Courses about Ancient Civilisations

An opportunity to find about how daily life was for ordinary people in the Roman Empire.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

How do you define magic and divination? Why has the Western world traditionally viewed magic as opposed to religion and science? These and other issues will be discussed in this thought-provoking course.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

This unique and wide-ranging course provides a broad introduction to the three major languages of the Ancient Near East, which together traverse a vast history of four millennia. In them were written some of the great landmarks of world literature, such as the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Sumerian Descent of Inanna.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Discover the ancient language spoken by the Goths, an ancient Germanic population from Scandinavia who settled in North-Eastern and Eastern Europe.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Mystery religions were very popular in the ancient world and were organised as voluntary associations. Their popularity is attested in writings and in material culture of the Greco-Roman world. They offered intense religious experiences outside the official, civic religions. The participants were initiated into the mysteries: whilst there is considerable variety in form and content, a belief in a form of salvation was a common denominator of many of these mystery religions. The question of the relationship between the mystery cults and Christianity will also be broached.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

The oldest profession as practised among the Romans - not for the squeamish.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

The Byzantines (circa 330-1453) have produced some of the finest works of art and erected the most remarkable buildings in the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea and beyond.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Find out more about epistolography (letter writing) as a literary genre in the Roman world.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

This talk will explore some of the connections which maintained the Anglo-Saxons' feeling that Rome was part of their heritage.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.