Hellenic Museum Summer School 2023: History & Culture of the Ancient World

Spend a week at Melbourne’s Hellenic Museum this January, exploring the spectacular and fascinating world of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Hellenic Museum Summer School offers a series of informative, relaxed and entertaining short courses. Anyone is welcome!

This Summer, we're offering four courses:

1. Ancient Cyprus: the Island at the Crossroads of the Mediterranean
2. Aristotle’s Human Flourishing Project
3. Ancient Greek Religion
4. An Introduction to Classical Mythology

Each subject consists of five sessions, delivered across five days. Details below.

Sessions will take place in person and online. People taking part online can participate live or watch recorded lectures at a time of their convenience.

Participants can enrol in one, two, three or all four courses. A discount applies if enrolling in all courses.

Located on the sea route between Greece and the Near East, and blessed with abundant supplies of copper, Cyprus was an important part of the ancient Mediterranean world. While Cyprus was closely connected to its neighbouring cultures, it also maintained a distinct identity. This makes for a fascinating history, as various empires fight to control the island, while the Cypriots try to pursue their own path. This course looks at the unique history and archaeology of Cyprus from the Bronze Age to the Byzantine Empire to understand what made the island special and the role it played in the ancient world.

• Session 1: Prehistoric Cyprus

• Session 2: Greeks, Phoenicians and Cypriots

• Session 3: Hellenistic and Roman Cyprus

• Session 4: Myth and Religion in Cyprus

• Session 5: Late Antiquity, Muslim and Byzantine Cyprus

5 x 1-hour sessions, 9-13 January 2023

10.00–11.00 am each day (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time - UTC+11.00)

$155 full, $125 concession

What’s the best way to live our lives? Should we be generous or just worry about ourselves? What will make us happy? What will give us a sense of fulfilment? Questions like these were as important to the ancient Greeks as they are to us today and were just as heavily debated. Aristotle provided powerful answers to these and other questions through his vision of the ideal life. In recent decades, Aristotle’s views have gained increasing popularity, with his ideas appearing in discussions ranging from personal ethics to international development. This course examines Aristotle’s vision along with some of the modern work which continues his tradition.

• Session 1: The Purpose of Life

• Session 2: How to Be and How to Act

• Session 3: Relationships

• Session 4: Companies and Governments

• Session 5: The Good Life – Money, Work, Leisure, Contemplation and Purpose

5 x 1-hour sessions, 9-13 January 2023

11.30 am -12.30 pm each day (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time - UTC+11.00)

$155 full, $125 concession

Ancient Greek religion contains both elements that are very familiar and elements that are very different to modern Western religions. This course looks at the ancient Greeks’ beliefs and practices, answering questions such as: What happened in a Greek temple? How did the Greeks’ myths fit into a religion? How were events like theatre and the Olympics part of religion? What did the Greeks do to get a better fate in the afterlife? Understanding a society’s religion is a great way to understand what was most important to it, and ancient Greek religion is an interesting and surprising phenomenon.

• Session 1: The Basic Elements of Greek Religion – Gods, Prayers and Sacrifices

• Session 2: Temples and Sanctuaries

• Session 3: Festivals – the Theatre, the Olympics, the Panathenaea and Rites of Passage

• Session 4: Magic and Prophecy – Manipulating the World and Telling the Future

• Session 5: Dealing with Death – Eleusinian Mysteries, Pythagoreans and Orphics

5 x 1-hour sessions, 9-13 January 2023

1.30–2.30 pm each day (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time - UTC+11.00)

$155 full, $125 concession

This course will explore and try to understand some of the most important and interesting myths of the Greeks and Romans, such as the Trojan War, Oedipus, Hercules, Orpheus, the Minotaur and Greek versions of the beginning of the universe. These myths have an ongoing resonance and have inspired much of Western art, literature and thought for over 2000 years. This course examines the characters that make up the myths, the principal stories and what these tell us about ancient Greek society. Designed for people who are new to Greek and Roman myth and for people wanting to deepen their understanding.

• Session 1: In the Beginning … the Creation of the Universe and the Older Generations of Gods

• Session 2: The Younger Gods – Apollo, Dionysus, Athena, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone and More

• Session 3: The Questing Heroes – including Hercules, Theseus, Oedipus and Orpheus

• Session 4: The Use of Myth in Ancient Greece

• Session 5: At the End … the Trojan War and its Aftermath

5 x 2-hour sessions, 9-13 January 2023

3.00–5.00 pm each day (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time - UTC+11.00)

$200 full, $160 concession

Host or Publisher Dr Christopher Gribbin