Greeced Lightning

It’s the end of Season 3, and the end of Sara and Sam’s journey through Age of Empires 2. Your hosts speculate about the future of civilization in 2025 while discussing the Peloponnesian War: optimistic peace agreements, ancient plague, a literal bag of dicks, video games as art, and a look back on our highlights of the season.

• Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War

We continue our Age of Empires 2 campaign with the Persian Wars! Join Sara and Sam for ostracism procedures, wily old Themistocles, and Sara’s waning tolerance for podcasting while pregnant.

• Map of the Greco-Persian Wars
• Herodotus' Histories - Books 6-9 cover the Persian Wars.

Back in the Greeced Lightning Game Room, your hosts tackle Part 1 of the Chronicles: Battle for Greece in Age of Empires 2. Join us to discuss Europeans stealing historical treasures, ancient tyrants, and the Ionian revolt.

• Herodotus' Histories - The first several books cover Persian history; coverage of the Ionian Revolt starts in Book 5.

We’re going back to our Greeced Lightning roots and revisiting the Trojan War! Join us for the 2018 series Troy: Fall of a City for the correct usage of chariots, birth plans, Bjӧrk-ified Helen, and distracting bowl cuts.

• Minoan 'Ladies in Blue' Fresco
• The Iliad - Emily Wilson's new translation

It’s Macedonian War time in the Greeced Lightning Game Room! Join Sara and Sam to discuss the Battle of Pydna, layoffs and unions, war elephants, and Total War: Rome II.

• Plutarch, Life of Aemilius - Sections 12ff. cover the Macedonian campaign
• Livy, Ab urbe condita 45.19 - Livy's later account of the Macedonian War
• Polybius, Histories 22.8 - On the origin of the Third Macedonian War, from a contemporary historian

Sara and Sam dive into the wonderful world of Broadway with very hot takes on Hadestown. (Please don’t come for us, Broadway lovers.) After a brief recap of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, we’ll dig into wedding night ceremonies, too many opera adaptations, unionizing, and the trouble with the perfect song.

Sara and Sam upgrade to a Game Room to discuss the city builder game Caesar III. Travel back to the era when “online” was still two words for: surprisingly horny video games, accidental slums, ancient fire brigades, and multipurpose holes.

• Curia Julia - A 1st c. coin showing the curia, or senate house
• Map of Pompeii

Sam and Sara take on Pompey and Julius Caesar’s civil war: populist politics, Cicero’s foibles, the sluttification of a model Roman matron, respect for ancient doctors, and the drama (and nudity) of HBO’s Rome.

• Plutarch's Life of Caesar, 53.4 - An account of Julia's death in childbirth; the following sections cover the political turmoil and growing hostility between Pompey and Caesar in the late 50s BCE
• Roman trepanation - A technical explanation by Celsus, a Roman medical encyclopedist
• Ancient Peruvian trepanation
• Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus - Caesar's account of the two centurions, from his Commentary on the Gallic Wars, Bk. 5.44
• Life of Julius Caesar - English translation of the biography by the historian Suetonius

Grab a slice of cold pizza and pull up a comfy chair: today we’re hanging out in Sam’s Video Game Corner! Sam takes Sara through the development and plot of Age of Mythology: Retold. Discussion includes Plato’s Atlantis, early bedtimes, the collapse of civilizations, and a hard no on ancient aliens.

• The Trojan Horse - Probably the more well-known account, from the Aeneid Bk 2
• Chariot of Demeter - 5th c. BCE vase painting
• Atlantis - English translations of Plato's allegorical myth of imperial hubris

Season 3 of Greeced Lightning is here! Sara and Sam are taking a new approach this season in more than one way. Join us in this episode to break down the myths behind the Netflix original series Kaos, including: Prometheus vs. Zeus, trans people in myth, the dangers of prophecy interpretation, and Hera’s creepy tongue room (yes, you read that right).

• Myth of Er - A story of the reincarnation of the soul from Plato's Republic, Bk 10
• Meander - The real meander: a design, not a divine fountain.
• Caeneus - From Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 12.146ff
• Orpheus and Eurydice - Virgil's take on the story, from the Georgics Book IV
• Aeschylus, PROMETHEUS BOUND - English translation