The Western Traditions Podcast

The gods through the eyes of the earliest Romans. The Indo-European religious inheritance. Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva. The precision and discipline of Roman religious practice. The ties to early Christianity.

God chastises the world with the Flood. Only Noah and his family are spared. A breakdown of symbols and morality in the flood narrative.

Pyrrhus, Greek king and general, fights the Roman tide that threatens to wash over the entire Greek world. The Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Egypt flourish and endure. The Maccabees revolt in Judea and start the Hasmonean dynasty of kings in Jerusalem.

Alexander the Great dies and leaves behind a fragmented world of multi-cultural states led by Greek soldiers. The Hellenistic period which follows brings western ideas in to East. More than anything, it paves the way for Eastern religions, like Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity, to infiltrate the West.

Alexander the Great at the Battle of Granicus, the Battle of Issus and at Gaugamela. Jerusalem and Gaza. The Temple of Ammon in Egypt. His horse Bucephalus. His strategos Parmenio. Darius III flees to the East.

The youth of Alexander the Great. His strange mother Olympias. His friends Ptolemy, Nearchus and others. Cleopatra , Darius III and the fall of Thebes.

Virgil writes of Aeneas and the Trojan origins of Rome. The tale is both distinctively Roman and notably Greek. Heroes such as Odysseus and Achilles are recalled, as are monsters such as Scylla and Cerberus. The relationship between Roman mythology and Greek myths.

Phillip II of Macedonia. Alexander the Great. The Sacred Band of Thebes. A brief digression on Greek sexuality. Olympias. Leuctra, Mantinea, Chaeronea. Epaminondas. Pelopidas

Exitus and Reditus. The theology of the genealogies in the Bible.

The philosophical works of Aristotle. Metaphysics, Ethics and Politics.