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This week Jeff and Dave take a break from the Marrou series to talk about 2nd century A.D. satirist Lucian of Samosata. Born in the further reaches of Asia Minor, Lucian made a name for himself as a Greek stylist by making fun of the rich and powerful, including the gods. Many claim him as the inventor of the science fiction genre because of his most famous work, A True Story. This fantastic voyage seems to anticipate Jules Verne and H.G. Wells by almost 2000 years! But the subject of this episode is Lucian's take on the fraudulent shyster Alexander, a good looking chap (with great hair) who worships a snake god leads and many astray. But what exactly is Lucian doing? Is this all a game to entertain the elite, or is he trying to educate the gullible away from belief in the supernatural and paranormal? And, what do Erasmus and Thomas More have to do with it all? Be sure to tune in.

This week Jeff and Dave continue on with Marrou's clues, finishing up the last portion of Chapter VII, Part I, Isocrates, and taking on all of Chapter I, Part II, "The Civilization of the Paideia". For Isocrates, the comparison to Plato continues, particularly with respect to the question of the teaching and inculcation of virtue. Is it possible, and if so, how is it done? Don't miss Marrou's thought-provoking concluding remarks on the relationship between P and I, how they "enriched the classical tradition without disturbing its unity." In the next portion, the guys get into the question of paideia, an old and storied concept. Specifically, how does culture, according to Marrou, become religion, and how is this a part of Alexander's enduring influence? Finally, the theme of the whole second portion of the episode focuses on how classical education took on its finalized, concrete form during the Hellenistic era (323-31 B.C.), and "thereafter it underwent no substantial change".

Isocrates, Yousocrates, Hesocrates? This week Jeff and Dave are back at it with the work of H. I. Marrou and education in antiquity. Here they tackle the last bit of Part I of the book, Chapter VII, and the groundbreaking "humanist" Isocrates. Born in 436, he spent the first part of his career as a "hired gun" speech-writer, before developing an influential -- and profitable -- school for rhetoric. But if you have never heard of this guy, no wonder. He has spent the last two millennia trying to creep out from beneath Plato's massive shadow. So just what is the purpose of rhetoric and dialectic? Is it to get to the truth, à la Plato, or should we veer more toward Isocrates' perspective, that rhetoric, honed by literary study, develops us into persons who are moral and useful to the state? Isocrates certainly had the time to develop his ideas, as he championed nascent Panhellenism to the rip old age of 98! Along the way, the hits keep coming, and the fallout from Jeff's opening pun is massive. Finally, don't miss the tease about how Plato spent his last days, link.

This week Jeff and Dave welcome into the studio Classicist extraordinaire and all around good guy Dr. Kirk Summers. We should probably also mention that Kirk is a Prof. of Classics at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, former co-owner of the Red Cat Coffee Houses in the same city, and one of the world's leading experts in Theodore Beza. And he still finds time to root for the Alabama Crimson Tide. Kirk drops by to talk about one of his earliest works on Beza, A View from the Palatine. First published in 1548 before his conversion to the Protestant faith, Beza issued this collection of poems, Sylvae, much in the style of Catullus, Martial, and other Roman love poets. This got him into a little bit of hot water, as Kirk explains. Along the way, we hear how Beza's early training in the humanities shaped him for a career in theology and polemics, about his wife Claudine Desnosse (that she was not Candida of his poetry), and some of Beza's views on the relationship between Christianity and the ancient Greeks and Romans. All this and more can be yours, if you can survive Dave's first, atrocious pun.

Herein Dave and Jeff resume their tour through Henri-Irénée Marrou's ground-breadking volume on ancient education. We wrap up Chapter VI, "The Masters of the Classical Tradition", and see what Plato thought about mathematics, elementary education, gymnastics, plastic-segmented jumpropes, playing the triangle and blocks in Kindergarten, and more. How was Plato's Academy organized? Was it a rigorous shool for political science, a training ground for the abstruse, esoteric, and recondite? Or did it mostly exist in Plato's mind, a thought experiment akin to not ever seeing an actual circle? We tackle these and other questions, including "What are the olfactory nuances of the Athens Metro ride to Piraeus on a sunny January day?" This is something we wall want to know, so tune in!

This week tune in as the guys interview one of the greatest and most prolific translators of this and the previous century—Dr. Stanley Lombardo. In this conversation we hear about Stanley’s early education where he was, yes, drawn to Greek and Latin but especially the rhythms and performance of poetry. The idea that these ancient works were meant to be performed and heard (not read silently) has always been at the center of his attempts to make these texts sing and become something new. So how does he do it? How does oneyou thread that needle of “staying close to the original text” while “making it new for a contemporary audience”? How do different authors lend themselves to different approaches? And how do you accompany your own poetry with a drum?