/clas/ - Classical Greek and Roman Literature Thread

>Wants to Read (Any modern western philosopher)
>Cant because hasn't read Platon
>Cant because hasn't read Homer
LUL

Anons, please.

I have a pretty good grasp on philosophy, I just want the greek structures and idea patterns

You don't need to read Homer in order to understand Plato. You'll miss some references here and there, but ultimately it's not that important, especially if you get an edition with footnotes.

>You'll miss some references here and there, but ultimately it's not that important,
opinion discarded.
Please don't give me any more (you)s.
Thx!

Currently a classics student at uni. Reading catullus and the aeneid. Translating aesop, virgil and petronius

Not an argument.

Let me make it clearer for you then:
You are a pleb.
Arguing with you is worthless.
Bye bye!

Not an argument.

t. Has never read Platon

Does anyone have any books about how the monarchy of Rome worked?

Thanks for finally adding my Romans chart, OP

How's aesop? Never tried in the original. I'll be reading Petronius this upcoming semester for the first time too. You doing any work you're proud of / excited about?

Agreed. Probably just someone who copied their intro to phil syllabus reading list or something.

Myth of Er, for those curious. It's one of Plato's most famous and fascinating stories. I'd assign it on its own for a class on "myth" in ancient philosophy.

Any reason why, besides they came first? Greek lit and thought heavily influenced Roman and later most western lit that we all love; it would be very difficult to make the same argument for the Egyptians.

Depends on your speed (obviously), but the plays/dialogues move very quickly and you can easily finish in one sitting. If you are only interested in "vocab and phil," skip reading them altogether and just read Stanford encyclopedia entries on the thinkers you're interested in.

tldr yes. More fantastic stories as well; more fun all around

fuck off with your gatekeeping; of course reading is more productive if you do more of it, but the idea of "necessity" is idiotic for those not formally studying a subject. If someone has an interest in a book, telling them to read something else often serves only to frustrate and push students away. Read what you want first; when you realize how much better that book is in conversation with others, read the others.

I'm new to philosophy reading but already read some epics, including the Iliad and the Odyssey. I just got the complete works of Plato, but really don't want to read everything before getting to the Republic. What besides the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo should I read first?

Is Hesiod's Theogony essential? What about his 'Works and Days'? After reading Hamilton and Bulfinch what I enjoyed the most were the creation stories, but mainly for enjoyment. I'm not interested in the serious and somber sludge of holy gospel from another era.

Basically what I'm looking for is more like the Homeric Hymns but less like dry Apollodorus. I won't set a high standard, I'll welcome any recommended works from antiquity, provided they're written as prettily as Ovid's.

Yes and yes. Although Hesiod is considered dry, he sometimes becomes pretty beautiful, especially in W&D.

Favorite book in the Odyssey?

have read homer, hesiod, complete aeschylus and almost finishing complete sophocles. this year my goal is to focus on nonfic, to read euripides and aristophanes, herodotus and thucydides, euclid, archimedew, apolloniud and nicomachus, and finally plato and aristotle.

Reading "Mythology" by Edith Hamilton. Is that a good enough primer before going into Homer?

oh fug username checks out lmao :DDDD

>tfw finally finished The Histories

It started lurching the longer I read it, by the last chapters I was just trudging through out of habit. It was still rewarding to read it, and now no other classical work will seem as long in comparison, I got some gain out of it.

But now I need to fucking scream and do some pleb shit like video games for a bit.

And then I'll only have Thucydides, The Anabasis, The Theban Cycle, The Argonautica, some more myth afterwards, Diogenes Laertios, the socratics proper, so I can move on to Livy and Gibbon while simultaneously reading 1 other book about early modern history or classic English fiction

The ride NEVER ends

>And now no other classical work will seem as long in comparison
>Thucydides
"And then the Athenians sent six ships, five from Lesbos and one from Euboea against the Ambriocans to support their friends the Thrachymacheans whom they had an alliance with since the year in which Osydecles won the olympic games."

Start with The Apology

Aristophanes bores me

>Spartans are assholes and their women are sluts!!
Real classy, Eurypides.

Delphi Complete Works of Plato or pic related?

I followed this and found it helpful.

That chart is not half bad. For the abbreviated version, I'd just assign the Apology, the Crito, and the Symposium before the Republic, but there's nothing really "wrong" with starting wherever you want. I know Veeky Forums has always loved its progression charts, but like I said above, follow your interests and you'll always go further.

He rarely is assigned to undergrads, even in more advanced mythology classes -- this may be because his language is eclectic and few profs want to teach him though. I got little out of the theogony in English (haven't read the Greek), but one of my peers is writing his dissertation on it so who the fuck knows. Clearly there's a lot there; try it and when you get bored, move along. Unfortunately, very little literature is "written as prettily Ovid's."

6 (intro to Nausicaa), 9 (favorite part of Od's stories), 17 (Eumaus & Od's dog), 21-end (fight and reconciliation)

Yes. It will be fun! Don't worry about "missing stuff;" it's not like you'll only be thinking about / reading Homer once.

Don't play vidya. You know you'd rather read. Don't give in to the worst parts of yourself. There are more books that you want to read than you have life.

Then don't read him. Pretty good chance you're reading a lame translation / don't really grasp why he's so important as an author. What are you reading? (and english or greek?)

>Athenians insulted people with whom they were at war and whom they considered lesser thinkers and writers than themselves? No way!

I have literally never seen anyone -- undergrad, grad student, professor, random person on the subway w/e -- with one of the Delphi classics editions. I can't comment on their quality because I haven't read them, but their unpopularity is striking.

>I have literally never seen anyone -- undergrad, grad student, professor, random person on the subway w/e -- with one of the Delphi classics editions. I can't comment on their quality because I haven't read them, but their unpopularity is striking.

That;s because it's only sold as an ebook. I guarantee that they're widely read in universities today because the translations are all in the public domain. I don't know why you feel the need to respond to so many people when you don't know what you're talking about and have nothing useful to say. You're just replying for the sake of replying.

Id love to if I could find any book other than "the book of the dead " that actually exists.

I'm convinced they couldn't write.

Trying to help m8. I know they are ebooks, but why you purchase and use something in the public domain when Perseus.tufts is free? The only reason one has to purchase Classics texts are the commentaries

Why be a dick when you could just make a point?

>This is a reminder to read Plato's myths

Many of these can be found in the inexpensive
"Plato: Selected Myths."

global.oup.com/academic/product/selected-myths-9780199552559

>this year my goal is to focus on nonfic

All ancient literature is non-fiction though.

have read SPQR, looking to pick up some proper Roman lit now, what would you recommend? I'm sketchy on going for Plutarch since I believe I'd need benefit more from being taught Plutarch, but I'm definitely picking up Meditations.

>I'm definitely picking up Meditations

You'll get a lot more out of Epictetus.

>buy The Histories
>figure it'll be written something like some other dense Greek philosophies
>I can handle The Republic, and there's no way its as dense as Aristotle, I got this

>by page 2 I feel my brain begin to melt out my fucking ears
How was this written at all
Holy fuck

>have read SPQR

If you want more popular takes, consider Tom Holland. I'm listening to the Persian Fire audiobook right now, and it's very good. Mary Beard on the other hand, I don't like.

Discourses first or Enchiridion? I know Meditations are basically a journal of one practitioner of a heavily distorted philosophy, but I consider having been the fucking Emperor of Rome a pretty good sell for Aurelius' writing.

What translation do you have? I got the one by Aubrey De Selincourt and I'm enjoying the shit out of it.

The way I understand it, Beard is an intro to Rome for people who have no knowledge base while Holland is more about contextualizing the vast ocean of information about periods of Roman history into a comprehensible logic. I'll probably pick up Holland's Roman writing after I fill in the blanks in my own knowledge.

>Discourses first or Enchiridion?
Discourses

>the fucking Emperor of Rome a pretty good sell for Aurelius' writing
Don't get me wrong. I like Marcus. By all means get the Meditations, but his self-reminders aren't nearly as meaty as the teachings of Epictetus put to word.

...

Selincourt. It's not that Its difficult to read, it just blows through paragraphs of information at a glance with absolutely no context. I'll need to find a guided reading or a map to go with the book or something, trying to retain anything in that book by rote is impossible for me.

And here's the image inside the image (woah).

I recommend the Landmark Herodotus for this very reason. Maps help very much.

The link for (What Translation of Homer Should I Read?) is not working. I've read a little of Alexander Pope's translation for the Iliad. Thoughts?

Preview the prose AND the maps of the Selincourt + Landmark versions and decide which you like

Reminder: Early Herodotus is Hard Herodotus because he's assuming familiarity (I mean, obviously, based on the educated Athenian audience he READ the book to) with the common mythology and quasi-history of the Greek world. They all not only knew the tyrants Herodotus is mentioning as legendary figures, they knew them as relatively recent historical figures as well - some in very recent memory. The thing is, it's nowhere near as daunting as it seems - it seems like he's just giving dozens of names of minor figures, but actually all these guys will become quite familiar to you as you learn more about Greek history, and the whole Archaic Age with its various storied tyrannies will become easy as fuck. The real meat of the book, the Persian Wars, actually gets easier than the beginning because it's more of a narrative.

The maps are handy but you may not absolutely need them.

Pope is fine, but he doesn't fit well with contemporary sensibilities. Many now tend to find him overly refined and find that the poetic structure of his translation gives it a certain "cheesy" quality.

Exaclty why should one start with the Greeks? I never got these meme?

Because all of our predecessors also started with the Greeks? How will you understand their allusions if you don't read what they read?

Then what translation would you suggest?

I've read that Pope's has the same sound effects and rythm as of the original, and i liked it more than other prose translations.

I'd say start with either Fagles, Lombardo, or Lattimore.

You could compare a few passages online to see which one you like best.

not him, but Fitzgerald is excellent for a first time read of both of Homer's epics.

using those search terms will not Garner anything, instead search for nepotism since the rules of succession were paraded as equal among all citizens which what a republic offered theoretically..... monarchy was none existent given that Rome was always either ruled by the senate or by a ceasar

Here's the image it's supposed to link to.

What's the best collection of the Homeric Hymns? Also, how much of Greek mythology is only known to us from later (often Roman) writers? I'm trying to read semi-chronologically but it's a bit difficult when most myths aren't told by Greek writers.

To be fair I haven't gotten to the Greek plays yet, does it get better there?

>What's the best collection of the Homeric Hymns?
I'd just get this.

>how much of Greek mythology is only known to us from later

Take a look at this for our sources on Greek myth:

theoi.com/Bibliography.html

Look up the authors to see when they wrote.

He's right, though, and this is coming from someone reading the greeks/romans to a borderline autistic level. Obviously every classic, especially from antiquity, ESPECIALLY classical Greece, will inform much of your subsequent reading. Personally I think that makes most of it worth reading. But if someone sees fit to read Homer, some Plato, maybe Herodotus and a few plays, they'll probably be fine. They'll miss some hints and references, and I 100% agree that it will at least to some degree lessen their later reading experiences, but if someone doesn't love the Greeks there's no need to force them to read the classics in full.

>now no other classical work will seem as long in comparison
m8 there are numerous primary source histories from antiquity easily 2-3x as long and far less approachable
buckle up motherfucker

Just a quick word of advice: don't bother trying to plan so far ahead. It doesn't work, because it can't work, because you haven't yet read the things you're trying to plan around, so you don't know what time periods they'll cover and which ones you'll need to fill in elsewhere. It's easy to whip up a list of 6-10 writers in reference to the Greek or Roman chart, but if you actually diligently read those few you're starting off with, you'll stumble onto references to other interesting, valuable writers as well, whom you may very likely wish to check out.

As a few examples, you might finish Thucydides and realize his books end before telling how the Peloponnesian war ends. Oops. If you want to wrap it up with a primary source, you have to read Xenophon's Hellenika.

Or you might start reading about Rome and realize that the Aeneid is way more important to have under your belt than the Argonautica.

Or you might look at the ToC of Gibbon and realize most of the history takes place after what you think of when you think "ancient Rome." Might want to read some Dio, maybe some Procopius, maybe some Byzantine history.

Or you might read all of Livy (and you should, he's great). Turns out his extant works tell you nothing about Pyrrhus (better read Plutarch) or the first Punic war (better read Polybius), or the perceived moral degradation of Rome after the fall of Carthage (better read Sallust), or the birth of the empire (better read Caesar), but oh fuck even Caesar is just a latecomer in a long series of 1st C BC civil wars (better read Appian) and the empire par excellence doesn't even come about until Augustus (relevant books in Appian lost; obviously outside of the scope of Caesar's books; better read Dio Cassius).

Obviously you don't need to actually read all of these guys. My point is just to take it one step at a time and do not even try to set a 10 book plan or whatever. It won't work. And it shouldn't. If you discover no new, exciting, possibly minor authors along the path of reading Thucydides and Livy, that will be the saddest possible conclusion of the very noble plan that you have so far.

Livy is a shitload of fun, but long
Everyone without a significant background reading history should read Polybius
Sallust is short and interesting and captivating
Caesar is basically a must

IMO either read very specific selections from Plutarch, as in "I want to read about Aemilius Paulus and I don't feel like digging through 2000 pages of Livy so I'll read his 30 page bio in Plutarch." If you want just straight up Roman history and don't know which eras/figures to focus on, leave Plutarch for later: he's surprisingly hard to approach, the original structure of his Lives jumps around a lot between place and time and thus expects you to basically already know the political histories and figures involved; reading the Lives in full is a great capstone to an already-strong historical background in that it revisits a lot of familiar or half-familiar stories with new angles, lenses, and emphases, but it's very light on the political events which act as the backbone for all of the stories.

Loeb's edition is worth it.

Why?

I've read The Gaelic Wars but I just find Caesar's autobiographical style insufferable, its probably more suited to a guided reading or other breakdown for me.

Polybius seems like a good jumping on point for me, my general knowledge of Roman history is incredibly limited, hence why I picked up SPQR. May look into Sallust as well, I remember him being a subject of much interest to Beard as well.

Why does Veeky Forums ridicule Eastern philosophy for being "mystical" and "spiritual" but slobbers over the Greeks, who were polytheists and believed in plenty of mystical bullshit themselves?

>baiting this hard
stop

>actually thinks most Greeks during the age of Socratic philosophies LITERALLY believed in the Olympic pantheon
Why do you post dumb shit like this when you assuredly live in a socially religious, culturally secular country?

>finish the Histories yesterday
>decide I'll have a break for one day, I'll just read a summary of it to reinforce the details for my classical study
>forgot about 40% of the details I read

Is there a fucking point in thoroughly reading the classicals if I'm such a fucking immense brainlet? Totally forgot about the anecdote with the horse or the pretext for Cambyses' invasion of Egypt. Might not seem like much but these are key to joining the historical narrative together. How can I remedy my leaky brainlet?

>disclosing religious mysteries would be punished by death
>Herodotus ascribes the finding of the Plataean victory at Mycale before it was physically possible for tidings to reach them to divine intervention
>Believes or reports an account that no Persians approached the statues of Ceres during Plataea or Mycale
>People sacrificed animals fit for eating to rivers and shit
>Almost any power referred to an oracle to predict a battle

Greekz wuz religious ironically

Reread it

If you think the point of reading is Rote recall, you're an idiot and can't be saved.
Yeah there are specific things you'll need to remember for specific later references, but the larger goal of reading the Greeks especially is to imbue yourself with a comfortable and general familiarity with a wide range of subjects that would become foundations of Western thought.

Having finished Histories, do you find yourself more comfortable with the development of History as a means of scientific enquiry, and the means by which it is used to predict and contextualize the actions of later individuals and populations?

>what is cultural iconography
>what is the legitimization of political power through religious institutional support
HURRRRRR SO CRATES WUZ KILT BECUZ HE HABE PET DEMUN N ZOOS WUZ MAD

please no
uh yes i think

>legitimization of political power through religious institutional support

What use would this have without a religious society? What point are you arguing, that they were agnostics or that they were moderately spiritual and not the bash-stones and dash-wood to worship their rock gods sort of people? Because it seems ridiculous to propose that Greeks were not religious when lavish sacrifices of perfectly serviceable goods were made.

Nevermind that also the Spartands adjourned military relief to Athens at Marathon due to a religious festivity when they showed themselves most eager to aid otherwise even after Athens has proven able to match the barbarians.

You think Greeks would endanger their muh freedomz for a LARP?

>i.warosu.org/data/lit/img/0086/04/1476211635020.jpg
You have read the chart incorrectly.
Politeia Books 1-5 is a random loeb serving as an example of publishers of original texts. If you continued to look at the chart you would have found an image of the complete works of Plato, as well as text recommending that one reads all of Plato.

...

>someone reading the greeks/romans to a borderline autistic level.
Can you tell us about yourself, dear user?

I love this post.

One thing I would stress is that mapping out a sort of outline of ancient authors that truly speak to you can be very fun. You'll also find that authors you thought would be good don't really do it for you.

I'd consider seeking out some anthologies with good intros and notes. I'd also caution not to ignore any genres or time periods. Explore the ancient world as a whole. You'll find all sorts of surprises. Before you know it, you'll be building your own personal canon which you can fill-in and adjust over the course of your life.

>Livy is a shitload of fun, but long

Sadly, we don't have the whole thing.
It would be much longer!

>Of its 142 books, we have just 35, and short summaries of all the rest except two.

Even if you absorb only 10%, it's still worth it.
You'll be reading it again anyways right?

>tfw writing an essay about a certain greek author whom a bunch of renaissance painters borrowed from for the theme of their paintings
can you guess who it's? ps: not ovid

I am a noob
I started like this:

1. Don Quijote
2. Dialogues of Plato:
- Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Gorgias, Menexenus, Phaedo
3. The Republic
4. Meditations - Aurelius
5. The Prince
Next: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud

Why am I like this?

I finished reading Volume 1 of the The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity.

It has made me reevaluate a number of ancient figures

Cicero
I disliked him before. Now I appreciate him; especially as a source for the skeptical Platonism.
His use of the dialogue form is great too.

Ptolemy
I didn't think of Ptolemy as a philosophical figure.
That has changed. I appreciate him a little more now.

Galen
My love of Galen has grown

Philo of Alexandria
Philo is more Greek in his thought than I thought.
I like him more now.

Clement of Alexandria
I knew almost nothing about him before.
I love him now.

Porphyry
Enigmatic as always.
These days, my appreciation is waxing.

Themistius
I had no idea who this guy was.
I really like him.

Hypatia
I like her less now.

Hierocles of Alexandria
My appreciation for Hierocles has deepened considerably.

Basil of Caesarea/Gregory of Nyssa/Gregory of Nazianzus
I thought these guys would be great. I was wrong.

Calcidius
A fascinating figure.
The reception of his work is really strange and interesting too.

Nemesius of Emesa
I wasn't familiar with him.
I like his stuff.

Synesius of Cyrene
New to me.
I really like him.

Augustine
I like him a lot less now.

I got memed into the Greeks and fell in love with them. Been reading Greeks/Romans regularly for almost 3 years. One of the best things to ever happen to me.

Great advice. You're right that planning can be fun; I guess I was really warning against being disappointed when a list falls apart and has to be remade with new information, which happens not just for "the Greeks" but for genres and even single writers among them. Before I started Aristotle I figured I could read him like I had read Plato, and expected I could read 40 pages a day and be done in two months. Literally day 1 of Categories knocked me on my ass and made me scramble to figure out a new method of approach. Probably took me 3-4 months to comfortably establish a method for reading, annotating, and finding/evaluating/choosing/reading secondary sources.

And you're absolutely right, there's a lot of fun to be had, and a lot of surprises to be found. Antiquity is not just something to get out of the way; it's something to steep yourself in and savor.

I haven't read SPQR and I hear it's a bit of a meme, but frankly it might be good for a starting point. There is no single primary source which will give you all the information you need. Livy cuts off early; Polybius strictly covers only 264-146BC. Appian's histories (not the civil wars) are a decent overview, arranged such that Roman history is told roughly "enemy by enemy," i.e., as an enemy comes into contact with Rome, Appian follows their relationship to the end before moving to the next enemy, and so on.

Also Sallust is technically history, but is more valuable IMO as a moralist. You'll see what I mean when you read him; the two episodes he's most known for are relatively minor in Roman history, but his writing is excellent. Quick read, definitely recommend it at some point.

Anyway, I hope you stick with it; there's a lot to be learned, and much of it is tough to get into, but it starts flowing more easily as you go on, and I believe much of it is very valuable. One last tip: When deciding which edition to buy, reference the ToC against the books offered by Loeb (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loeb_Classical_Library) so that you can see if the edition you're considering is complete or selected, rearranged, etc. Many minor writers will be only available in bits and pieces from normal publishers like penguin, oxford. Polybius is one of these (oxford version is like 4 complete books and like 3 fragmented books; penguin edition is excerpts from most of the 40? total books, and even the completely extant books are only presented as selections). Plutarch is particularly notorious for being chopped up and repackaged into countless editions like "the founders of Rome" or whatever. If you buy him, buy the Modern Library 2 vol set (paper or hardback both easily found used).

Hope that helps!

Yeah that's a bummer. I would have loved to read him describe the 1st, 3rd punic wars, and Pyrrhus.

>Many minor writers will be only available in bits and pieces from normal publishers like penguin, oxford.

I found this out again when looking for a complete translation of Pliny's Natural History in English.

It can be had in French at least, but the prices are very high.

To elaborate a little.
I was hoping to find the whole thing in one or two volumes.

At a certain depth into Greece/Rome you need to start buying Loeb editions (English translation) or a similar publisher (I think French has Budé or something like that). Small, pricey books to which there is often no alternative, as you found for Pliny; the loeb Pliny is 10 vol at retail $26 each. Sometimes you can find them used (I got a pliny set for like $100 on abebooks a while back) but usually the prices won't go much lower than $20 a volume.

Second Sophistic is the best Roman period. Loving studying it.

Any recommendations or general pointers?
You can be vague. I don't mind.

Polybius user here, thanks for the link. Delving into multi-volume historical works is ominous for beginners.

Cheers, I totally understand. Polybius is actually what first tuned me into Loebs. Until then I had only read widely published stuff (like Herodotus, Livy), and neither the penguin nor oxford editions of Polybius were clear about how they were arranging the text; after a lot of confusion trying to reconcile the two tables of contents I ended up finding the loeb editions.

Once you know what's up it's easier to keep an eye out for passing mentions of "selections" or "excerpts" but if you're unused to that it's easy to get dicked. Like the penguin Dio Cassius is fucking 10 books out of 80 lmao