Starting with the period from the late Bronze Age, c. 1500 B.C.E., these lectures proceed chronologically and concentrate on the 200-year interval from 600 to 400 B.C.E., tracing the history of Classical Greece and its foundational influence on all of Western civilization.
This course introduces the world of classical Athens and Greek culture. In areas such as religion and gender, the Greeks seem alien, approaching the world in ways utterly different from ours. In politics and war, the culture seems very familiar. This course examines each of these aspects of Greek culture in an attempt to better understand how it developed as it did and why it still resonates for us today.