Jason and the Golden Fleece By Michael Wood

Classic tale

The Greek tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece has been told for 3,000 years. It's a classic hero's quest tale - a sort of ancient Greek mission impossible - in which the hero embarks on a sea voyage into an unknown land, with a great task to achieve. He is in search of a magical ram's fleece, which he has to find in order to reclaim his father's kingdom of Iolkos from the usurper King Pelias.

The Greeks have retold and reinterpreted it many times since, changing it as their knowledge of the physical world increased.

The story is a set a generation before the time of the Trojan War, around 1300 BC, but the first known written mention of it comes six centuries later, in the age of Homer (800 BC). The tale came out of the region of Thessaly, in Greece, where early epic poetry developed. The Greeks have retold and reinterpreted it many times since, changing it as their knowledge of the physical world increased.

No one knows for sure where the earliest poets set the adventure, but by 700 BC the poet Eumelos set the tale of the Golden Fleece in the kingdom of Aia, a land that at the time was thought to be at the eastern edge of the world. At this point the Jason story becomes fixed as an expedition to the Black Sea. The most famous version, penned by Apollonius of Rhodes, who was head of the library at Alexandria, was composed in the third century BC, after the invasion of Asia by Alexander the Great.

Since the 1870s a series of excavations at Mycenae, Knossos, Troy and elsewhere has brought the Greek Heroic Age - the imaginary time when the great myths were set - to life. The archaeologists' discoveries of Bronze Age (2300-700 BC) artefacts made it clear that the Greek myths and epic poems preserve the traditions of a Bronze Age society, and may refer to actual events of that time. The story could also perhaps represent an age of Greek colonisation around the shores of the Black Sea.

Echoes of Plato's Atlantis By Dr Iain Stewart

Introduction

Quite why a story written 2,500 years ago by the Greek philosopher Plato continues to capture the public imagination is a mystery in itself - a mystery fed by countless books, films, articles, web pages, and now a Disney cartoon. It has spawned a rich populist sub-culture (much of it internet-based) which pits the passions and imaginations of committed 'Atlanteans' against the orthodox analysis of the scientific mainstream.

Part of the contemporary appeal of the Atlantis story has no doubt been fed by scientists. Historians, archaeologists and geologists have also entered the debate to contest the various literary, historical or geographical elements of the story. Currently - following Bernhard Zangger's new book presenting the archaeological case for Troy as the true inspiration for Atlantis - we have the BBC Horizon documentary 'Helike - The Real Atlantis' staking the same claim for the Classical Greek city of Helike. Atlantis, it seems, remains a very bankable media product.

So what do we actually know about Atlantis and its demise?

So what do we actually know about Atlantis and its demise? The answer is not much. Plato's story comes to us from two short pieces, Tinnaeus and Critias, believed to have been written in the decade or so before his death in 348 BC. In these, he presents an apparently true account of an ideal society that existed many millennia before the Classical Greek times in which he was writing.

According to Plato, Atlantis was a great island (larger than Libya and Asia combined) in the Atlantic Ocean, but its control extended beyond the 'Pillars of Heracles' into the Mediterranean as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia (Italy). Its powerful and remarkable dynasty of kings arose directly from Poseidon, god of sea and of earthquakes, though this divine and heroic lineage gradually became diluted by mixing with mortal stock.

The resulting degeneration of this noble civilisation led it into a war with its former ally, Athens, and culminated in its cataclysmic destruction, which Plato dates as 9,000 years previously. Of the destruction itself, Plato simply notes, 'Some time later there were earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence, and in a single dreadful day and night all your life [ie, Athenian] fighting men were swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis was similarly swallowed up by the sea and vanished'.

While the bulk of Plato's account of Atlantis details its physical and political layout, its location and the nature of its destruction warrant only a few hundred words. It is a meagre foundation for the weight of subsequent theories and speculations on which the modern controversy is based.

The Fall of the Minoan Civilisation By Jessica Cecil

Volcanic explosion

Three and a half thousand years ago, the tiny Aegean island of Thera was devastated by one of the worst natural disasters since the Ice Age - a huge volcanic eruption.

This cataclysm happened 100km from the island of Crete, the home of the thriving Minoan civilisation. Fifty years after the eruption, that civilisation was in ruins. Did the volcano deliver a death blow to the Minoans? It's a whodunnit that has haunted historians and scientists for decades.

The lost world of the Minoans has intrigued people for thousands of years. Their palace at Knossos was vast and elaborate, with Europe's first paved roads and running water. The ancient Greeks wove its magnificence into their myths; it was the home of King Minos and his man-eating bull, the Minotaur, which roamed the palace labyrinth.

In the 1900s, British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans excavated and restored the ruins at Knossos. Beautiful and delicate frescoes of bulls and dolphins revealed a highly artistic civilisation and a people who apparently lived in harmony with nature.

Early 20th-century archaeologists knew of the devastating volcano and some concluded it must have snuffed out the Minoan civilisation almost instantly. But was it really as simple as that?

Beautiful and delicate frescoes of bulls and dolphins revealed a highly artistic civilisation and a people who apparently lived in harmony with nature.

For a start, they discovered little ash had fallen on Crete - as luck would have it, the prevailing winds took the volcano's ash in the opposite direction. Then archaeologists found clay tablets that proved the Minoan civilisation survived for about 50 years after the eruption. So if the volcano killed the civilisation, what accounted for this long gap?

Vulcanologist Floyd McCoy, from the University of Hawaii, has been inspired by volcanoes since his childhood on the volcanic islands of Hawaii. His passion is the most romantic volcano of all time - Thera. He went on a journey of discovery, gathering evidence from other scientists around the globe, to try answer this question: was there a connection between the eruption of Thera and the end of the Minoans on Crete?

His journey started on the island of Thera. It was home to thousands and a flourishing trading post for the Minoans until disaster struck. So massive was the volcano it had an extraordinary effect, preserving forever the town of Akrotiri.

Mysteriously, no skeletons have ever been found on the island. Akrotiri's chief archaeologist, Christos Doumas, believes the people of Akrotiri didn't survive, and that the bodies are still to be uncovered, huddled at the harbour where they were trapped by the eruption as they waited to escape. He believes it's highly unlikely that scores of boats were waiting in the harbour to save them

Alexander the Great: Hunting for a New Past By Professor Paul Cartledge

Many-sided hero

It seems there have been many Alexander the Greats - as many as there have been serious students of him as man, hero and/or god. There are two main reasons for this multiplicity and plasticity. First, and more poetically, the great leader's achievements - both in his lifetime and posthumously (the Alexander myth or legend) - are simply staggering. Second, the original narrative sources that survive for Alexander are mostly either very non-contemporary (eg Plutarch's biography of c.100 AD, and Arrian's narrative history of a little later in the second century AD), or very skewed by partisanship - pro or con, or both.

In the past there have been those who saw him as essentially reasonable and gentlemanly, or dynamic and titanic, or Homerically heroic. But the recent trend has been decidedly negative, emphasising variously his conquering bloodlust, his megalomania, or alleged alcoholism.

But the recent trend has been decidedly negative, emphasising variously his conquering bloodlust, his megalomania, or alleged alcoholism.

Here I hope not to err on the side of gratuitous mudslinging, in my search for clues to the mainsprings of Alexander's character. But I do lay stress on his grand passion for hunting game - human as well as animal, and the bigger and more dangerous the better. Such macho feats offered him the chance to enhance his standing in the eyes of his subjects, as well as to ensure an impressive reputation into posterity.

The Democratic Experiment By Professor Paul Cartledge

What's in a word?

What's in a word?We may live in a very different and much more complex world, but without the ancient Greeks we wouldn't even have the words to talk about many of the things we care most about. Take politics for example: apart from the word itself (from polis, meaning city-state or community) many of the other basic political terms in our everyday vocabulary are borrowed from the ancient Greeks: monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy and - of course - democracy.

Greece was a collection of some 1500 separate communities scattered round the Mediterranean and Black Sea shores "like frogs around a pond".

The ancient Greek worddemokratia was ambiguous. It meant literally 'people-power'. But who were the people to whom the power belonged? Was it all the people - the 'masses'? Or only some of the people - the duly qualified citizens? The Greek word demos could mean either. There's a theory that the word demokratiawas coined by democracy's enemies, members of the rich and aristocratic elite who did not like being outvoted by the common herd, their social and economic inferiors. If this theory is right, democracy must originally have meant something like 'mob rule' or 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

Lord Elgin - Saviour or Vandal? By Mary Beard

Controversy

During the first decade of the 19th century the agents of Lord Thomas Elgin (British Ambassador to Constantinople 1799-1803) removed whole boatloads of ancient sculpture from Greece's capital city of Athens. The pride of this collection was a large amount of fifth-century BC sculpture taken from the Parthenon, the temple to the goddess Athena, which stood on the Acropolis hill in the centre of the city.

The Parthenon sculpture included about a half (some 75 metres) of the sculpted frieze that once ran all round the building, plus 17 life-sized marble figures from its gable ends (or pediments) and 15 of the 92 metopes, or sculpted panels, originally displayed high up above its columns.

These actions were controversial from the very beginning.

These actions were controversial from the very beginning. Even before all the sculptures - soon known as the Elgin Marbles - went on display in London, Lord Byron attacked Elgin in stinging verses, lamenting (in 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage') how the antiquities of Greece had been 'defac'd by British hands'.

Others enthusiastically welcomed the arrival of the sculpture in London. John Keats penned a sonnet to celebrate 'Seeing the Elgin Marbles' in the British Museum, and from Germany, JW Goethe hailed their acquisition as 'the beginning of a new age for Great Art'.

Critics and Critiques of Athenian Democracy By Professor Paul Cartledge

Invention of political theory

One of the indispensable words we owe ultimately to the Greeks is criticism (derived from the Greek for judging, as in a court case or at a theatrical performance). Another is theory (from the Greek word meaning contemplation, itself based on the root for seeing). An early example of the Greek genius for applied critical theory was their invention of political theory, probably some time during the first half of the fifth century BC.

The first concrete evidence for this crucial invention comes in the Histories of Herodotus, a brilliant work composed over several years, delivered orally to a variety of audiences all round the enormously extended Greek world, and published in some sense as a whole perhaps in the 420s BC. The evidence comes in the form of what is known as the Persian Debate in Book 3.

According to the writer's dramatic scenario, we are in what we would now call the year 522 BC. The mighty Persian empire (founded in Asia a generation earlier by Cyrus the Great and expanded by his son Cambyses to take in Egypt) is in crisis, since a usurper has occupied the throne. Seven noble Persians conspire to overthrow the usurper and restore legitimate government. But what form of government, what constitution, should the restored Persian empire enjoy for the future? That at any rate is the assumed situation. In hard practical fact there was no alternative, and no alternative to hereditary autocracy, the system laid down by Cyrus, could seriously have been contemplated. So what we have in Herodotus is a Greek debate in Persian dress.

An early example of the Greek genius for applied critical theory was their invention of political theory...

Three of the seven noble conspirators are given set speeches to deliver, the first in favour of democracy (though he does not actually call it that), the second in favour of aristocracy (a nice form of oligarchy), the third - delivered by Darius, who in historical fact will succeed to the throne - in favour, naturally, of constitutional monarchy, which in practice meant autocracy. The main interest for us centres on the arguments of the first speaker, in favour of what he calls isonomy, or equality under the laws.