real event and noting its later influence on Freud's reading of the subconscious.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

With Owen Rees, Roel Konijnendijk

The team looks at Ancient Warfare Magazine IX.2, The ascendancy of Thebes, on how Thebes had finally ascended to its place of power and control in the Hellenic world, needing only to learn from the mistakes that Sparta had made.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Clif Mark joins Graham Culbertson of the Everyday Anarchism podcast to discuss Athenian democracy, Plato, anarchism and how modern meritocratic education fails, in this crossover episode.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With David M. Pritchard

David Pritchard, Associate Professor of Greek History at the University of Queensland, edits The Athenian Funeral Oration: After Nicole Loraux, and researches the symbiosis between war, democracy and culture in classical Athens.

Part of Ad Navseam

Lysias, a resident alien who prospered as a speechwriter, impeaches the tyrant Eratosthenes to get justice for his murdered brother Polemarchus after Sparta's regime followed the Peloponnesian War.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

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.

Part of Epic Greek History

The episode traces the beginnings of the Greek polis and the military developments that shaped it, describing the environment where Greek drama, architecture and philosophy reached their peak.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

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

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

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

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Edward Harris

Emeritus Professor Edward Harris of the University of Durham returns to discuss how Classical Athens ran its court trials under a legal system whose principles echo in many legal systems today.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With Leah Lazar, Christy Constantakopoulou

Leah Lazar, postdoctoral researcher at Oxford's Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, and Christy Constantakopoulou examine Athens and its fifth-century subject allies, the Athenian empire Constantakopoulou traced in The Dance of the Islands.

Part of Spartan History Podcast

Cleomenes the First held the Agiad throne of Sparta from around 520 to 490 BCE, ruling with an iron fist against co-king Demaratus while the Achaemenid Persian empire loomed before the Greco-Persian wars began.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

This penultimate chapter of Plato's Republic turns to tyranny, the government form the dialogue takes up here, given the nickname Tyrone by the hosts for the occasion.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

Book V of Plato's Republic, an aside on something he glossed over earlier, holding women and children in common, and the hosts calling him the first true feminist before taking it back.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

The fourth installment on Plato's Republic finally reaches the meaning of justice, with some sympathy along the way for the warriors, who the hosts feel are getting a raw deal.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

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.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With Clare Rowan, M.E. Gkikaki

Clare Rowan, Associate Professor at the University of Warwick and principal investigator on the ERC-funded project Token Communities of the Ancient Mediterranean, and M.E. Gkikaki discuss monetiform tokens in Greek antiquity, via Aristophanes' Ekklesiazousai.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With Vincent Azoulay, Paulin Ismard

Vincent Azoulay of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Paulin Ismard of Aix-Marseille University study the restoration of democracy in Athens in 403 BC, examining the Athenian civil war through the prism of chorality.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With Carol Atack

Carol Atack, fellow and Director of Studies in Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, discusses her biography Plato: A Civic Life, the second volume in Paul Cartledge's Great Lives of the Ancient World series.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

Thucydides recorded, as best he could, the funeral oration of Pericles, among the greatest rulers of Athens, give or take, played here in full before the hosts discuss it.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

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.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

In Book VIII of Plato's Republic, Socrates traces how an Aristocracy degrades into weaker forms of government, with democracy ranked well below the top by his account.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Early Athens from its myths, Kekrops, the contest of Athena and Poseidon, Erichthonios, Theseus and Kodras, to oligarchy after the monarchy, the crises of the late 7th century BC, Kylon's failed tyranny attempt and Drakon's constitution.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Solon as sole archon, whose economic, political and legal reforms later formed the backbone of Athenian democracy, and whose moderate stance did not quiet the social and economic problems, after which factionalism set in and, ultimately, tyranny.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

How Classical Athenian democracy worked in the mid-to-late 5th century BC: Perikles' role in its radicalization, the magistracies, the ekklesia, the boule and prytaneis, the law courts and jury system, contemporary critiques, and the liturgies that paid for it.

Part of The Rest Is History

Tom and Dominic explore what 'demos' really meant to the Athenians and why women were such a crucial part of Athenian democracy, asking whether it really was the precursor to modern democracy or something entirely different.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With Scott Lawin Arcenas

Scott Lawin Arcenas, associate professor of history and classics at the University of Montana, examines political violence in Greek city-states between 500 and 301 BCE, the stasis his new book quantifies and qualifies.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

Deacon Harrison Garlick, Dr. Frank Grabowski, and Thomas Lackey discuss Book 2 of the Odyssey, where Telemachus, inspired by Athena, addresses the assembly of Ithaca and condemns the suitors.

Part of Ancient Greece: Myth, Art, War

Dr Gillian Shepherd looks at Athenian democracy in the 5th century BC, tracing how structures and objects found in the Athenian agora evidence its workings after the fall of the Peisistratid tyranny.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Part two on the archaic poets: Mytilene in the late 7th and early 6th centuries BC, where Alkaios, Sappho, tyranny and Pittakos, one of the so-called Seven Sages, meet, and the lawgiver as a response in many city-states.

Part of The Ancients

With Michael Scott

Themistocles rose from obscurity to help build one of the greatest naval powers in history and defeat Persia's navy, then his story ends in exile serving the empire he once defeated; Tristan Hughes and Michael Scott trace rise and fall.

Part of The Ancients

With Andrew Bayliss

Considered one of Athens' biggest rivals, Sparta has longstanding mythological origins, from rumoured descendants of Heracles to the mythical lawmaker Lycurgus; Tristan and Dr Andrew Bayliss ask what archaeological evidence exists for how, and by whom, Sparta was founded.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Edward Harris

Emeritus Professor Edward Harris of Durham University explains how Classical Athens became an early adopter of the rule of law.

Part of Alexandria: A Hellenistic World Podcast

In 341 BCE the Athenians Antiphanes and Charias have promised to vote against any war with Macedon, until Demosthenes, the greatest orator of Greece, proves persuasive.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Kleisthenes defeats the Spartan-backed Isagoras and overhauls the constitution: the boule and ekklesia, Attika gerrymandered into new tribes, a reorganized military, a first diplomatic folly with Persia, and the threat of war with Thebes, Korinth, Sparta, Chalcis and Aigina.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Plato's characters plan the laws for a new state called Magnesia, starting in Book 4, covering marriage rules, a nocturnal council, and the argument that everyone has to believe in gods.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With James Romm

James Romm, the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College, discusses his biography Demosthenes: Democracy's Defender, part of Yale University Press's Ancient Lives series, drawing on speeches by Demosthenes and Aeschines.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

Deacon Garlick and Dr. Grabowski discuss Plato's Hipparchus, a short, strange, somewhat forgotten dialogue whose question, what is the love of gain, becomes an examination of the democratic soul.

Part of History Unplugged Podcast

With Terry Bourcious

For almost two centuries, Athens filled most public offices and the Council of 500 by lottery, a reform from 508 BC meant to curb aristocratic control; guest Terry Bourcious argues modern democracies should adopt this sortition model too.

Part of Greeced Lightning

Sara and Sam continue their Age of Empires 2 campaign into the Persian War, covering ostracism procedures, wily old Themistocles, and Sara's waning tolerance for podcasting while pregnant.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates, suspected by Athenians of plotting to overthrow democracy, argues that thinking politics turns people into a paranoid mob, raising how the political mindset differs from the philosophical mindset and whether he is an enemy of the state.

Part of Ancient Greece: Myth, Art, War

Dr Gillian Shepherd outlines the Peloponnesian War of 431 to 404 BC between Athens, Sparta and their allies, centred on the statesman Perikles and the historian Thucydides who recorded the conflict.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

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.

Part of In Our Time

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

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Jonathan Lear's Open Minded essays connect Plato's Republic and Symposium to psychoanalysis, comparing Socrates' questioning to psychotherapy and asking whether Plato's analogy between mind and state in the Republic truly holds.

Part of Epic Greek History

The episode covers Pisistratus seizing power twice and losing it before establishing an autocratic regime in Athens that lasted more than thirty-five years and improved city infrastructure.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Emily Katz Anhalt

Emily Katz Anhalt's Embattled (Redwood Press, 2021) reads Homer's Iliad and Odyssey alongside Aeschylus's Oresteia and Sophocles's Antigone as warnings against tyranny.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates analyzes the four kinds of regime in the Greek world and the personality each one makes, spirited and proud under Sparta, cheap under oligarchy, chilled out under democracy until a tyrant takes over, in book 8 of Plato's Republic.

Part of Ancient Greece: Myth, Art, War

Dr Gillian Shepherd traces Athens from the benevolent rule of the tyrant Peisistratos through the fall of his dynasty to democracy, and on to the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea against the invading Persians.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

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.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

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.

Part of Epic Greek History

The episode defines the Greek term tyrannos as an autocrat who seized power by overthrowing an existing regime, tracing the rise of such rulers across the seventh and sixth centuries BCE.

Part of HistoryExtra podcast

With Paul Cartledge

Historian Paul Cartledge explores the Athenian statesman Pericles, renowned for promoting democracy, championing the arts and shaping the Athenian empire, though his military mistakes and eccentricity left him with a mixed reputation.

Part of Ancient History Fangirl

Aspasia, long-term partner of the Athenian statesman Pericles and darling of the philosophical set, survived the plague of Athens and threw the best parties for a hundred miles.

Part of Epic Greek History

The episode covers the contest for power after the tyrant Hippias was expelled, between Isagoras, a conservative aristocrat who favored a narrow oligarchy, and Cleisthenes of the Alcmaeonid clan, who drew support from the people by proposing radical democratic reforms.

Part of In Our Time

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.

Part of In Our Time

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.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Plato's Laws argues that a just state's laws should aim at making people virtuous, with each law preceded by a rational prelude persuading people to obey it.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit

With Paul Cartledge

Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek Culture Emeritus at Cambridge and author of 'Democracy: A Life', discusses democracy, the concept the episode calls the foundation stone of political culture, drawn from the back catalogue.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Jeffrey Rusten

Dr Jeffrey Rusten, Professor at Cornell University, discusses how Athens, though not the first major city-state in Greece, rose to become the most prominent one during the Classical period.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Tyranny in the 7th and 6th centuries BC through four Peloponnesian case studies: Pheidon of Argos, Kypselos and Periandros of Korinth, Kleisthenes of Sikyon, and Theogenes of Megara, the unsuccessful attempt.

Part of Epic Greek History

Athens at the start of the 6th century BCE, where Draco's law code did nothing for the crushing debt of the poor, and the Athenians gave Solon full powers to solve the economic crisis and reorganize the state.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Marcus Gibson

Marcus Gibson discusses Books VIII and IX of Plato's Republic, asking whether America today counts as democratic or oligarchic and whether democracies drift toward tyranny.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Philip Davies

Dr Philip Davies of the University of Nottingham explains how Classical Sparta was governed by a diarchy, two kings who ruled together alongside a citizen body that passed its laws.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

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

Part of The Ancients

With Amelia Brown

Occupied since around 3000 BC, Corinth's transition from a pagan, Greco-Roman state to a Christian one is tracked through surviving evidence; Dr Amelia Brown outlines the city's administration and Pausanias's account, a Greek travel writer of the second century AD.

This 2006 short IMAX documentary from MacGillivray Freeman Films is set across the Greek Isles and covers the Minoan eruption, the Parthenon, philosophy, theatre, democracy and the Olympics.

Part of The Ancients

With Armand D’Angour

It is often thought the ancient Greeks were devout in tradition and strict in their ways; Tristan and Dr Armand D'Angour explore Ancient Greek innovation and their perception of 'new' across the arts, philosophy and the model state.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

The demos and the oikos in the late Dark Age, their unification through synoikismos into the polis, and later Greek philosophical thought on what it meant to live in a polis.

Part of Spartan History Podcast

A biography of Lycurgus, a liminal figure between the dark and archaic ages whose status even an early Delphic oracle doubted, with his achievements as lawmaker and an attempt to debunk the more outlandish events of his legend.

Part of Spartan History Podcast

Sparta's 6th and 7th century government blended Monarchic, Aristocratic and Democratic rule: kings descended from Heracles, a council of elders, a citizen assembly for ratification, and five annually elected Ephors drawn from the Demos.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates explains his proposal for philosopher kings, smart, capable and virtuous rulers, and argues that democracies never produce them, in this reading of books 5 and 6 of Plato's Republic.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

Greek colonisation of Sicily goes on, with colonies founding their own, tyrants emerging as in the mother cities, and Carthage leading the opposition until it secures much of its trade interests by the end of the 6th century.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

After Mantinea Argos restores democracy, Nicias and Alcibiades unite to exile Hyperbolus in the final use of ostracism, and Athens conquers neutral Melos after the Melian Dialogue and executes its male citizens.

Part of In Our Time

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.

Part of In Our Time

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.

Part of The Classics Podcast

With Peter Liddel

Peter Liddel discusses the importance of Attic Inscriptions to understanding this period of ancient Greek history, in conversation with James Renshaw for the Ancient History A Level syllabus.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

The Athenian tradition of funeral processions for the war dead and the oration Pericles gives at the end of the first year, recorded in full by Thucydides and meant to convince Athenians the struggle was worth continuing.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

Athens sends more forces to besiege Potidaea amid diplomacy in Thrace and Macedon, Sparta sends a mission toward Thrace and Persia, and Pericles faces mounting discontent as the war party gains influence.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

After Pericles, new figures such as the demagogue Cleon rise in Athens, Mytilene leads a revolt on Lesbos and seeks Peloponnesian help, and Athens reaches a chilling decision after the revolt fails.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

The fall of the Sicilian Expedition, from the eclipse and broken fleet to the collapse at the Asinaris River, asking whether Nicias, democracy, overreach, logistics or contingency best explains it.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

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.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

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.

Part of In Our Time

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

Part of WINNOW: A Couple’s Close Reading of the Iliad and Odyssey

Book 2 of the Odyssey follows Telemachus calling the elders and suitors together in Ithaca as Penelope's scheme comes out, asking why Athena favors him so.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Robert C. Bartlett

Robert Bartlett discusses translating Aristophanes' The Acharnians and The Knights alongside Aristotle's The Art of Rhetoric, on how public speech can turn demagogic.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

Ephialtes and his junior Pericles turn the Athenians against Cimon and have him ostracized, the Areopagus sees its powers severely reduced in favour of the council of 500 and the assembly, and Ephialtes falls to political violence.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

Sicily from the Greco-Persian Wars to 427 BCE: the liberation of Syracuse, the tyranny of Hieron and the counsel of Simonides, democratic revival, and the ambitions of Ducetius, setting the board for the later expedition.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

Alcibiades uses a small force to intimidate the Peloponnese without breaking the peace, King Aegis makes a truce with two Argive generals that nearly costs him everything, and both sides bend festivals and omens.

Part of Ancient History Hound

With Michael Furman

In the 4th century BCE Thessaly moved from fractured to unified under Jason of Pherae, who became a prominent figure in Greece and earned the admiration of Xenophon before it all ended abruptly.

Part of The History of Ancient Greece

Oligarchia and aristokratia replacing the waning basileis, the divide between nobles and commoners brought on by a spike in population, and Hesiod's Works and Days as life in the emerging polis seen by an ordinary citizen.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

A recap from Pylos to the Peace of Nicias, then Corinth and Elis weighing a break from Sparta for the Argive League, partly shaped by their governments, and secret negotiations between Athens and Sparta.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

Siege lines rise around Syracuse until Gylippus arrives and a counterwall blocks them, Lamachus dies, and Nicias writes home that Athens must withdraw entirely or reinforce massively.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Demetra Kasimis

Plato's Republic imagines building an ideal city from scratch almost 2,400 years ago, a hypothetical posed to understand justice, human behavior and what a more just society would take.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

The Peace of Nicias unravels: Corinth encourages Argos to form a rival bloc, Sparta allies with Boeotia, and Alcibiades deceives Spartan delegates to win an alliance of Athens with Argos, Elis and Mantinea.

Part of Casting Through Ancient Greece

Segesta seeks help and Athens debates: Nicias warns against overreach, Alcibiades promises easy conquest, and demands meant to deter the assembly backfire, growing the expedition from 60 ships to 130 triremes and 5,000 hoplites.

Part of Tides of History

The episode traces classical Athens' wealth to democracy, law and institutions that made people feel safe doing business, beyond the silver lodes of Attica and access to the sea.

Part of Tides of History

The episode describes Macedonia as a semi-barbarian backwater on the fringes of the Greek world for most of ancient Greek history, until the rise of King Philip II began to change that very quickly.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Clif Mark asks why a reasonable, well-intentioned Athenian might have voted to kill the 70-year-old Socrates, why politics might get interested in you, and what separates morality tales from philosophy tales.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast · The Great Books read in seasons; the Homer, tragedy and Plato seasons are indexed

With Justin Brophy

Part of The History of Ancient Greece · The long chronological run, from the Stone Age forward

Part of The History of Ancient Greece · The long chronological run, from the Stone Age forward

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

With Jennifer T. Roberts

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know · Three teachers on the classical world; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified · Conversations that take in Greece and the wider ancient world

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas · Johanna Hanink talks with fellow Hellenists about their latest work

With John Ma

Part of Epic Greek History · From Mycenaean kings through the Persian invasions, one full and one short episode a month

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know · Three teachers on the classical world; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With James Romm

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified · Conversations that take in Greece and the wider ancient world

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified · Conversations that take in Greece and the wider ancient world

Part of In Our Time · The BBC seminar format; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of History Unplugged Podcast · Scott Rank's call-in show and expert interviews; only the Greek episodes are indexed

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

With Demetra Kasimis

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

With Josiah Ober

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast · Panel discussions from Ancient Warfare Magazine; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Owen Rees

Part of The History of Ancient Greece · The long chronological run, from the Stone Age forward

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Owen Rees