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. ( )

Fascinating. Covers theories of mythology, classifications of myth, Greek and Roman culture and history, the fact that we know a lot of the mythology only through literature, and so much more. ( )

This is probably a bit biased, as I went into this lecture series already knowing I would love the content... but I absolutely loved Classical Mythology and it's one of my favorite Great Courses so far. Greek Mythology is my favorite - there's something about it that is familiar and fascinating to me. Classical Mythology focuses on Greek and Roman myths ("classical" meaning the classical era, not "oh, that's a classic!"). I know a decent amount of Greek mythology, but Vandiver still managed to teach a lot of new things and hold my attention through the entire lecture series. I appreciated her observations and discussions, and enjoyed this course as a whole. If you're interested in Greek mythology in particular (Roman mythology is limited, but there's a good reason for that), I highly recommend this! ( )

This audio book is part of the Great Courses Series and not only tells the stories of the classical Greek myths, but also gives historical context into their origin and their meaning to those of us living today.

Very interesting for those of us whose introduction to myths was many years ago, ( )

I decided to listen to this set of lectures after reading Jo Walton's The Just City. It had been sitting in my digital library for a couple of years for no reason other than I was waiting for the perfect time to delve into it.

In the back of my mind, I was thinking it would be a set of lectures along the lines of Bullfinch's Mythology. While there were plenty of myths discussed, the strength of this series is the historical context and intriguing analysis Elizabeth Vandiver put forth. Moreover, I was fascinated by her presentation. She has a marvelous handle on the English language and is brilliant. I found myself often surprised by the myths and in particular, the curse of the House of Atreus. I read the lecture notes that came along with the lectures and found them very helpful as I know relatively little about the classic world. ( )