Odyssey of the West V: Enlightenment, Revolution, and Renewal

A number of different lecturers provide lectures in Odyssey of the West V.
These lectures oscillate between coverage of key people and discussions of events and movements. We get conversations on Hume and Adam Smith. And then we get the French revolution and the terror.
There are a few different lecturers participating, some better than others. My favorite is Timothy Shutt. He is always careful to discuss the "consensus" scholarly opinion, while also providing his particular view. This is especially useful when he discusses "best" novel of a certain era or genre. He almost gets me to want to read Jane Austen.

Monsters, Gods, and Heroes: Approaching the Epic in Literature

These lectures take a narrow view of "Epic", to focus primarily on long-form poetry that has a bold universal appeal. The Odyssey, Aeneid, Fairy Queen, Baeuwolf, Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost are the ones primarily covered here. Some such as Gilgamesh, Ramayana and El Cid are not mentioned. Other modern works are considered "almost epics". (Huck Finn, Moby Dick, Wagner ring cycle.) Fantasy, such as Tolkein's Lord of the Rings is considered to be the best successor to the epic.

The lectures spend some time quoting from the epics and presenting some analysis of them. However, there is not enough time to fully cover these works, leaving the analysis rather superficial, though at the same time a little too long. The narrow definition of the epic also self-limits what can be told. Some of Shutt's other more focused lectures are much better.

Hebrews, Greeks and Romans: The Foundations of Western Thought

Hebrews , Greeks , and Romans : The Foundations of Western Civilization ( Course Guide ) (THE MODERN SCHOLAR)

It starts out good, but my interest faded when he started going in to details about the Greeks and Romans. I had recently heard a lot of the similar material and was hoping for more details putting everything together. Instead it was a big narrative of the Odyssey, Illiad, Socrates, Aneid, and how they are all important. That is all nice, but more useful would be how they all built upon each other and how the different areas combined to give us our modern western thought. For that, we do have bits and pieces such as descriptions of how some Greek philosophical views are the root in communist arguments. However, we really didn't get much more until the last lectures where he finally ties everything together. If the middle lectures kept up the quality it would have been much more enlightening.

History of Ancient Sparta

A History of Ancient Sparta: Valor, Virtue, and Devotion in the Greek Golden Age, 7 Cds [Complete & Unabridged Audio Work]
Sparta never seems to get the credit of Athens. Sure, there are plenty of Spartan sports teams, but you don't have colleges in towns called "Sparta". Spartans are more the Republicans of Greek history. They survived for a while, were conservative, and had a great military. However, Athens is what gave us all the intellectual basis for our modern democracy. (Ok, so a lot of the Athenian culture came from Sparta, but, hey, at least Athens made some cool stories.)

These lectures provide some nice background of Sparta. They were truly the "jocks" of the ancient world. They exercised like crazy, and were well-prepared to take on any foe. However, their preferred method of engagement was to intimidate the enemies and let them peacefully leave. (Rather than the then common custom of slaughter.) When were well respected, especially in childbirth. Unfit human "specimens" were discarded so that only the strongest continued to propagate.

For some reason, however, the Spartan's began to die out. And eventually, they fell by the wayside. It makes for an enchanting history, though the records are alas, somewhat lacking, especially compared to their neighbors form Athens.

Wars the Made the Western World

Wars that Made the Western World: The Persian Wars, The Peloponnesian War, and the Punic Wars
The Greeks got a lucky and beat the Persians once. This gave them the confidence to continue to beat the Persians in the remainder of the Persian wars. The end of the Persian threat, alas, got too much to the heads of the Athenians, leading them to set up their own empire. From this, they decided to take on the Spartans and nearly won. But democracy roiled its ugly head, leading them to attack their commander, who defected to Sparta. The Spartans ended up coming back before the Athenians got back the commander and almost won before doing something else stupid and losing the war.

The professor turns this in to a tale of democracy gone amok. It was probably good for the world that Athens lost, thus allowing for some great philosophizing. It is also interesting that this war was well covered by contemporary historians and political scientists. Perhaps other similar wars had happened in the past that we just don't know as much about.

The Punic wars shift to a different area of the globe. The Greeks have been relegated to bit players in the bitter battle between the Romans and Carthagenians. Initially Rome uses great innovation to duplicate the ships of Carthage and build its own naval power. (So the US cloning of British technology and the Chinese cloning of everyone else has plenty of historical antecedents.) Then they nearly beat Carthage before Hannibal completes his brave trek with the elephants across the mountains to nearly sack Rome. But he doesn't quite make it before the Romans go on the offensive and beat Carthage, extracting 50 years of tribute before they finally decide to wipe it out once and for all. In this war it is much harder to see the good guys vs. bad guys.

In the end, the Romans won and created a vast Mediterranean empire. They adopted many features of the Greek culture which they found beneficial. That in turn gave us the basis of the western civilization that we have today. The society is willing to question many of its basic tenants and structures, yet still have an underlying structure of law. How would it have been different if these wars had gone differently? Perhaps not much. After all, democracy lost the middle war. Without the loss, there may have been violent Ahtens/Rome wars with both cultures going by the wayside.

Literature of C.S. Lewis

The Literature of C.S. Lewis provides some basic background on C.S. Lewis's life, and then launches directly in to an analysis of his works. The content and delivery are quite good. However, the pacing seems a bit off. He spends entire lectures covering a novel or two, then at the end rushes through his other works. The novel discussions also provide a heavy dose of synopsis. (You could just about skip reading the novels after listening to the details of the lecture.)

The lectures do acknowledge the importance of Lewis's religious conviction in all his works. However, they also make clear that Lewis never thought of himself as perfect, and loved smoking, drinking and eating. He also brings up a debate the Lewis lost (to another Christian) at Oxford that lead to him to focus more on fiction than overt apologetics.

The content was informative, but it could have been improved replacing some of the novel summaries with analysis of the novels and other works.