Ancient Greece: Myth, Art, War

After a curious gap of over 30 years, the Athenians finally started to rebuild on the Acropolis following the Persian sack of 480 BC. In this lecture Dr Gillian Shepherd examines the extravagant programme of grand buildings – most famously the Parthenon – on the Acropolis and looks at some of the issues surrounding the interpretation of the buildings and their decoration. Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Sanctuaries were the context for many of the most impressive buildings and sculptures produced by the ancient Greeks. In this lecture Dr Gillian Shepherd looks at the basic types of sanctuary and temple design, and then focuses on one of the most famous of all Greek sanctuaries, that of Zeus Olympios at Olympia – home to the Olympic games, but also the site of lavish temples, treasuries and sculpture. Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Pottery is the single biggest category of evidence we have from the classical world – there is nothing we have more of. Much of it is fragmentary coarseware, but other vases were decorated. Thousands of vases painted in the black and red figure techniques were made in Athens between the seventh and fourth centuries BC and exported all over the Greek world. In this lecture Dr Gillian Shepherd looks at the basics of Athenian vase painting: shapes, techniques and dating. Vases with scenes of myth and everyday life are invaluable sources for analysing ancient society – for example, the scenes of everyday life give us a picture of Greek activities and what perishables such as furniture and textiles looked like. But can we take these at face value? Or do they potentially offer some more idealised or restricted view of ancient Greek life and society? This examined through two categories of everyday life scene in particular: warfare and women. Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Staged not long after the disastrous defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War, the seriousness of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata would not have been lost on its audience, despite it being a comedy laden with sexual humour. In this lecture Dr Heather Sebo looks at the very real messages about the futility of war, the parlous state of Athens and the position of women in Athenian society in Aristophanes’ comedy of a sex strike orchestrated by women to bring their men to their knees… Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Sophocles’ Ajax is one of our earliest surviving Greek plays, produced in c. 440 BC. In this lecture Dr Heather Sebo examines Sophocles’ treatment of the theme of a changing world which posed new challenges and required new skills for coping – an issue only too familiar to contemporary 5th century Athenians. The ability of the adherents of the old order to cope with a new environment – or their lack of ability – is explored through the tragic figure of the hero Ajax. Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

This lecture examines the role and status of Athenian drama in Athenian society. Picking up where the last lecture (on the Peloponnesian War) left off, Dr Gillian Shepherd looks at the finale of the Sicilian Expedition, and the event that preceded it: the Melian Dialogue, which purports to recount events which just might have influenced one of the three great 5th century Athenian tragedians, Euripides, when he wrote his play The Trojan Women. This play, as well as others by Euripides and those by Aeschylos and Sophocles, were performed in the Theatre of Dionysos in Athens as part of the Great Dionysia. This was a religious festival in honour of the god Dionysos, but it was also more than that – it was an integral part of Athenian society and politics in the fifth century BC. Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Following the fall of the Peisistratid tyranny in Athens, the Athenians instituted a revolutionary new form of government: democracy. In this lecture, Dr Gillian Shepherd looks at the nature of Athenian democracy and how we think it might have functioned in the 5th century BC, including some of the structures and objects found in the Athenian agora which provide evidence for democracy at work. Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Athens in the 7th century BC seems to have been a place of social and political tensions between rich and poor. At the beginning of the 6th century, Solon emerged as an enlightened reformer, who put in place measures to improve the Athenian economy and the lot of the poor, and recorded his efforts in poetry. By 560 BC, however, Athens was moving towards a political regime common in archaic Greece: tyranny. After three attempts, Peisistratos finally gained power as tyrant of Athens. In this lecture Dr Gillian Shepherd explores this critical period in Greek history and also focuses on one of our main sources, the 5th century BC writer Herodotus, who is often awarded the title of “the father of history”. Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Did the Trojan War actually happen? What evidence do we have on – or rather in – the ground for Troy and the world of heroes, magnificent cities and rich objects which Homer describes? In this lecture Dr Gillian Shepherd looks at some of the issues in identifying “Homer’s Troy” and the glories of Late Bronze Age Greece, especially Mycenae, home of Agamemnon – much of which is indeed described by Homer. Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

In this lecture Professor Christopher Mackie recaps the culminating events of the Iliad and looks more closely at the character of Hector, his fate and death, and the role of the goddess Athena. Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

The warrior goddess Athena ranges the battlefield in Homer's Iliad, but her role differs greatly from those of mortal women in the epic. Professor Chris Mackie compares and contrasts the goddess of cunning intelligence with the mortal women of the epic. Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

This lecture outlines key aspects of the Trojan War myth, including the historical and mythological background to the war, the Judgement of Paris, the expedition to Troy and the fall of the city. It examines Homer’s treatment of gods, heroes and the city in the Iliad. Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

This lecture provides a general introduction to this subject by providing a chronological framework and basic geography of the ancient Greek world. Copyright 2013 Gillian Shepherd / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.