/CLAS/ Classical Studies Thread

>You will never play boardgames with bare-chested Minoan maidens while they spin you new garments

>Do i need to read the Iliad and Odyssey before anything else?

Homer is a sort of background noise present in every text of the age.
This should come as no surprise. Ancient education was done through Homer.
Think of Christian allusions in early Modern texts, but even more pronounced.
You'll want to read it eventually, but you don't absolutely need to begin with it.
Don't obsess over reading order.

fuck off, i dont care about your old people "knawledge", you are teenage brainlet with an acne

Reminder that Cicero is right about everything.

Tell me about the turtle.
Why does it wear the string?

Lotta swastikas for a hired turtle-wrangler

that’s a sauwastika its not the same as a svastika

Is there an eastern equivalent to the Greeks flowchart? I know the Chinese chart exists but it's more shotgun rather than tactical in its recommendations.

>starting with the greeks
>have now read four secondary source books with a fifth on the way
>still have yet to read any actual ancient greek

But why?

Was being pedantic part of your plan?

>>i.warosu.org/data/lit/img/0086/04/1476211635020.jpg (Essential Greek Readings)

Don't greentext links you fucking retard. Especially don't add text after the line. It makes it so that you have to manually highlight it rather than double click open.

Format like this:

Essential Greek Readings:
i.warosu.org/data/lit/img/0086/04/1476211635020.jpg

I think you'll live

At some point you will need to jump into the deep.
Have you found something you love yet?
Tragedy, comedy, philosophy, history, myth?

CARTHAGO

youtube.com/watch?v=aofPdMbXzUQ

youtube.com/watch?v=ZYCGJ0eCUvw

Well first I read

>Hellenism - Toynbee

As to get the history down, and while it was fascinating at parts it didn't really have the linear history I was looking for. Next was

>Mythology - Hamilton

for obvious reasons followed by

>The World Of Odysseus - Finley

because it was very short and looked promising. Lasty was

>The Trojan War A New History - Struass

which was fantastic. I plan to find next a more straight forward, textbook like approach for Greek history to fill the gaps left by Toynbee (though I'm not sure what yet, any suggestions?). Once I finish that, then I'll read the Illiad and Odyssey, and make my way from there. Probably with Hesiod, though thats still pretty nebulous.

>Wenched

>I plan to find next a more straight forward, textbook like approach for Greek history to fill the gaps left by Toynbee
If you don't mind something short and condensed, I'd consider 'Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times'.

>Overall the text of the book serves as a good brief overview of Greek history that is impressive in scope, topic, and clarity. It is well-organized, well-written, and generally easy to read. The interspersed sections on society, art, and religion break up the narrative of political history in a way I expect will be welcome to the general reader, but when M. resumes his narrative he is always careful to reorient his audience. The book will be useful as a text book for a semester-long course on the history of Greece from Mycenaean to Hellenistic times or as one of several textbooks for an even more general "Caves to Constantine" survey.

I'm reading a history of Greece to the death of Alexander the great by J.B. Bury.
It's great, with a focus on politics and events over art/philosophy/myths.
I am making an ancient Greek timeline to go with it since a strictly linear history is difficult to write about (different timelines overlapping).
I'm also reading Plutarch's Greek lives as I read about each person. It it's significantly more insightful than when I read it with very little historical knowledge..

Imagine!

Looks promising, thanks

I was considering the same book, as it is mentioned in one the OP charts, but from what I can tell its 956 pages? That's pretty hefty, and while I'm not opposed to reading massive tomes like that, I'm not sure in my case it is warranted. I'll still give it a closer look, though.

The edition I have is just over 700 pages, with probably 50 pages that are just pictures.
It's not very complex writing and it reads pretty fast.

I also thought

>The life of Greece : being a history of Greek civilization from the beginnings, and of civilization in the Near East from the death of Alexander, to the Roman conquest - Durant, Will, 1885-1981.

looked good too. Again, that is some 700 pages though. I do like that it goes all the way to the Roman conquest though.

I would just read a short history then read Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon to flesh it out

Can anyone comment on the use of the gerund in this clause:
>nihil hic munitissimus habendi senatus locus

Imagine watching thousands of these guys fight each other from the tall walls of your fortress

Best translation of the Iliad?
Fagles, Lattimore, or Fitzgerald?

Should i just learn Latin and ancient Greek for reading purposes?

What's the goriest, edgiest classic?

The goriest is probably the Iliad

I've enjoyed my time learning them. It will take years to read with any fluency though.

Im also learning Spanish (B1-2 level atm if that means anything).
I suppose that would help a little bit with the Latin?

The massacre of the Athenians during the Sicilian expedition as told by Thucydides was some of the most dramatic non-fiction prose I've read. Not very graphic, though.

It will probably help with vocabulary. I don't know about the grammar though.

All of those are good, you won't go wrong with any of them.

I think I'll go with lattimore, didn't like the great gatsby and fagles seems normiecore.

Fagles and Lombardo are highly regarded.
Lattimore comes in third.
Fitzgerald is no longer widely read.

Not the same Fitzgerald.
kek

>What's the goriest, edgiest classic?
The Eumenides by Aeschylus is spookier than the spookiest horror movie.

Fagles is so juvenile.

who >reck here?

Anyone know why Loeb is re-releasing Seneca's tragedies?

The translations are from 2004, but I see a pair of coming releases in 2018. Something get updated?

>The translations are from 2004, but I see a pair of coming releases in 2018. Something get updated?

that pic looks so cozy

While OP's pic has the "Complete Greek Tragedies" versions for the plays (pic related), are Oxford translations as good or better? I'm also thinking about supplementary information like notes, introduction, etc..

im on nofap bro (nearing 4 mo.)

u must have hella low t bro

I used to wank all the time, like ten times a day even after fucking my girlfriend. But since getting a job, I can barely get relaxed enough to get horny. Even now, I can't understand you fucking weirdos. What do you think will happen, again? You'll get some weird new charisma and pheromones that will attract the ladies?

I reckon all high t. men will wank heaps.

Read a general book on Greek mythology by Richard Buxton and now I'm reading the Iliad translated by Lattimore with a companion book. Gonna read the Odyssey with a companion book next and then Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days. Afterwards was planning on reading the works of the Nine Lyric Poets. Someone recently recommended The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. Any other user think it's worth reading?

>Socrates was gay

You [most likely] won't be able to learn it on your own.

>for reading purposes
If we're talking "reading purposes" as in casually reading easy greek authors without a vis-à-vis translation, and I mean authors like Lucian, Xenophon or Plutarch, we're looking at a good 5 years of constant, nearly daily practice. Reading Homer without a dictionary is considered the final feat, most teachers would say it requires a decade or so to get there.

So were a large number of Roman Emperors and Greek Kings including Agesilaus of Sparta

Redpill me on the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Wrong

Time completely and utterly wasted

>current reading
Mythology (Hamilton)

>future reading
Ancient Greece History (first book in swtg2)
Learn Greek (JAOCT)
The Complete Sherlock Holmes

And then maybe the Illiad

>Questions
What do the colours in the charts mean? Is there a key?

>shutitdown.gif

>What do the colours in the charts mean?
If you can't figure that out by yourself, I don't think there's any point of you starting with the Greeks.

have a book
>Ritual Texts for the Afterlife Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (Graf and Johnston)

Do you guys find Latin or ancient Greek more rewarding?
I enjoy language learning because I like long term projects with slow reliable progression. I want to pick one up.

I find Greek more rewarding since it is more alien.
Latin vocab comes fairly easily, not so with Greek.

Not to mention that Greek uses a different alphabet.

why listen to some youtuber babbling for 15 minutes when you can spend that time reading the actual essay that he is poorly imitating?

biblio3.url.edu.gt/SinParedes/08/Weil-Poem-LM.pdf

can't comment on how the translations compare but the editions in your pic have only very slim introductions and a handful of notes limited to the transmission of the texts. if you want critical commentary then the oxford and penguin ones will be more suitable.

The Symposium is mostly a meme.

Thanks, user.
Just finished downloading it.

Thanks user. Oxford it is!

I'm a loeb fag, I found it most literal and the greek next to it helps,

though loeb sits rightfully in the intermediate section, those who know greek latin perfectly just read the greek text with app crit, those who know very little about the history-culture and language read penguin abridged versions

I do love loeb though, it is heavily underrated

I just bought those same two iliad books.

I've been reading The Consolation Of Philosophy by Boethius recently, and i'm not sure if people would regard that as being too medieval instead of ancient classical but w/e. There is one part of the work i've been thinking a lot about recently, the part in prose 4, book 4 where Lady Philosophy claims that the criminal who is rightfully punished is happier then the criminal who is never punished. I'll post the part below for discussion sake:

(...)'That wicked men are happier when they pay the penalty for their wickedness than when they receive no penalty at the hands of justice. I am not going to urge what may occur to any one, namely, that depraved habits are corrected by penalties, and drawn towards the right by fear of punishment, and that an example is hereby given to others to avoid all that deserves blame. But I think that the wicked who are not punished are in another way the more unhappy, without regard to the corrective quality of punishment, nor its value as an example.'
'And what way is there other than these?'
'We have allowed, have we not,' she said, 'that the good are happy, but the bad are miserable?'.
'Yes.'
'Then if any good be added to the misery of any evil man, is he not happier than the man whose miserable state is purely and simply miserable without any good at all mingled therewith?'
'I suppose so.'
'What if some further evil beyond those by which a man, who lacked all good things, were made miserable, were added to his miseries? Should not he be reckoned far more unhappy than the man whose misfortune was lightened by a share in some good?'
'Of course it is so.'
'Therefore,' she said, 'the wicked when punished have something good added to their lot, to wit, their punishment, which is good by reason of its quality of justice; and they also, when unpunished, have something of further evil, their very impunity, which you have allowed to be an evil, by reason of its injustice.'
'I cannot deny that,' said I.
'Then the wicked are far more unhappy when they are unjustly unpunished, than when they are justly punished. It is plain that it is just that the wicked should be punished, and unfair that they should escape punishment.'
'No one will gainsay you.'
'But no one will deny this either, that all which is just is good; and on the other part, all that is unjust is evil.'
Then I said: 'The arguments which we have accepted bring us to that conclusion. (...)

Now while the logic and argumentation for why a punished criminal is "happier" then the unpunished is fairly simple and understandable, i can't help but wonder how someone can come to the conclusion in the age where horrible punishments like crucifixion existed. There has to be some form of disconnect between the metaphysical idea of "justified punishment" that allows the justification of some of the most grotesque ways of killing another human being. How can he conclude this when he knows what actually happens to a person who meets his end with nails struck through his wrists.

Seven-inch nails hammered through the wrists of the victim so the body weight can be supported by the bones followed by, executioners breaking the legs of their victims to give no chance of using their thigh muscles as support. Once the legs give out the weight would be transferred to the arms, gradually dragging the shoulders from their sockets. The elbows and wrists would shortly follow. The victim would have no choice but to bear his weight on his chest. He would immediately have trouble breathing as the weight caused the rib cage to lift up and force him into an almost perpetual state of inhalation. This is how his life ends, dying from suffocation, in excruciating pain.

I guess i've just read too much Stirner but i seriously can't understand how anyone can look at the reality of punishments in 500AD and still justify the horrible deaths. Was Boethius himself happy when a strong cord was tied so tightly around his head that his eyes bulged out followed by him getting beaten to death with a club? (Boethius own answer to this would be "no" since he was wrongfully convicted of his crimes, but the punishment was still laid out and was just in the eyes of the law).

What do you think boys, have i misunderstood something or can i just not understand the full metaphysical plain of platonism/neoplatonism? What are your thoughts on ancient Greek ethics in relation to punishment and violence?

>tfw Loeb's edition of Boethius is super sloppy even with the latin text

Any other bilingual editions of Boethius or just the Consolations? What's the best translation?

bump

The key is the rightfulness of the punishment.
Was Boethius himself happy to be punished you ask. No, but he would not have seen it as rightful punishment either.

>Bump replies are not necessary.

does Guy Debord have anything to say to any of the Greeks? I think only Diogenes would entertain his idea of Spectacle, but is there another? would Debord be considered an eastern mystic babbling about Maya?

What are the best companion texts to Plato?

What translation of Ovid should I get?
Also what are the best translations for attic tragedy and Aristophanes.

>What's the best translation?

Relihan's translation is held in very high regard by many. It attempts to reproduce the rhythms and meters of the original Latin poems through English accents. It works surprisingly well. Unfortunately, the author chose to mess around with the original to remove sexist language.

I literally questioned my sexuality for a week after reading it.

this pic unironically triggers me

I wonder what you'll get out of Platon without being an aristocrat. It's like reading Epicurus if you don't have any friends, isn't it? As in it doesn't really fit with the philosophy.

As always, there are no perfect answers, but I would look at 'Plato' by Andrew Mason and 'Reading Plato' by Szlezák.

You can find a review for the first of these suggestions here:
bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2011/2011-01-37.html

Elobarate please unless you're shit/funposting, are you saying it's more popular than it deserves to be out of the dialogues?

>What translation of Ovid should I get?
I'd start with this.
It's a nice verse translation with great notes.

>I wonder what you'll get out of Platon without being an aristocrat. It's like reading Epicurus if you don't have any friends, isn't it? As in it doesn't really fit with the philosophy.

No problem.
I'm an aristocrat of the soul.

If you were Longinus, would you become the personal philosopher of Zenobia even if it meant your eventual death?

It's also a pretty literal translation. It's what I read next to the Latin text to understand harder passages.

How do you finish the Greeks?

>How do you finish the Greeks?

Master Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles.
Damascius is the final boss of Greek.