Archive

Posted on February 19th, 2022 in Courses, Upcoming by Elizabeth W. Thill

You’ve probably heard the axiom “Never meet your heroes.” In Ancient Greece, the phrase was closer to “Never meet your heroes, because they will straight up get you killed, if they don’t casually kill you themselves.” Although Ancient Greek gave the world the word “hero,” their definition of the word was pretty far from our …

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Posted on February 17th, 2022 in Courses, Upcoming by Elizabeth W. Thill

Benjamin Franklin once said “[I]n this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Since our program already had a course on ancient death, we were inspired to add a course about ancient taxes…and all other things money related in Ancient Greece and Rome. And there’s a lot of things money …

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Posted on February 12th, 2022 in Courses, Upcoming by Elizabeth W. Thill

Have you ever wondered what the lives of women were like in the ancient world? Mythology is full of extraordinary women, and, statistically, 50% of every human who lived in ancient times was a woman. Yet finding ancient women can be difficult, given that they were excluded from many of the activities, big and small, …

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Posted on February 3rd, 2022 in Courses, Upcoming by Elizabeth W. Thill

In 79 CE, Mt. Vesuvius erupted on a massive scale, burying a large swath of the prosperous Bay of Naples area under meters of rock, ash, and mud. Cities such as Pompeii and Herculaneum were snuffed out, preserved for millennia until they were rediscovered in the modern era. Almost overnight, Pompeii became one of the …

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Posted on January 23rd, 2022 in Courses, Upcoming by Elizabeth W. Thill

Ancient Greece is famous for its many innovations—technological, social, philosophical—that have had an outsized influence on the Eurocentric world. Athens of the 6th and 5th c. BCE saw the birth of democracy, theater, and trial by jury. The conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th c. BCE stretched from Egypt to Afghanistan and created …

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Posted on January 22nd, 2022 in Courses by Elizabeth W. Thill

Ancient Greece and Rome have inspired filmmakers since the dawn of the Age of Cinema. Their gripping mythology has appeared in numerous renditions of Clash of the Titans, Hercules (Disney or otherwise), and Percy Jackson, and more subtlety in films such as O Brother Where Art Thou and Cold Mountain. Their history and culture lie behind movies such as Gladiator, 300, Pompeii, and any …

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Posted on January 12th, 2022 in Courses, Upcoming by Elizabeth W. Thill

The Olympics, theater, a general obsession with entertainment spectacles: our modern society can trace the origins of all these directly to Ancient Greek and Roman societies. Like our world, ancient Mediterranean cultures were engrossed by competitions of strength, speed, stamina, and skill. Their languages gave us terms such as theater, stadium, orchestra, chorus, and arena. …

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Posted on January 11th, 2022 in Courses, Upcoming by Elizabeth W. Thill

Birth, death, illness, health—these are constants that run through the history of humanity, cutting across cultures and borders, eras and social divisions. Ancient medicinal practices touch modern medicine in numerous ways, primarily: in the way we approach healing today in the vocabulary we use to describe and practice medicine. Traditionally traced to the Ancient Greek doctor …

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Bernini Medusa
Posted on January 10th, 2022 in Courses, Upcoming by Elizabeth W. Thill

What do Shakespeare, Dante, Percy Jackson, and Game of Thrones all have in common? They all draw heavily on Classical Mythology, the myths of Ancient Greece and Rome. Learn about these important societies through the lens of the stories they told about themselves. Meet Achilles, a warrior searching for meaning on the battlefield. Meet Medea, …

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Posted on January 2nd, 2022 in Courses, Upcoming by Elizabeth W. Thill

Have you ever voted in a republic? Inherited something from a will? Enjoyed your citizenship no matter where you lived? Sat in an amphitheater? Used words like agenda, altruism, ambiguous, futile, incalculable, mundane, obvious, plausible, stipend, tentative… If so, your life has been touched by the culture of Ancient Rome, the birthplace of all these …

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