Ancient Greece: City and Society

Has Greek history had any impact on the modern world? Are the literature, art and architecture of the ancient Greeks still relevant centuries later? In this lecture Sarah Midford examines the enduring appeal of classical Greece and the ways in which its culture has both moulded Western society and also been manipulated by it. Copyright 2014 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

For the ancients, the consequences of defeat in war were that every man, women and child became the property of the victors, to be disposed of in whatever way they saw fit. In this lecture Dr Heather Sebo shows that the anxieties and implications of this terrible possibility were expressed on the Athenian stage, particularly in the Trojan War plays of Euripides. Copyright 2014 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

In the first of two lectures on Ancient Greek slavery, Dr Gillian Shepherd looks at two important slave systems – chattel slavery in Athens and the helots of Sparta – and how they might have come into being. Concentrating on Athenian slavery, the lecture goes on to examine some essential features of ancient Greek slavery, including sources and numbers of slaves, the work undertaken my slaves and their role in the ancient economy. Copyright 2014 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Athens was a wealthy and prosperous place in the classical period. In this lecture Dr Gillian Shepherd takes a closer look at the Athenian economy by examining the nature of coinage in ancient Greece and one major source of Athenian wealth – the silver mines of Laurion, which provided the famous “Owl” coins of Athens. Copyright 2014 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

One of the best sources of evidence for understanding an ancient society is burials. Ancient cemeteries can provide evidence for population, diet, social divisions, religious beliefs and cultural practices, and changes in funerary method can signal changes in social and cultural attitudes and priorities. However, the evidence needs to be treated carefully, since cemeteries do not necessarily provide direct reflections of ancient populations and can represent idealised social identities. In this lecture Dr Gillian Shepherd looks at patterns, shifts and changes in classical Athenian burial customs and explores their possible explanations. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

One of the preoccupations of the ancient Greeks, especially in the fifth century BC, was the idea of the barbarian “other” – people who were barbaros (ie did not speak Greek) and had customs and cultures which contrasted with the practices of the Greeks. The fifth century BC historian Herodotus was particularly interested in such “ethnography” and provides detailed accounts of other groups like the Egyptians, Scythians, the Amazons and the Persians. In this lecture Dr Rhiannon Evans looks at Herodotus’ ideas of other peoples and how in fact they might shed more light on the Greeks than the “others”. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Greek ideas of male sexuality differed from modern Western ones; rather than defining their sexual orientation one way or another, Greek men could indulge in both hetero- and homosexual relationships, although the latter seems to have been socially condoned only in the context of the relationship between an adolescent and an older man. In this lecture Dr Rhiannon Evans explores one of the great philosophical discussions of (male) love and sexuality – Plato’s Symposium, which describes a conversation between some of the leading thinkers of late fifth century Athens. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Athenian tragedies of the 5th century BC provide an extra dimension to our impressions of women and attitudes to women in ancient Greece. Here, women can be strong, powerful and commit (under provocation!) heinous crimes; the men, in comparison, often seem vain, weak and too ready to break important social codes. In this lecture Dr Heather Sebo looks at three tragic plays which revolve around women – Aeschylos’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Medea – and examines their exploration of women and their place in society. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

One of the most intriguing problems in investigating ancient Greece is reconstructing the lives of women. In the first of several lectures on women in this lecture series, Dr Heather Sebo explores some of the ideology, legislation and cultural practices surrounding and integral to the lives of women in ancient Greece. As usual, most of the evidence comes from Athens – with the added problem here that it was largely generated by men and the agency of women is hard to detect. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

In addition to the Panathenaia, Athens had another great festival: the Dionysia. This was a festival celebrated in spring in honour of the god Dionysos, with a dramatic competition as its centrepiece – going to the theatre was part of a religious festival. In this lecture Dr Heather Sebo looks at the structure of the festival, the nature of dramatic performances in Athens, and the links between the dramatic festival and Athenian society, democracy and politics. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

An essential feature of Athenian democracy was its system of litigation; here not only private cases were tried, but points of civic legislation put to the test. In this lecture Dr Gillian Shepherd looks at Athenian law courts and the legal system as well as archaeological evidence for selecting the huge juries and conducting trials, together with some other important features of Athenian life and culture as revealed by the Agora. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Over the course of the 7th and 6th centuries BC, major changes occurred in Athens which laid the foundations for the prosperous and powerful state of classical Athens. In this lecture Dr Gillian Shepherd traces some of these important developments. A critical area of the city – the agora, the public square which was the administrative and commercial heart of the Athenian state – seems to have been designated in this period and the first civic buildings erected around it. After the social tensions of the 7th century, three major political upheavals occurred in the 6th century: the reforms of the lawmaker Solon, the tyranny of Peisistratos and, at the very of the century, the rise of Athenian democracy – the subject of the next lecture. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

In this second lecture on sources for ancient Greece, Dr Gillian Shepherd looks at some of the practicalities surrounding the study of material culture (such as the dating of objects) and also at issues of survival, excavation and the methodological issues to bear in mind when assessing the significance of archaeological evidence. She goes on to describe two “success stories” where archaeological and textual evidence have been successfully combined to reconstruct two features of the Athenian navy which was so critical to Athenian prosperity: the Arsenal at Pireaus, the monumental building where the rigging for the ships was stored, and the trireme Olympias, a modern reconstruction of an ancient warship. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.