Kostenlose Vorlesung der Yale University

Reenactors like us are oftentimes actually amateurs in their respective fields of knowledge. This means the majority of us hasn't gone through an academic study in history or a comparable field. Instead, we acquired the knowledge about our impressions ourselves. To create an accurate view of a historical period, many sources have to be researched with great effort. An university course, however, has the advantage that one can learn from the knowledge of a seasoned professor and thus already start with a good view of the period and  a knowledge where to focus further research. This makes the courses of the famous Yale University a blessing for aspiring reenactors.

The university offers a few selected of their normal courses in their program Open Yale Courses. This program allows everyone to access recordings of the normal courses online. Of course, you have to be able to understand English to gain anything from it. Especially interesting for us is their course "Introduction to Ancient Greek History" by Prof. Donald Kagan. Prof. Kagan is a well-known expert for ancient Greece in the US. He is introduced on the courses website as follows:

Donald Kagan is Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale University. A former dean of Yale College, he received his Ph.D. in 1958 from The Ohio State University. His publications include The Archidamian War, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, Pericles and the Birth of the Athenian Empire, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace, and The Peloponnesian War. In 2002 he was the recipient of the National Humanities Medal and in 2005 was named the National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Lecturer.

Video and audio recordings of all 24 sessions of the course are available at the site linked above. Additionally you can download text transcripts. The course covers the time from the emergence of the Cretic/Minoic civilizations to the beginnings of Hellenism and thus should be a great starting point for anyone wishing to know more about ancient Greek history.

Even if you already know about the topic, I highly recommend his introduction as to why we should study ancient Greek history.