

The Foundations of Western Civilization
Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köp
Priset före rabatt är medianpriset för de senaste 90 dagarna.
Prime-medlemskap krävs
Villkor gäller
Tidsbegränsat erbjudande. Villkor gäller.
Avsnitt
S1 A1 – “Western,” “Civilization,” and “Foundations”
20 september 202332 minThese three seemingly simple words demand reflection. Where is the West? Who is Western? If civilization means cities, where do those come from? And when we look at history, how do we tell what is truly foundational from what may be merely famous? What is the difference between celebrity and distinction?Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A2 – History Begins at Sumer
20 september 202330 minBorrowing our title from a famous book by S. N. Kramer, we look at why this small slice of what is now southern Iraq became-along with Egypt-one of the two foundations of Western civilization.Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A3 – Egypt - The Gift of the Nile
20 september 202331 minAs Sumer was the gift of the Tigris and Euphrates, so Egypt-a ribbon of fertile floodplain 750 miles long but not much more than 15 miles wide-has been called "the gift of the Nile." But the differences between Egypt and Mesopotamia tell us as much as the similarities.Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A4 – The Hebrews—Small States and Big Ideas
20 september 202331 minIsrael, built by the descendants of Abraham, was one of the small states that arose after the Egyptian Empire fell (c. 700 B.C.). Unified and independent only from 1200-900 B.C., it bequeathed to the West crucial religious ideas.Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A5 – A Succession of Empires
20 september 202331 minThe peoples holding sway over the ancient Near East included the cruel Assyrians, the Medes, the Neo-Babylonians who overthrew the Assyrians around 600 B.C., and the Persians, who along with the Medes would build the largest empire the world had seen to that time.Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A6 – Wide-Ruling Agamemnon
20 september 202330 minWhy is it important for you to grasp the archaeological record of the period from 1500 - 1200 B.C. in order to understand "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" - two poems composed 500 years later?Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A7 – Dark Age and Archaic Greece
20 september 202331 minWhat unique circumstance-unknown before or since in human history-made the Greek Dark Ages so "dark"? And how do we "do" the history of a time and place that is so obscured from our view? Surprisingly, we know a good deal.Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A8 – The Greek Polis—Sparta
20 september 202330 minSpartan society was harsh and peculiar, yet many observers at the time and since have found "the Spartan way" strangely compelling. After all, they won the war against Athens, and their victory moved Plato to re-imagine Athenian society in "The Republic". What were the main features of this system, and why did the Spartans embrace it?Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A9 – The Greek Polis—Athens
20 september 202331 minLurching from crisis to crisis, the Athenians accidentally created one of the world's most freewheeling democracies—at least for adult male citizens—even as they were building an empire. How did the whole thing work, and what finally brought it down?Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A10 – Civic Culture—Architecture and Drama
20 september 202331 minCan you list the key public buildings of an ancient Greek city? How did they combine beautiful and functional forms with deep ideological meanings? What made drama (including comedy) the public art par excellence?Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A11 – The Birth of History
20 september 202331 minWhat does it mean to say that the Greeks, while certainly not the first people to reflect on the past, nonetheless "invented" history? How did Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, each in his own unforgettable way, contribute to this basic turning of the Western mind?Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A12 – From Greek Religion to Socratic Philosophy
20 september 202331 minHow did the Greeks begin moving from religious to more philosophical views of the world, and why did these views first arise in a particular part of the Greek world called Ionia? Who were the Sophists, what did they teach, and why did Socrates oppose them?Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A13 – Plato and Aristotle
20 september 202331 minThe goal of this episode is to explain why Raphael's famous painting, "The School of Athens," has Plato pointing up and Aristotle pointing down, and why both are defending and extending the work of Socrates.Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A14 – The Failure of the Polis and the Rise of Alexander
20 september 202331 minWhy couldn't thinkers as brilliant as Plato and Aristotle conceive of a non-imaginary alternative to the polis, and why does the career of one of Aristotle's students mean that in the end, such a shortcoming may not have mattered anyway?Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A15 – The Hellenistic World
20 september 202331 minThe world after Alexander was cosmopolitan, prosperous, and dominated by Greeks and Macedonians all over the Mediterranean and far out into the old Persian Empire. Literature, science, and new philosophies flourished.Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A16 – The Rise of Rome
20 september 202331 minThis episode is about the foundations on which Roman history rests, including the geography of Italy and the two centuries or so of monarchical rule—ending, tradition says, in 509 B.C.—that the republic overthrew.Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A17 – The Roman Republic—Government and Politics
20 september 202330 minWhat does it mean to speak of the "constitution" of the Roman republic? What are the essential offices, procedures, and ideals involved, and how did the whole thing really work?Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A18 – Roman Imperialism
20 september 202330 minBy the time the republic found that it didn't merely possess but was an empire, Roman rule extended from the Atlantic to Mesopotamia, and from the North Sea to the Sahara Desert. How and why did this happen?Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A19 – The Culture of the Roman Republic
20 september 202330 minThe Romans "did" more than war and politics. They created a distinctive culture that flowered in magnificent lyric and epic poetry, assimilated profound Greek influences, and gave us Cicero as Rome's greatest booster and toughest critic.Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A20 – Rome—From Republic to Empire
20 september 202330 minThe 200 often-turbulent years between the murdered reformers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus and the rise of Octavian saw the old Roman system drown amid overwhelming temptations and tensions brought on by Rome's very conquests.Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A21 – The Pax Romana
20 september 202331 minWhen Octavian became Augustus princeps—"First Citizen"—in 31 B.C., he was inaugurating a 200-year period of security, prosperity, and wise rule that Tacitus would nonetheless wryly label "a desert [that we] called peace." Was Tacitus right?Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A22 – Rome's Golden and Silver Ages
20 september 202331 minTo understand how culturally creative and important the principate was, you need only reflect that what today strikes the popular imagination as quintessentially "Roman" is a product of this period (republican Rome was a city of wood).Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A23 – Jesus and the New Testament
20 september 202331 minNo well-informed observer in the time of Augustus and his successors would have predicted that a world-changing movement would arise in a small, poor, and insignificant region of Palestine. But that is what happened.Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A24 – The Emergence of a Christian Church
20 september 202331 minThe word "church" (ekklesia) occurs only twice in only one of the Gospels (Matthew). Yet Paul, whose letters predate the Gospels, uses the word routinely. This intriguing fact is your gateway to the fascinating history of early Christianity.Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köpS1 A25 – Late Antiquity—Crisis and Response
20 september 202331 minFor 100 years after the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180, the Romans put up almost no great public structures—a sign of severe trouble. What lay behind this crisis, and how did Diocletian (who became emperor in 284) and his successor Constantine successfully respond?Kostnadsfri provperiod på The Great Courses Signature Collection eller köp
Detaljer
Mer information
Undertexter
- Inga tillgänglig
Producenter
- The Great Courses
Rollbesättning
- Thomas F. X. Noble
Studio
- The Great Courses
Genom att klicka på Spela upp godkänner du våra användarvillkor.