Introduction To Ancient Greek History

I’ve come across a real gem.  Yale University (USA) have released Professor Donald Kagan’s 2007 lectures on Ancient Greece:

“This is an introductory course in Greek history tracing the development of Greek civilization as manifested in political, intellectual, and creative achievements from the Bronze Age to the end of the classical period.”

What makes this so special is the combination of Professor Kagan’s reputation, his clear lecturing style and the way Yale have released the course materials online.  Not only are the lectures available as audio and video downloads but so are the support materials and handouts.

For the military historian lecture 12 covers the Persian Wars whilst lectures 17-19 cover the Peloponnesian War.  Each lecture is around the 75 minute mark so you’ll need to set aside some time to enjoy these.

Although the lectures are available as standard mp3 files I had a problem playing them with Windows Media Player (WMP).  I was able to play them with VLC; my other main media player. 

Update: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 

The WMP problem was caused by unsynchronised ID3 v2 and v3 tags within the mp3 files.  In fact there aren’t any tags at all in these files.  All I did was open them in mp3tag, my tag editor of choice, and save a fresh set of blank tags and the files now play in WMP.  Make sure your tag editor writes both sets of tags not just one.