The ancient Greeks left the world that came after them - particularly our own and our ways of seeing it - an incalculable legacy. Mention politics, philosophy, law, medicine, history, even the visual arts, and we barely scratch the surface of what we owe this extraordinary culture. How can we best learn about these people who have given us so much, who have deepened and enriched our understanding of ourselves, and whose world remains far closer than we might imagine?

The 36 lectures of this sparkling series from a frequently honored teacher is an outstanding place to begin, as Professor Schenker opens up to us the epics of Homer; the dramatic genius of the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes; and the poems of Archilochus, Sappho, and many others. He includes some of the world's greatest works of history and philosophy, and he gives rhetoric and oratory their proper due, as well.

Beginning with Homer and the two great epics credited to him, the Iliad and the Odyssey - including a provocative discussion of whether Homer even existed - Professor Schenker offers a wide-ranging overview of the subject that is both instructive and entertaining. His lectures are rich in anecdote, so that the works are set against a vivid backdrop of their times, as exemplified by his description of the debut of Aeschylus's the Eumenides, first staged in Athens in 458 B.C.E.

You'll learn that the presentation was said to have elicited full-blown terror in its audience. When the Furies - the hideous, avenging spirits roused from sleep by the ghost of the murdered Clytemnestra - appeared in the audience, men are said to have shrieked and fainted, with pregnant women miscarrying on the spot.