Elizabeth Vandiver

Great Courses Classical Mythology by Professor Elizabeth Vandiver is a tremendously informative course of 24 lectures, each about 30 to 45 minutes long. Professor Vandiver is adept at covering this subject and her lectures are fascinating and highly educational. She is a distinguished professor and has received many honors.

So much information is to be found in this course! It covers Classical Mythology in both its Greek and Roman forms and gives us an overview and introduction to some of the main gods and heroes, along with a timeframe and ending with a summary of how classical mythology is present in many modern day books, films, etc.

Learning the actual story of these gods from mythology and some of their interactions was so interesting and, I realized, something I should have done many years ago. I have always enjoyed the watered down books of mythology, or the children's versions, and the movies that have appeared from time to time. And though I thought I had a very basic understanding of some of the main classical mythology stories, I did not. The factual historical tales are not for the faint of heart. They are filled with violence of every kind, sexual perversion and deviance galore, incest, cannibalism and you name it. And the descriptions get very graphic and unimaginably horrific and gross. Modern horror movies and serial killers have nothing on gods and heroes from classical mythology. I was shocked to find out that I had gone all these years without being aware of that. Or definitely the extent of that. And, by the way, "hero" does not always refer to a great personage of good intention. Great personage and amazing deeds perhaps, but they can be a bad person or bad deeds. All-in-all, I highly recommend Great Courses Classical Mythology. It is very educational and gives us so many facts about something that we should all be familiar with.… (mere)