Old Western Culture (Roman Roads Media)

Old Western Culture is Wes Callihan's four-year video course through the Western canon. The Greeks, The Romans, Christendom, and Early Moderns, published by Roman Roads Media. It is the most ambitious Great Books video curriculum in the classical homeschool market, and it is what happens when a classical teacher with thirty-plus years of close reading is given a camera and told to keep going for twelve hours per unit.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Classical, literature-based, video-led Great Books seminar
Worldview	Christian-reformed (Protestant classical; Reformed / Presbyterian editorial framing with engagement across the Christian tradition)
Grades	9-12; most commonly a single year per course across four years of high school
Formats	Streaming video and DVD, student workbook, teacher guide, reading list of primary texts (most available in public domain)
Cost tier	Premium
Parent intensity	2
ESA-common	Yes
Accredited	Not accredited as a standalone program; can satisfy portions of high-school English and history credit depending on family's records
Established	Roman Roads Media founded 2008; Old Western Culture series released progressively from 2013 onward
Website	romanroadspress.com (published as Roman Roads Press; legacy URL romanroadsmedia.com)

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	5	Callihan teaches primary texts at a depth most undergraduates do not encounter
Ease of teaching	5	Video does the teaching; parent role is discussion partner and grader
Content quality	5	The lecturing is the core product, and it is exceptional
Flexibility	3	Designed as a sequence; individual years stand alone, individual units less so
Value for money	3	Premium pricing; complete four-year stack runs over $1,500
Worldview scope	3	Christian-reformed editorial framing is present; worldview-neutral or non-Christian families will notice it
Visual/design	3	Production is competent if modest; Callihan at a desk or in front of a shelf of books rather than high-production-value documentary
Support resources	4	Workbooks, teacher guides, exam materials; community forum and Roman Roads Academy as live-class alternative

Who the publisher is

Roman Roads Media, rebranded in recent years as Roman Roads Press, is a classical Christian educational publisher founded by Daniel Foucachon in 2008 in Moscow, Idaho, within the broader classical-Christian educational ecosystem associated with New Saint Andrews College and the Logos School. The publisher's catalog includes a range of classical Christian titles, primarily focused on literature, philosophy, and classical languages, with Old Western Culture as its flagship high-school product. The publisher's About page outlines its editorial mission and the lineage of the Old Western Culture project.

Wes Callihan, the course's author and lecturer, is a longtime classical educator and former instructor at the Logos School in Moscow, Idaho. He spent decades teaching literature, history, and classical languages in classical Christian school settings and in a small homeschool tutoring practice called Schola Classical Tutorials. Callihan's reputation in the classical homeschool world is specific: he is a close-reading teacher, with deep familiarity with the Greek, Roman, medieval, and early modern primary texts, and a particular gift for making older texts readable to contemporary high-schoolers without dumbing them down. Old Western Culture is, in effect, Callihan's four-year high-school literature and history seminar recorded on video.

The course is divided into four years: Year 1, The Greeks; Year 2, The Romans; Year 3, Christendom (medieval literature through the early Reformation); and Year 4, Early Moderns (Reformation-era through the nineteenth century). Each year is subdivided into four units, typically Epics, Drama, Histories, and Philosophy for the first two years; comparable thematic divisions for the later years. Each unit contains twelve lectures, workbook exercises, exams, and an extensive reading list of primary texts the student is expected to read alongside the video.

The core pedagogy

Old Western Culture is a Great Books video seminar in the older sense of that phrase, before the term was appropriated for reading-list marketing. The pedagogy is simple and deeply traditional: the student reads primary texts, watches Callihan lecture on them, and engages in written and (ideally) oral discussion. The lectures are substantive. A typical lecture runs forty-five to sixty minutes. Callihan sits at a desk or in front of a bookshelf with the primary text open, and he teaches. He reads passages aloud, analyzes them, places them historically, connects them to what came before and what will come after, and raises questions the student can return to in written work.

Three pedagogical commitments anchor the course:

(1) Primary texts first. The course does not teach about Homer; it teaches Homer. The student reads the Iliad, reads the Odyssey, reads the Aeneid, reads Virgil and Dante and Augustine and Milton and the rest, in reputable English translations, at full length. Callihan's lectures assume the reading has been done; the lectures illuminate and deepen what the student has already encountered on the page.

(2) Close reading over coverage. A twelve-lecture unit on the Greek Epics spends substantial time on the Iliad and the Odyssey rather than surveying a dozen poems rapidly. Callihan's instinct is to slow down, read a passage carefully, and explicate it, not to race through a reading list.

(3) Christian engagement with the canon. The course is explicit about its Christian-reformed editorial framing. Callihan teaches as a Christian, engages pagan and Christian texts from that perspective, and interprets the Western tradition within a providential-historical framework. He does not caricature non-Christian voices, and his readings of Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, and Marcus Aurelius are substantive and respectful; but the lectures include theological commentary that a secular or non-Christian course would not. Families and students of different traditions use the course widely. Catholic and Orthodox homeschoolers in particular find Callihan's treatment of Christendom-era literature valuable, but the editorial frame is clearly Reformed Protestant.

The student workbook accompanies the lectures with discussion questions, comprehension prompts, and exam preparation. The teacher guide provides answer keys for the workbook, suggested essay topics, and assessment rubrics. Exams at the end of each unit test comprehension of the primary texts and the lecture content. A homeschool parent without background in Western literature can serve as grader and discussion partner by working through the material alongside the student; many parents who start as graders end up as co-students by mid-course.

A day in the life

A tenth-grader working through Year 1: The Greeks, the Epics unit, opens the Iliad at the beginning of the week and reads the assigned books, typically one to three books of the epic per week, before watching the relevant Callihan lecture. Reading takes substantial time; a week's Iliad assignment may require two to four hours of reading across several sessions, especially for students who are new to Homeric Greek epic. The student then watches the lecture, forty-five to sixty minutes, streamed on a laptop or tablet, once, typically with the text at hand to follow Callihan's page references.

After the lecture, the student opens the workbook and completes the unit's written work: short-answer comprehension questions covering the primary text, vocabulary or glossary work on Greek terms Callihan has introduced, and sometimes an essay prompt that connects the week's reading to earlier material. Total student time per week: five to eight hours, roughly half on reading and half on lecture-and-workbook.

The parent's role is flexible. Some parents watch the lectures alongside the student, discuss the reading over dinner, and grade written work against the teacher guide. Others treat the course as largely independent high-school work, reviewing completed workbooks weekly and discussing exam results. A few families co-op the course, with several students watching the lectures together and discussing the reading in a weekly gathering; Roman Roads Press offers a Roman Roads Academy live-class option for families who want a real instructor-led cohort version of the course.

What they do exceptionally well

Callihan's lecturing. The core value of Old Western Culture is the lecturing, and the lecturing is exceptional. Callihan is the kind of teacher who makes a fourteen-year-old start caring about the Iliad in a way that persists. His close-reading instincts, his ease with the primary texts, and his ability to move between the specific line and the larger tradition are genuinely unusual. A student who completes all four years of Old Western Culture has heard a classical educator teach the Western canon for roughly 192 lectures across approximately 150 hours of video. This is a substantial body of instruction from a single teacher, and the teacher is very good.

Depth over coverage. Old Western Culture's deliberate slowness is a strength. The course refuses to race. Students finish the Greeks year not having surveyed Greek literature but having actually read and thought carefully about the Iliad, the Odyssey, the major tragedies, the histories, and the central philosophical texts. The resulting literacy is deeper and more durable than what a coverage-oriented Western Civ survey produces.

Primary-text commitment. Few high-school literature courses assign students to read complete major works from the Western canon. Old Western Culture expects the student to read Homer, Virgil, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Dante, Milton, and others in full, in reputable translations. The reading load is substantial; the resulting encounter with the texts is substantial as well.

Ecosystem depth. Roman Roads Press publishes companion products (supplementary guides, reading lists, classical-language programs) that fit with Old Western Culture, and the publisher maintains a community and a live-class academy option for families who want more than the self-paced video-and-workbook model. The Roman Roads Academy offering in particular gives students the option of live cohorted discussion rather than fully solo study.

What they do poorly

Premium pricing. At approximately $329-$369 per year-course (four units) for the streaming version per the publisher's current pricing page as of April 2026, with student workbooks sold separately, a family completing all four years across high school spends approximately $1,400-$1,800 on the core course materials alone, not counting primary-text purchases (many of which are available free in public domain). This is at the top end of homeschool high-school humanities pricing. Families for whom budget is a central constraint may find the cost hard to justify when much of the primary-text reading could, in principle, be done with a free reading list and a classical-literature commentary.

Production values are modest. Callihan lectures from a desk or in front of a bookshelf. There are no animated reconstructions of Troy, no drone shots of the Acropolis, no high-production-value documentary inserts. A student who expects video production at the level of a BBC or PBS documentary will find the production flat. The lecturing carries the course; the production does not.

Christian-reformed editorial framing. Callihan is clear about his theological commitments, and they shape his readings. Catholic, Orthodox, and secular families can and do use the course, but they will encounter moments, particularly in the Christendom year, where Callihan's readings of medieval or Reformation-era texts reflect specifically Reformed Protestant commitments. This is not a flaw for families aligned with that framing; it is a real consideration for families seeking a worldview-neutral Great Books course.

Demanding reading load. Students who cannot commit to four to six hours of serious primary-text reading per week will not succeed in Old Western Culture. The course assumes a student who can and will read a book of Homer in a sitting, an Augustine chapter carefully, a Platonic dialogue with attention. For a struggling reader or a student without strong high-school reading habits, the course is too demanding without substantial parent scaffolding.

Not a transcript-ready packaged course. Old Western Culture does not come with grade reports, transcript-ready credit documentation, or accreditation. Families record completion as literature and history credit in their own high-school transcripts; the course supports this well via its workbooks and exams, but parents are the ones assigning grades.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Old Western Culture if: you want a serious high-school Great Books course and you can budget for it; your student is a capable and willing reader of long, difficult texts; you are classical-Christian or classical-aligned and comfortable with a Reformed Protestant editorial framing, or you are broadly Christian and willing to engage Callihan's framing from a different theological perspective; you want genuine depth over coverage; you want one of the strongest video-humanities courses in homeschool publishing.

• Skip Old Western Culture if: your budget cannot absorb premium high-school humanities pricing; your student is not yet ready for primary-text reading at volume; you want a worldview-neutral or secular Great Books course; you want a course with transcript-ready grading or accreditation; you want high-production-value documentary content rather than instructor-at-a-desk lecturing.

Cost honest assessment

Each year-course. Year 1 through Year 4, is sold as a bundled package of four units. Streaming access runs approximately $329-$369 per year-course per the Roman Roads Press pricing page as of April 2026. DVD-box-set options run comparably or slightly higher as a one-time purchase. Student workbooks are sold separately at approximately $30-$40 per unit, or $120-$160 per year-course if all four unit workbooks are purchased new. Teacher guides add approximately $20-$30 per unit. A full year-course with student and teacher materials runs approximately $480-$560.

A family completing all four years of Old Western Culture spends approximately $1,900-$2,250 over the four-year high-school span on the core course materials. Primary texts are additional but typically available cheaply or free via public domain; estimate $100-$300 for the full four-year reading list in physical copies.

Compared to Angelicum Academy's Great Books Program (a live-class Catholic Great Books program at approximately $500-$1,000 per year depending on enrollment level), Old Western Culture is more expensive per year-course but delivered as self-paced video rather than live class. Compared to Wilson Hill Academy or Veritas Press Scholars Academy (live-class classical Christian high-school humanities courses at approximately $700-$1,200 per year per course), Old Western Culture is actually less expensive per year and more flexible in pacing. Compared to a free Great Books reading list paired with a free commentary or public-domain-critical-edition approach, Old Western Culture is dramatically more expensive, the value proposition is Callihan's lecturing and the structured workbook-and-exam apparatus.

An all-in cost for one student completing a single year-course of Old Western Culture with new materials: approximately $450-$560. Across four years: approximately $1,900-$2,250, plus primary-text reading costs.

ESA eligibility notes

Roman Roads Press is approved on several state ESA marketplaces that permit classical or Christian materials. Because Old Western Culture is a content-rich classical high-school course, it is generally welcomed on ESA platforms in states that permit Christian classical curriculum. Arizona's ClassWallet, Florida's Step Up For Students, West Virginia's Hope Scholarship, Iowa's Student First Scholarship. Some state ESA programs restrict religious materials or require specific accreditation standards for high-school credit-bearing programs; families in those states should verify eligibility within the specific state marketplace before ordering. Streaming video subscriptions are permitted on some ESA platforms and restricted on others, families may be able to elect DVD format instead where that matters.

Alternatives

• Angelicum Academy's Great Books Program, a Catholic family would choose Angelicum over Old Western Culture when they want a live-class Socratic Great Books program with an explicitly Catholic editorial frame and live weekly discussion rather than self-paced video.
• Wilson Hill Academy, a family would choose Wilson Hill over Old Western Culture when they want live-class classical Christian humanities with a broader Christian (not specifically Reformed) framing, teacher-led grading, and a cohorted learning experience.
• Hillsdale College's free online courses, a family would choose Hillsdale's free Western Heritage or Great Books courses over Old Western Culture when budget is the primary constraint and they are willing to trade the structured workbook-and-exam apparatus for a free-standing lecture series at a shorter total length.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Roman Roads Press catalog at romanroadspress.com in April 2026, including the Old Western Culture product pages for all four year-courses and sample lecture excerpts and workbook pages made available by the publisher. We cross-referenced Callihan's biographical and teaching history against Roman Roads Press's published descriptions and third-party classical-Christian homeschool discussion, verified pricing for streaming and DVD options along with student workbook and teacher guide pricing, and confirmed the availability of the Roman Roads Academy live-class alternative. Prices and program details verified April 2026.