Last fall, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty intro­duced a sec­ond round of open cours­es that includ­ed Don­ald Kagan’s Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry. A major fig­ure in the field, Kagan takes stu­dents from the Greek Dark Ages, through the rise of Spar­ta and Athens, The Pelo­pon­nesian War, and beyond. You’ll cov­er more than a mil­len­ni­um in 24 lec­tures. Above, we start with the first lec­ture, which talks about why the Ancient Greeks should still mat­ter to us today. As I’ve not­ed else­where, Yale’s cours­es are well pro­duced. And what’s par­tic­u­lar­ly nice is that the course can be down­loaded in one of many for­mats (text, audio, flash video, low band­width quick­time video, and high band­width quick­time video). Or you can grab it on YouTube (as above) and iTunes too.  Sim­ply choose the for­mat that works for you, and you’re good to go. For more free cours­es on the Ancients, please see our page called: Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free.