希腊罗马故事

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 wro te “ Greece, the captive, made her savage victor captive Despite all their similarities, Greeks and Romans were different enough that each engaged in cultural stereotyping of the other, which amounted to latent nationalism. Throughout the lectures, you explore some of their more substantive cultural differences, including: * Religion: Greek religion was anthropomorphic, with deities displaying human form and manner. Early Romans did not believe in deities but rather in numina —divine powers that had precise functions but no physical identity. * Views of foreigners: Romans were far more diverse in origin than the Greeks, which made them more open to foreigners. This had profound effects, as the Romans used grants of citizenship as a political tool to cement and expand the Roman Empire. * Construction: The largest structures in the Greek world were theaters, some of which could hold 20,000 to 40,000 people. The Romans had a more grandiose concept of public space, as seen in the Circus Maximus, in which 250,000 spectators could assemble to watch a chariot race. * Thinking: The Greeks delighted in analyzing the world and asking questions about the nature of existence, the constitution of the ideal state, and the definition of virtue. For their part, the Romans, though they also studied philosophy, were content to run the world An Expert in the Classical World Professor Garland has spent his entire career immersed in classical studies and in the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome. His academic research focuses on the cultural, religious, social, and political histories of these two civilizations. He has written numerous books on subjects ranging from the politics of Athenian religion and disability in the Greco-Roman world to daily life in ancient Greece and the idea of celebrity in antiquity. Delight in the wide variety of sources — literature, archaeology, the visual arts, coinage, inscriptions — that he draws upon in order to assemble a fascinating and complex picture of these two great civilizations. Value his mastery of detail on his subject, as he helps you to reach important conclusions from an analysis of the shared cultural features of Greece and Rome. And appreciate how Dr. Garland always keeps Greece and Rome focused on how this material affects us in the present day. “ I profoundly believe that Greece and Rome are inside us, both as destructive and as creative forces, ” he says. “ They ’ ve taught us our ways of being a human being and of seeing the world. We are their heirs and their guardians, a h eavy but invigorating challenge. ” Course Lecture Titles 01. Who Were the Greeks? Who Were the Romans?