Advanced Ancient Greek Mythology and Archaeology: The Underworld and After-Life
In this 18-week advanced class students will learn all about the mythical universe of the underworld gods and demons, the realm of the dead souls and the ghosts, as imagined by the ancient Greeks in their stories, art, architecture and cult
Spyridon (Spiros) Loumakis
Average rating:
4.9
Number of reviews:(776)
What's included
18 live meetings
18 in-class hoursHomework
1 hour per week. Homework, designed to take no more than 30 minutes per day, will be assigned before each of the fifteen meetings students will be asked to study a short hand-out which will be distributed in advance as part of their class preparation (each hand out will be uploaded 24 hours in advance).Assessment
at the end of the course students will be assigned an (optional) multiple-choice quiz, in order to test their memory, attention and observation. This test may also include one or two questions requiring a very short answer, in order to assess the learners' comprehension.Grading
I do not believe that a letter grade is meaningful for a mythology class. However, as I often do with my one-time classes, which are always small classes, I communication with the parents and the children directly, providing my personal comments, private feedback and an informal assessment, especially if they complete the (optional) quiz assigned at the end of the camp.Class Experience
US Grade 7 - 9
Advanced Level
This is an *educational* multi-day class, suitable for learners who are genuinely interested in ancient Greek mythology or/and history, and who have zero or basic prior knowledge of mythology but are motivated to learn more, and willing to follow this multi-day class in order to acquire a deeper understading of ancient Greek ideas around death, the dead and afterlife. (B) Teaching style and students interaction: The learning process of this class is based on a combination of a power-point presentation, a lecture that asks students to participate, class dialogue, questions based on the ongoing lecture, and new ideas based on the participants. There is not one universal solution to teach. Rather I combine techniques to achieve the maximum of my strengths and of my students. Having taught so far young kids, teenagers, University students and mature learners, I know that teachers need to approach students with understanding. After all, such a small class has the advantage of making the combined technique of ppt presentation-lecture-dialogue feasible and efficient. Thanks to Zoom, engaging students and interacting with them is always possible. (C) Class format and weekly topics to be covered: Each class dedicated to a specific topic, but all classes should be seen as a unit, and they will be treated as such, often using the material from a previous class on a certain aspect to build upon it the following class. 1) Thanatos (Death) - Greek burial rituals 2) At the Tomb to Honor the Dead - Charon (the Ferryrman) 3) The Realm of the Dead Part A (Tartaros - The Children of the Night [Nyx] - River Styx - Charon and the Golden Coin Ritual) 4) The Realm of the Dead Part B (River Acheron and Crossing to the Other Side) 5) The Realm of the Dead Part C (Hades the Lord of the Dead - Zagreos/Melinoe/Minthe/Leuce) 6) and 7) The Realm of the Dead Part D (Furies as Punishers in the Underworld and Other Infernal Avengers) 8) The Realm of the Dead Part E (The Damned) 9) The Realm of the Dead Part F (Cerberus) 10) The Realm of the Dead Part G (The Blessed - Elysium) 11) and 12 ) Comical Underworld - Platonic Underworld - Satyrical Underworld 13) Psyche - Psychopompos 14) Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld 15) Orpheus and Dionysos 16) Ghosts and Hekate 17) Oracles of the Dead 18) Temples of Plouto and Charon
Learning Goals
In this class students will understand that the magic of myths lies not only in the stories themselves, fascinating as they are, but in the logic behind them and in their deeper meaning. Myths will be appreciated as a system of beliefs and a way of thinking about the world, as it was created by the ancient Greeks.
The goal for the students is to learn at an introductory level how the ancient Greeks were structuring their myths about after-life, about coming back to life and about the nature of the soul, and some of the narrative patterns that they were employing to tell meaningful stories about how the world of the dead and after-life were according to their imagination.
We will discuss together how were these stories played out in ancient art, and especially in relation to their idea that there was a world that is inhabited by the dead (rested souls) and the ghosts (restless souls), together with underworld gods and demons.
We will finally delve into an ancient religion with respect, so as to learn from theses examples two very important lessons: that there is no absolute truth, and that nothing unchangeable in time, when it comes to religious traditions, old and new.
Other Details
Parental Guidance
(a) I use only and exclusively ancient art, original artworks created by the ancient people whose stories I teach in my classes, and this is the reason why I spend hours finding images that are from museums and collections of art from all over the world;
(b) this course is based on what some of the ancient civilizations believed, which means that their ideas may have been based on their observations, their imagination or their fears and hopes, but not on facts;
(c) the class is about the ancient world and not modern religions, which means that I approach the ancient world, based on the work of scholars (like me) who study it historically from a secular perspective.
(d) specifically the topics of the Dead Souls and Afterlife, or Stories about people coming back from the dead are approached from the perspective of the ancient Greek imaginaton, artistic creativity and mythical universe, and have nothing to do with the individual beliefs of modern people and contemporary cultures. Parents and learners should feel safe that this class is not about death and afterlife as we approach them today (scientifically, theologically or metaphysically). This is a class strictly about ancient Greek mythology and often about ancient Greek art (inspired by mythology)
(e) parents' and learners' level of comfort with the concept of death is irrelevant to this class, since we are going to discuss only "death" as a demon, called Thanatos, in Greek mythology.
I have a special note to make for Greek art:
in the ancient Greek arts gods are depicted often (but not always) naked. The Greek word for a naked man is "gymnos" and that is why in English today we say "gymnastics" or "gym" although our children and athletes wear uniforms. This being said, any artistic reproduction in ancient art should be expected to show nude gods. I try to use as less as possible, but it is not always within my hands since this is the nature of the ancient Greek art itself. Since, it is an art that comes from an era where there were no photographs, or videos, the art is found only on painted vases, wall paintings and sculpture. Nudity was never meant to provoke, but to tell to the ancient viewer that gods are not mortal humans and, thus, they do not need clothes. As you may very well understand, I cannot change the history of art, nor my preference as teacher of mythology to show students the original art from ancient times.
External Resources
Learners will not need to use any apps or websites beyond the standard Outschool tools.
Sources
Some of the source I use for this class, which come from some of the best scholars in the field, are:
Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World), by Alberto Bernabé and Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece by Sarah Iles Johnston (University of California Press, 2013)
Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the 'Orphic' Gold Tablets by Radcliffe G. Edmonds III (Cambridge University Press, 2012)
"Reading" Greek Death: To the End of the Classical Period Paperback by Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood (Clarendon Press, 1996)
Greek and Roman Necromancy by Daniel Ogden (Princeton University Press, 2004)
Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook by Daniel Ogden (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Round Trip to Hades in the Eastern Mediterranean Tradition (Cultural Interactions in the Mediterranean) by Gunnel Ekroth and Ingela Nilsson (Leiden: Brill 2018)
The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Mythos: The Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology, 139) by Jan Bremmer (Princeton University Press, 1987)
In addition, archaeology, art, architecture, epigraphy and numismatics will be used, whenever relevant, to enlighten aspects of ancient Greek mythology that are not so apparent in the mythical accounts.
My background in all these fields will guide the student through these peculiar sub-fields of history, in order to be abe to "read" them and complete their knowledge.
Joined March, 2020
4.9
776reviews
Teacher expertise and credentials
I have a B.A. and M.A. in ancient Greek and Roman history and archaeology, as well as an M.A. in history and phiosophy of religions (especially ancient religions). I have excavated in ancient Greek sites, I speak ancient and modern Greek, as well as archaic and classical Latin and I am currently finishing my PhD. Reviews
Live Group Class
$22
weekly or $396 for 18 classes1x per week, 18 weeks
60 min
Completed by 5 learners
Live video meetings
Ages: 12-15
3-8 learners per class
