Professor J. Rufus Fears retells the lives of the remarkable individuals—the statesmen, thinkers, warriors, and writers—who shaped the history of the Roman Empire and, by extension, our own history and culture.

Like the authors who serve as sources for this course—Livy, Polybius, Suetonius, Tacitus, and above all, Plutarch—Professor Fears believes that individuals, not organizations or social movements, are the primary forces that make history.

"It doesn't take an Einstein to understand modern physics," says Professor Richard Wolfson at the outset of this course on what may well be the most important subject in the universe.

Relativity and quantum physics touch the very basis of physical reality, altering our common-sense notions of space and time, cause and effect. Both have reputations for being bewilderingly complex. But the basic ideas behind relativity and quantum physics are, in fact, simple and comprehensible by anyone. As Professor Wolfson points out, the essence of relativity is summed up in a single, concise sentence: the laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion.