TGC - Greece and Rome: An Integrated History of the Ancient Mediterranean
Professor Robert Garland, Ph.D. | Audio: MP3 96Kbps | Duration: 18:49 H/M | Lec: 36 - Average 31 minutes each | 775 MB | Language: English + Guidebook
Explore Greco-Roman Culture
Description
In the 1st century B.C., Rome's matchless armies consolidated control over the entire Mediterranean world, and Greece lay vanquished along with scores of other formerly independent lands yet the Roman poet Horace saw something special in Greece when he wrote "Greece, the captive, made her savage victor captive."
What did Horace mean by this paradoxical quote?
What did Greek culture symbolize to the militarily successful Romans?
How did the Greeks, in turn, view their Latin-speaking rulers?
How did these two independent branches of ancient civilization develop and then become inextricably entwined, with implications for all of subsequent Western culture?
The answers to these and other intriguing questions require an understanding not just of Rome but of Greece as well. Integrated approaches to teaching Greek and Roman history, however, are a rarity in academia. Most scholars are historians of either Greek or Roman history and perform research solely in that specific field, an approach that author and award-winning Professor Robert Garland considers questionable.
"It's only by studying the two cultures in connection with each other that we can come to an understanding of that unique cultural entity that is 'Greco-Roman,'" he notes.
Greece and Rome: An Integrated History of the Ancient Mediterranean is an impressive and rare opportunity to understand the two dominant cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world in relation to one another. Over the course of 36 lectures, Professor Garland explores the many ways in which these two very different cultures intersected, coincided, and at times collided.
Explore Greco-Roman Culture
The relationship between the Greeks and the Romans has virtually no parallel in world history. Greece and Rome's relationship resembled a marriage: two distinct personalities competing in some areas, sharing in others, and sometimes creating an entirely new synthesis of the two civilizations.
This synthesis created the extraordinary culture that we call Greco-Roman: a unique fusion of civilizations that encompasses statecraft, mythology, language, philosophy, fine arts, architecture, science, and much else. "The term suggests there was an unbreakable tie between the two cultures," says Professor Garland. "And indeed there was. What would Rome have been without the imprint of the Greeks, and what would we know about the Greeks were it not for the Romans?"
Professor Garland cites three critical reasons why an understanding of the Greco-Roman world is so important to us here in the 21st century:
The connections between the two civilizations remind us that culture is not created and owned by a single people, but is enriched through the contributions of others.
The relationship between the Greeks and Romans is somewhat analogous to the relationship between the British and the Americans.
An integrated study of the Greeks and Romans helps us understand how each profoundly influenced the other
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