Picture what it was like to be a British native under Roman rule. How did you make peace with being subjugated when Claudius subjugated you in A.D. 43? The Romans built cities and showed natives new, more efficient agricultural practices, and protected the island for 365 years. After all that, how would you have felt when they abandoned you?

What are the origins of slavery? Although ancient Greeks didn't invent the concept, they did leave records. You'll discover the range of work slaves did, from performing domestic duties to being worked to death in the mines. Then travel to Sparta, where helot slaves outnumbered free Spartans by as many as 7 to 1.

Experience the world of Roman crime and punishment, law and order. You'll witness crime ranging from midnight muggings to piracy to bandits in the countryside, and you'll discover the variety of punishments meted out in a society lacking prisons - from loss of civic rights and exile to impalement and crucifixion.

As in ancient Greek society, a Roman woman lived on the other side of history under the domination of the paterfamilias - most likely her father or husband - yet examples of love letters and poems offer evidence that loving marriages did exist. This lecture explores wedding rituals, the complexity of Roman women's roles in society, and how opportunities for women differed based on class status.

This lecture takes you into the world of Athenian women, who were subjugated to males all their lives and who rarely left the home except for festivals and funerals. You'll also look at the hetaerae - or female companions - whose lives were relatively independent.

Despite their lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality, some Greeks managed to live to a ripe old age, especially the poets and philosophers, who lived a more sedentary life. Discover the secrets to their longevity, and how you would support yourself in an era without anything like today's retirement systems.

Like the ancient world, the Middle Ages was patriarchal and male-dominated, so a woman had few options - to get married, to become a nun, or to turn to prostitution. But Chaucer's Wife of Bath, the seducer in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and the notion of courtly love all added new dimensions to womanhood.

Could Romans have achieved all they did without the labor of slaves? Imagine yourself as part of the largest slave force in human history, perhaps as an agricultural slave worked to death or as a semi-independent craftsman. Then explore manumission, the process by which domestic slaves were sometimes freed.

The Vikings have always been on the "other side" of history, their deeds recorded only by their victims. In this lecture, you'll get at the truth of this enigmatic culture. While a small number were the raiders we know from other accounts, the Vikings had a vibrant trading culture based on the sea.

Unpack the term "Crusade" and situate it in its cultural context. When Pope Urban said it was the Christians' duty to take up arms against the "infidels," ordinary people were swept up in the idea that they were fighting to save Christianity and their own souls against the advance of Islam.