Seminar 1: Herodotus and the Invention of History
This seminar took place on Sunday 5 October 2025
In the first line of his work, Herodotus becomes the first to use the word history, originally meaning ‘enquiry’, to describe a continuous narrative of the past. At this moment, in the second half ot the 5th century BCE, history as we know it is born. Yet Herodotus offers more than a record of wars between Greeks and Persians in the early 5th century BCE. His account travels widely in time and place: from myth to the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis; from Greece to Egypt, Scythia, and even the ‘Tin Islands’. In doing so, he could also lay claim to being the pioneer of anthropology, ethnography, sociology, and travel writing. This opening seminar will look at the very beginning and the very end of ‘The Histories’ as a means of exploring Herodotus’ method and purpose, how he aims to tell not only what happened, but why.
Seminar 2: Sophocles’ Antigone and Obedience to the Law
This seminar took place on Sunday 30 November 2025
The works of only three tragedians have survived, Aeschylus, the author of The Oresteia, Euripides, the author of The Bacchae and Medea, and Sophocles who wrote nearly 100 plays in a long career but only nine survive intact. Perhaps the most famous is Oedipus Tyrannos, in which Oedipus, the king of Thebes, comes to discover that he has murdered his father and married his mother. However, the play which has had the greatest impact on European theatre has been Antigone. Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus. Her brothers have killed each other in combat, one attacking Thebes, the other, Polynices, defending it and Creon, the new ruler of Thebes has decreed that Polynices will remain unburied. Antigone defies that decree and, in doing so, goes to her death. The play thereby addresses an issue fundamental to any society: when, if ever, is it right to disobey the law? The seminar will look at the key passages where Antigone defends her decision and confronts her death.
Seminar 3: Thucydides, Pericles and Athens
This seminar took place on Sunday 11 January 2026
Herodotus of Halicarnassus may be the ‘Father of History’ but Thucydides the Athenian, his younger contemporary, can rightly claim to be the inventor of history as we know it. His subject is the Peloponnesian War, a war between the Athenians and the Spartans (431-404 BCE. He was a general in that war, a general exiled by the Athenians for a military failure, an eye-witness to these events. Central to his method is accuracy and attention to evidence: he wants us not only to understand the past but also to understand our own times. His work is ‘a possession of all time’. He explores the issues that war brings to the fore: the nature of democracy at war; the erosion of morality under pressure; the impact of leaders, good and bad, the fragility of reason, the dangers of rhetoric.
The online seminar will focus on Thucydides’ account of the speech given by Pericles, the greatest of the Athenian leaders, at the public funeral held for the war dead in 430 BC. In that speech, Pericles celebrates the greatness of Athens, a greatness which will be undermined and brought low in the years that follow.
Seminar IV: Plato, Socrates and the Law is now available via the Short Seminar Series page.