Learning Ancient History for Free

For life­long learn­ers, cours­es on Ancient Greece and Rome always remain in steady demand. While these cours­es are poor­ly rep­re­sent­ed in under­grad­u­ate pro­grams (at least in the States), they seem be to mak­ing a come­back in con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion pro­grams designed for old­er stu­dents. Even­tu­al­ly, it seems, many come to the con­clu­sion that you can’t skip over the foun­da­tions and still make sense of it all. And so they go back to basics.

The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny, a com­mer­cial provider of cours­es for life­long learn­ers, has rec­og­nized this demand and built a sur­pris­ing­ly rich col­lec­tion of lec­tures ded­i­cat­ed to the Ancients. (See full cat­a­logue here.) These cours­es are pol­ished and well put togeth­er. But they cost mon­ey. If that’s a con­cern, then you should know about some of the free alter­na­tives. Thanks to the “open course” move­ment, you can now find a series of free cours­es online, includ­ing some from top-ranked uni­ver­si­ties. Let me give you a quick overview of your options:

Last fall, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty intro­duced a new round of open cours­es that includ­ed Don­ald Kagan’s Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry (YouTube — iTunes Audio — iTunes VideoDown­load Course). A lead­ing fig­ure in the field, Kagan takes stu­dents from the Greek Dark Ages, through the rise of Spar­ta and Athens, The Pelo­pon­nesian War, and beyond. You’ll cov­er more than a mil­len­ni­um in 24 lec­tures. As I’ve not­ed else­where, Yale’s cours­es are high touch. And what’s par­tic­u­lar­ly nice is that the course can be down­loaded in one of five for­mats (text, audio, flash video, low band­width quick­time video, and high band­width quick­time video). Sim­ply choose the for­mat that works for you, and you’re good to go.

When you’ve com­plet­ed the arc of Greek his­to­ry, you can move next to the UC Berke­ley course, The Roman Empire. The course taught by Isabelle Paf­ford moves from Julius Cae­sar to Con­stan­tine (rough­ly 40 BC to 300 AD) in 42 lec­tures. And the audio comes straight from the class­room, which means that you’ll get sol­id infor­ma­tion but you’ll also have to endure some extra­ne­ous talk about home­work assign­ments and exams. (It’s free, so don’t com­plain.) You can down­load this course in one of three ways: iTunes, streamed audio, or via rss feed. Last­ly, I should note that Paf­ford has taught anoth­er relat­ed course at Berke­ley — The Ancient Mediter­ranean World (iTunes — Feed - MP3s).

Once you have the big sur­vey cours­es under your belt, you can switch to some more focused cours­es com­ing out of Stan­ford. Let’s start with Patrick Hunt’s course Han­ni­bal (iTunes). As I’ve not­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, this pod­cast­ed course takes you inside the life and adven­tures of Han­ni­bal, the great Carthagin­ian mil­i­tary tac­ti­cian who maneu­vered his way across the Alps and stunned Roman armies in 218 BC. The course also gives you glimpses into cut­ting-edge trends in mod­ern archae­ol­o­gy. Because Han­ni­bal still remains a fig­ure of intense his­tor­i­cal inter­est, it’s not sur­pris­ing that this course has ranked as one of the more pop­u­lar cours­es on iTune­sU.

Anoth­er short course worth your time is Virgil’s Aeneid: Anato­my of a Clas­sic. Pre­sent­ed by Susan­na Braund (a Stan­ford clas­sics pro­fes­sor at the time), the course teas­es apart the epic poem that was an instant when it was writ­ten 29–19 BC), and still endures today. Divid­ed into 5 install­ments, each run­ning about two hours, this pod­cast offers a good intro­duc­tion to one of the cen­tral texts in the Latin tra­di­tion.

Final­ly, let me throw in a quick bonus course. The His­tor­i­cal Jesus, anoth­er Stan­ford course taught by Thomas Shee­han, looks inside the historical/Roman world of Jesus of Nazareth. This is a his­to­ry course, not a reli­gion course, and it uses the best lit­er­ary and his­tor­i­cal evi­dence to answer the ques­tions: “Who was the his­tor­i­cal Jesus of Nazareth? What did he actu­al­ly say and do…? What did the man Jesus actu­al­ly think of him­self and of his mis­sion…? In short, what are the dif­fer­ences — and con­ti­nu­ities — between the Jesus who lived and died in his­to­ry and the Christ who lives on in believ­ers’ faith?

UPDATE: Thanks to a read­er, I was remind­ed of anoth­er relat­ed course: 12 Byzan­tine Rulers: The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire (iTunes — Feed — Site). These pod­casts cov­er the lega­cy of the Roman Empire that emerged in the East (after it had col­lapsed in the West). You can read more about this course in one of my ear­ly blog posts.

All of these cours­es can be found in the His­to­ry Sec­tion of our larg­er col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es. There you will find 200 high qual­i­ty online cours­es that you can lis­ten to any­time, any­where.


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Comments (14)
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  • Carol A says:

    As some­one who con­tin­ues to study Clas­sics at uni­ver­si­ty I have lis­tened to all of these except the new Don­ald Kagan series. They are all excel­lent and will give you that in-depth infor­ma­tion to real­ly under­stand the era. Also many thanks to the uni­ver­si­ties who make this mate­r­i­al avail­able.

  • Amazonia says:

    Thank-you.

    This is bril­liant stuff for the dai­ly com­mute.:)

  • […] infor­ma­ciĂłn com­ple­men­taria sobre edu­caciĂłn abier­ta. Dan Cole­man describe en un buen artĂ­cu­lo la antigua his­to­ria del apren­diza­je gra­tuita­mente. Sara Joy Pond ofrece una visiĂłn vivi­da y col­ori­da de la his­to­ria de OERs […]

  • I’m glad about lecture.Thanks the lecturure.I’m Masum, Dept.of Politic and Pub­lic Admin­is­tra­tion.
    Islam­ic Uni­ver­si­ty
    Kush­tia
    Bangladesh

  • Nelson Alexander says:

    The uni­ver­si­ty cours­es are a won­der­ful pub­lic asset, and I hope the col­lec­tion will grow. How­ev­er, there is a big dif­fer­ence in qual­i­ty. The Yale lec­tures I have found to be quite good, but the Berke­ley series less so, which is too bad. Many of the Berke­ley pro­fes­sors tend to spend a great deal of time dis­cussing class­room busi­ness or the nature of the course itself or review­ing what they said last week and pre­view­ing what they will say this time. And the record­ing qual­i­ty is not very good. Berke­ley should get high praise for the effort, but a lit­tle plan­ning and edit­ing would have made these lec­tures far more valu­able to the inter­est­ed pub­lic. I should note that I have only tried four or five.

  • Maria Lumens says:

    Don­ald Kagan is a nation­al trea­sure! so thrilled we can get to know him!

  • […] you, and you’re good to go. For more free cours­es on the Ancients, please see our page called: Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free. Share and […]

  • […] to dig deep­er into ancient his­to­ry, I’d rec­om­mend look­ing through our pre­vi­ous post, Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free Cours­es. This will point you to some of the best free cours­es avail­able on the […]

  • leonidas says:

    make it to be sud­able

  • […] Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free Share: […]

  • Dr. Loran Carrier says:

    What a won­der­ful thing it is to have this at our fin­ger­tips, lit­er­al­ly. If only this had been avail­able when my sil­ver glow was­n’t so obvi­ous. Thank you and good luck. Dr. Loran Car­ri­er

  • thorne wright says:

    I believe we live his­to­ry every­day. How­ev­er, the ancient world has always held a spe­cial inter­est to me

  • life long learning,lifelong learn­ing…

    […]Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free | Open Cul­ture[…]…

  • Sovan roychowdhury says:

    I am very inter­est­ed about ancient his­to­ry. Pls help.

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