Over the past two months, Ralston College’s MA students made Greece their classroom, moving through the landscapes, texts, languages, art, architecture, and sacred places that birthed and shaped the Western intellectual tradition.
Beginning on Samos, students attended lectures and seminars on Homer, falling in love with philosophy, the Athenian miracle, the survival of the classical tradition, Pseudo-Dionysius, Heraclitus, and Parmenides.
Their studies ranged across nearly three millennia of thought and literature. On-site and seminar readings included selections from Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales; Alexandros Papadiamantis’ The Gypsy Girl; Aristotle’s Poetics; the letters of Bessarion; Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata; Michael Critobulus’ Histories; Dio Chrysostom’s Orations; Doukas’ Histories; Epictetus’ Discourses; the letters and orations of Gemistos Plethon; Nicephorus Gregoras’ Roman History and letters; the fragments of Heraclitus; Herodotus’ Histories; the Hippocratic Oath; Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; the Homeric Hymns; Longus’ Daphne and Chloe; Marsilio Ficino’s Proemium in Plotinum; the Orphic Hymns; Pausanias’ Descriptions of Greece; Plato’s Apology, Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Republic; Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s Mystical Theology; Pythagoras’ Golden Sayings; Strabo’s Geographica; Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War; and extensive passages from the Gospels, Epistles, and Revelation.
And much of the term's activity took place beyond the seminar room. On Samos, students visited Panagia Makrini, Kallithea, the Cave of Pythagoras, Platanos, a traditional boatmaker, the Tunnel of Eupalinos, the Heraion, and the Monastery of Megali Panagia, and participated in the grape harvest at Sevasteika.
From Samos they traveled to Patmos, visiting the Cave of the Apocalypse, the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian, and its museum; then to Ephesus, encountering its library, theatre, museum, the House of Mary, and Basilica of St John; and onward to Constantinople, where they visited Hagia Sophia, Hagia Irene, the Hippodrome, the Basilica Cistern, the Chora, the Archaeological Museum, and the ancient walls.
The journey continued through the Peloponnese and mainland Greece: Dimitsana and the monasteries of the Lousios Gorge, ancient Gortys, Epidaurus, Mycenae, Nafplio, Mystras, Olympia, Galaxidi, and Delphi, before concluding in Athens, with visits to the Acropolis and Acropolis Museum, Agora, and National Archaeological Museum.
Throughout the term, texts were encountered alongside, and often within, the very landscapes, monuments, works of art, and traditions from which they emerged—bringing poetry, philosophy, history, theology, art, and architecture into conversation with the living world of Greece.
And alongside all of this, our students learned Ancient and Modern Greek.
This is not a light or easy program—and this is just the beginning. Soon, the adventure begins anew in Savannah, where our students will continue their studies for three more terms.
