/startingwiththegreeks/

What's the point of "starting with the Greeks" seriously. You probably don't belong to any cultural sphere where they had any major literary influence like Spain, France or Italy, or South America in an extreme case, because if you were you'd already have enough of hearing about the Ancients and would know about the mythology and literary work.

The truth is, there's no reason to start with the literary Greeks if your cultural heritage didn't have much to do with them. England did try in the XVI and has his unique twist, but that's it and it failed because of their late miserable anti-human worldview. Germans tried too in the XIX.

Anglos have no need to do anything with the Greeks and can just jump to whatever else. Of course if you read philosophy it becomes a lot easier, and that's why retards here are obsessed with Plato and Aristotle, but would just read Metaphysics and call it day, never paying attention to Poetics because first it's not philosophy but lit theory and second because it deals mostly with tragedy and on Veeky Forums reading Greek theatre (and epics) is just a meme to feel smart not to follow cultural links into other literary works that carried on tradition like the Aeneid that nobody here reads, or Spanish literature that constantly references the Ancients ad nauseam. To make things more hypocritical, although many choose Greek philosophy, you never see a glimpse of discussion about Avicena/Averroes around here.

Basically just read the Republic. That's all the "starting with the Greeks" you'll ever need and more than any normalfag ever read in their lives.

I'll only speak to what I know. I read Lattimore's Iliad, and the introduction to the edition I read compared several translations. It argues that Pope's Iliad, while a great feat and a beautiful poem, is terrible in imitating the spirit of the original Greek. When you're writing a long series of couplets in English, every other line is just a clever turn of phrase, which is very different from what the Iliad would have sounded like to a Greek. Besides that, Pope adds whole lines to help his rhymes, extending metaphors and the like, so his translation reads wildly different than the original. The bigger chart calls that the 'preferred translation,' and speaks authoritatively about it without mentioning any of that. Don't blindly follow charts.

>reading Greek theatre is just to feel smart
m8, it's mostly fart and dick jokes, combined with the odd rape. it's like you hate fun.
>the Republic
oh sorry, you do hate fun.

>Don't read the Greeks
Or... hey...

How about we completely disregard your opinion?

That sounds like a much better idea.

>To make things more hypocritical, although many choose Greek philosophy, you never see a glimpse of discussion about Avicena/Averroes around here.
Fuck off mudslime

Light flowchart is great but I think Plotinus' Enneads are important enough that they should also be on there. Unless you consider then Roman.

Things you need to read the Greeks for:

1. Understanding other Greeks
2. Rome
3. Shakespeare and all of Renaissance mostly
4. Spain
5. Spanish colonization of America
5.1. Latin America
6. German Romantics/Nietzsche
7. Autistic literary theory arguments about Aristotle

Because they formed the grounds on which the western canon is based? Because virtually every author has referenced, commented on, or is inspired by them? Because many of the philosophical and literary works are still as entertaining and thought-provoking as modern works?

I've seen other threads suggesting starting with a general overview of philosophy before reading primary sources. What's currently considered the best survey book? I was thinking about Anthony Kenny's New History of Western philosophy. Or is there a new favorite?

Not a great start, read some mythology and Homer and some warmup Plato

Stop calling other people pseuds when you just started

>no point in reading things that link to other works like the Aeneid that nobody here reads
Project harder faggot

Greek/Roman flowcharts don't really touch on neoplatonism. Considering that there's no chart suggesting the Bible, it wouldn't make too much sense to jump ahead to Plotinus.

Wow, so like all of the Ancient world and some of the most influential literary pieces from the modern world? Sounds like a great reason to start with the Greeks.

This.
>yfw you can't even read Milton without having read the Greeks

The Greeks kickstarted Western Civilization. Anglos and Germs may be descendants of barbarians, but they still can find some of their cultural heritage in the Greeks. It's like saying Turks don't owe anything to the Persians.

On the other hand, people here might be "Romanic" (including Romance Europe and Latin America) or Slavic and have had bad education and are trying to educate themselves.

>the Bible
Why would it? Honest question.

>4. Spain
>5. Spanish colonization of America
>5.1. Latin America
>6. German Romantics/Nietzsche
Please explain.

>You have to be X to care about X
I'm a cosmopolitan enlightened 21st century gentleman and if I want to read about the Greeks, I jolly well will.

So you can take your traditionalist nonsense and shove it up your Mediterranean butthole!

>Why would it?

Because once you reach the time of Christ you get neo-Platonism, influencing and being influenced by the Bible and later Christian thought.

The Roman era is a total mess compared to the comparatively streamlined and manageable works of the Greeks, which you can (as we have) put on a few modest flowcharts. The extant body of work from the time of Roman superiority is just overwhelmingly bigger and harder to wrestle with.

For example, classic Greek history is pretty much just Herodotus->Thucydides->Xenophon (and most people don't even reach X), writing one after another about likewise chronologically ordered events. Rome has no similar sequence to follow. If you want to read Rome's history from the beginning, your only choices are 1st century BC historians (Livy/Dionysius), but then one of the era's best historians (Polybius) wrote in the 2nd c. BC, yet a useful writer on the 3rd/2nd centures BC (Appian) lived in the 2nd AD. Toss in the relevant-for-the-first-ever Jewish histories (Josephus) leading up to and revolving around the Bible, and the whole era is a fucking mess.

In short, the Bible hasn't been included in a Roman chart because the whole era is a bitch to deal with. Our fledgling Roman chart is strictly Romans writing about Rome, and so is useful in a sense, but gives an incomplete if not necessarily false perspective of the era in which those historians/poets/orators lived. The Bible would be included if the aim were for a more general "ancient world" chart, which I think would be the only context appropriate for stuff like Plotinus, Plutarch's Moralia, Augustine, early church fathers, etc.

What about Roman history/philosophy after the fall of the Western Empire? Surely that's more streamlined(?).

>no tacitus
>no plutarch apart from biblical context

>herodotus
>ordered
>xenophon
>ordered
uwotm0

Seconding this, what's the connection between the Greeks and Spain/Latin America?

It's "streamlined" in that there's not too much overlap in writers/eras, but beyond that it's actually worse. Empire era Rome is ironically really lacking in primary sources, and draws most heavily on Plutarch, Dio Cassius, Tacitus, and Suetonius, with some minor content on later years from the Augustan Historians, Marcelinus, and a few others. And after the collapse of the Western Empire there's almost nothing that I'm familiar with besides Procopius writing about the Eastern Empire, but honestly that's not my strong suit so I could be wrong about that last point.

One of the main reasons for this is that the scope of the histories is huge compared to classical Greece, which was respectable but not expansive, and had no really long-lasting "empires." Athenian supremacy lasted from ~479-404, where Sparta tenuously picked it up until ~371, and Macedon from ~359 to 323. Compare that with Roman contention for supremacy in the Mediterranean as early as 264 BC (start of first Punic war), sealed in 146 BC (end of third Punic war, sack of Carthage, raze of Corinth, dissolution of Achaean league, subjugation of every Mediterranean state besides a crippled and tribute-paying Egypt), revitalized in 31/27BC (Empire begins under Augustus) and carried on for hundreds of years afterwards.

That was not intended to be a thorough list of Roman historians. Also Herodotus and Thucydides and Xenophon ARE ordered in the sense that each covers (except for X's minor works) events in chronological order with no overlap. Herodotus is legends/Greco-Persian wars; Thucydides is Peloponnesian war from 431-411ish and Xenophon picks up exactly from that point and carries it to 362, ignoring his minor treatises on earlier events.

Bumping, I'd like to hear this answered too

delet this

Wish there was a german version of this chart...

>The truth is, there's no reason to start with the literary Greeks if your cultural heritage didn't have much to do with them.

Phew, then i got every reason to start with the greeks.

Not OP, but good analysis

Here

I have read extensive mythology and have a very good annotated version of The Republic, so even when I don't get a ref it helps me out..

Thanks for the tips though!

So, everyone needs to read the Greeks.

I start with The Bible.

>That was not intended to be a thorough list of Roman historians.
It was supposed to be an argument that the Greeks were easier to order than the Romans, when you can track Roman history through all the ages (including the ones where they're not writing in Latin) and they often give a more ordered overview. They don't.

>Also Herodotus and Thucydides and Xenophon ARE ordered in the sense that each covers (except for X's minor works) events in chronological order with no overlap.
Ah, the Xenophon was just filling out Thucydides argument- if you read more than the opening sentence of Xenophon, you'd know that's bunk.
>draws most heavily on Plutarch
>Empire era Rome
No it doesn't. Early Roman empire historians are already dead by the time that Plutarch's a citizen, and most of the authors, including Caesar, wrote following Thucydides and Herodotus' example. The Golden age of Latin is gone by the time Plutarch is born, and the Silver age is over before he's dead.
We actually have lots of other sources from the return to Greek after those periods, because Plutarch is writing Koine against the Atticising school which he gets compared to, or even Ionian imitations like Lucian's mistaken for Herodotus text. There's so much wrong in this I can't even.
>lacking in primary sources
jesus, if you mean in the period after Plutarch when you get Tertullian, Appian and all the others who went out like Herodotus to these places, just fucking kys.
Also remember that Plutarch based most of Lives on Polybius, so primary sources is a bit rich as your quibble with the rest.
>tl;dr- you're a fucking idiot

>Ah, the Xenophon was just filling out Thucydides argument- if you read more than the opening sentence of Xenophon, you'd know that's bunk.

Xenophon literally picks up exactly where Thucydides left off, and you should be familiar with his decline in historicity after concluding Thucydides' topic and moving on to events after the Peloponnesian war. PS you didn't actually counter my point; untenable smugness isn't an argument.

>early empire historians
>Caesar
>laughinggirls.jpg
Wanna check those dates again there, champ? Seems like an awful lot happened between 44 and 27 BC.

>Thucydides and Herodotus' example
Literally opposing styles of history. You are retarded.

>golden age
>silver age
Nobody is talking about literature you dip.

>if you mean in the period after Plutarch when you get Tertullian, Appian and all the others who went out like Herodotus to these places, just fucking kys.

Name some sources providing similar insight to the empire as Livy, Polybius, and the like did for the Republic, besides the ones I already listed.

>Appian
Yeah he lived in the empire, too bad literally zero percent of his work mentions the empire. Have you even read Appian? Are you just reading a wiki page of primary sources and mistakenly inferring that each of these guys is writing history contemporary to himself? This was my entire point: Not only do we have fewer sources as the empire goes on, not all of them write about the empire. Appian? No. Dionysius? No. Plutarch? A little.

>Also remember that Plutarch based most of Lives on Polybius, so primary sources is a bit rich as your quibble with the rest.
>most of the lives based on only Roman events spanning a mere 118 years
>no pre/post Punic war sources
>no Greek sources
Are you dumb?

The most annoying part about this argument is that you actually seem to know a lot, and I think I would have really enjoyed talking with one of the few other people on this board who have heard of, let alone read, these historians. But now we're just flinging shit.

>Xenophon literally picks up exactly where Thucydides left off, and you should be familiar with his decline in historicity after concluding Thucydides' topic and moving on to events after the Peloponnesian war. PS you didn't actually counter my point; untenable smugness isn't an argument.
You know when I said if you read more than the opening sentence, you'd see how that's bunk? Well, when you then tell me "b-but but he literally says in the first sentence I'm picking up where something else left off" as your refutation, it tells me you haven't read more than the opening sentence, or any of the arguments as to why it's not a continuation which can be easily found in any scholarship. Not understanding that someone has counteracted your argument before they make it doesn't excuse your level of smugness; I'm fine though because I'm actually informed.

>Wanna check those dates again there, champ? Seems like an awful lot happened between 44 and 27 BC.
>Point out even the outliers who don't do this for a job follow the Greek example
>he takes this as an argument that history only existed during Caesar
Jesus, the level of idiocy you need to ignore the foundations of Roman historiography to pretend they only start writing a quarter of the way into the period, I can't even.
Early Empire starts with the fucking Empire, not after the first ten starter Emperors who you apparently think don't count. It seems like a who bunch of shit happened before where your historiography picks up with shit designed for school boys.

>Literally opposing styles of history. You are retarded.
Literally the styles which inspired Roman historiography before and after Plutarch. You're the retard who thought it was modelled on Plutarch, once they got over that starter period of not having historians for nearly a century, kek.

>Nobody is talking about literature you dip.
You retard, people were writing Latin history before Plutarch's Greek synopses. Even in Latin, they follow the styles of Herodotus and Thucydides both before and after Plutarch. You'd know this if you weren't a retard, but literature includes history and historiography, especially in Rome where historiography was a political exercise (see: Livy and Pliny advising the foundations of the form)

>Name some sources providing similar insight to the empire as Livy,
You know, I think it's great you shit on Caesar as a source because of his dates, but you're willing to accept Livy as early Empire. It shows a real lack of fear of becoming hypocrite.
You're also only dropping Roman historian names once I've listed them, so why don't you try knowing some Roman historian names before I bring them up if you want to convince me you know them. I brought up Polybius as a source for Plutarch, so I don't see why you're quoting the section after Plutarch, or why you think you brought up Polybius when I brought him up as a counter point to your idea Plutarch is one of our few primary sources kekekekeke

>Yeah he lived in the empire, too bad literally zero percent of his work mentions the empire. Have you even read Appian?
The guy who wrote a history of Rome and the introduction of various people's to the Empire didn't write a thing on the Empire? I think it's probably more you only heard of the five books of the civil wars and want to discount anything about Octavius as "he was only emperor later lol". Even you just read the bit where he's defining the edges of the Empire, which we use to date his work, you'd know you're a tit.

>Also remember that Plutarch based most of Lives on Polybius, so primary sources is a bit rich as your quibble with the rest.
>most of the lives based on only Roman events spanning a mere 118 years
>no pre/post Punic war sources
>no Greek sources
Are you dumb?
I know you're trying to find a way that Plutarch isn't a secondary source to Polybius, but you need to be smart enough to build a time machine to make that happen.

Ive read Homer ,Hesiod, Plato (his most important works sans Laws), First Philosophers, Mythology and now I am reading Herodotus 200 pages in. After I'll read Thucydides and after ill either go to the tragedies or revisit Plato. Probably tragedies and start Plato again before going into Aristotle again but weill see. Herodotus + Thucydides is like 1500 pages so...

Loving it so far. I wish I found Plato earlier in my life.

>tfw you started with the Greeks but can't get past Homer.

I've read the fagles and Latimore translations twice each. Gonna read Fitzgerald eventually.

My point about Xenophon is and from the beginning has been that he chronologically picked up from Thucydides. That is undeniably true. By all means try to prove otherwise. I don't give a fuck about his shift in tone or historicity after 404 BC; that was never my point and you know it.

>Early Empire starts with the fucking Empire

Um, yeah, exactly. You know when that was formed? 27BC. Maybe you read some Penguin-rewrapped book on Suetonius and think that Caesar was emperor, but he wasn't.

>You're the retard who thought it was modelled on Plutarch, once they got over that starter period of not having historians for nearly a century, kek.

Are you intentionally being dense? When did I say Plutarch was a "model" for anything? I said he's one of few major sources for the empire; whether he's truly "primary" or otherwise, he passed on to us information that would otherwise have been lost. Whining that he's not a true primary source when "secondary source" generally refers to far more modern scholarship just makes you an annoying pedant.

>I think it's great you shit on Caesar as a source because of his dates, but you're willing to accept Livy as early Empire. It shows a real lack of fear of becoming hypocrite.
Caesar died in 44BC, before the empire was formed. Livy lived until 17AD. I also never said Livy was a source about the empire. You are literally blaming me for the failures of your own argument by trying to pin blame on me for thinking that writers living in the early empire wrote about the empire.

>You're also only dropping Roman historian names once I've listed them
Let's see your Greek/Roman book collection then. Are you seriously bragging about referencing Polybius, who is literally referenced in footnotes of other historians as "needing no introduction"?

>I don't see why you're quoting the section after Plutarch
Because you said we have plenty of sources about the Empire. Please name the ones besides the major ones I've listed (Tacitus, Suetonius, Dio, Plutarch). Share your bountiful knowledge with us.

>The guy who wrote a history of Rome and the introduction of various people's to the Empire didn't write a thing on the Empire?
You mean the guy who wrote a history of people within the Empire UP TO THE CIVIL WARS and then wrote about the civil wars, and whose work doesn't even reach the final dissolution of the second triumvirate? Yeah, that guy. Pic related, eat shit.

>Um, yeah, exactly. You know when that was formed? 27BC. Maybe you read some Penguin-rewrapped book on Suetonius and think that Caesar was emperor, but he wasn't.

>he believed Cicero about the tyrant thing
>claims there's no ordered history of Rome, and wants to cut off one of the beginning primary sources
>earlier wanted to claim Livy's fine for the republic even though Livy's history is secondary since a whole bunch of it deals with ~700BC
You're the one who keeps bringing up Suetonius, btw.

>Are you intentionally being dense? When did I say Plutarch was a "model" for anything? I said he's one of few major sources for the empire;
He's not though. He's working off the long history before him of primary and secondary sources. The works you picked are not major sources for empire: they're intro summaries culled from actual sources, who you want to poopoo so Plutarch can be a major source.

Plutarch is a major turning point, but not for the reasons you think. His Koine rewriting of things already logged by the wealth of historians before him sets the tone for Koine writing afterwards; in this way it's similar to how Ovid rewrote in Latin what had already been collected in Greek by Antonius, thus defining the style of his era of Latin. He is not one of the few major sources for the empire; he's the schoolboy compilation of the actual sources, the reader's digest of the historians preceding him.

>I also never said Livy was a source about the empire. You are literally blaming me for the failures of your own argument by trying to pin blame on me for thinking that writers living in the early empire wrote about the empire.
You thought he was a good source for the Republic, so I was kinder in my misreading to you than I should've been. In response to a question about if you're talking about historians after Plutarch like Tertullian, you thought Livy on the Republic being mentioned would prove what?This gets really hilarious because if you're counting Livy, contemporary to Caesar and the Empire, as just a writer on the Republic to get you "Roman historian" points, I'm going to have to point out that you told me Caesar was a no good example for being too early for empire and call in Livy is no good for being before Plutarch. The question you responded to was about after Plutarch if you want to be a little bitch.you'll have difficulty getting what I meant by the Cicero thing; don't worry, it's a good joke
>Are you seriously bragging about referencing Polybius, who is literally referenced in footnotes of other historians as "needing no introduction"?
Babby, if I wanted to brag, I'd've addressed more than thinking Plutarch's a source for more than schoolboys. Like, if I wanted to twist the knife
>>no Greek sources
I think you meant by this that I implied Plutarch, by using Polybius as a source, used no Greek sources. :3 Livy is a source for empire btw, and you did only hear about the 5 civil war books. :33

The Appian thing I just can't get over because you're really insistent he doesn't talk about empire, when it's in the opening pages. It's *all* the opening pages.

Me.
Aristotle's Poetics is still useful for insight on writing.

You make a good point with regards to Plutarch, but the rest of your comment is a fucking mess of obstinate reiterations of stuff I've already addressed.

>continuing your pedantry of primary/secondary sources
Name true primary sources from the ancient world. Xenophon, Caesar, Cicero... Hardly a treasure trove. I have already said that most ancient writers are not "true" primary sources and, again, that is exactly my point about the early empire: we have a serious lack of sources, secondary let alone primary. You still have shared with us literally zero other sources.

> if you're counting Livy, contemporary to Caesar and the Empire, as just a writer on the Republic to get you "Roman historian" points, I'm going to have to point out that you told me Caesar was a no good example for being too early for empire

Yeah, because Livy wrote about the Republic, and Caesar wrote...about the Republic. So that would make them both good sources about the Republic...and would make them bad sources about the Empire...Are you fucking stupid?

>Livy is a source for empire btw
Livy may have been a source on the empire one day, for, oh, I don't know, maybe those secondary source authors you apparently love to vilify. But I know you know none of his books about the empire are extant.

>and you did only hear about the 5 civil war books.
lmao what. Are you retarded?

>The Appian thing I just can't get over because you're really insistent he doesn't talk about empire, when it's in the opening pages. It's *all* the opening pages.
You really underestimate how autistically specifically I remember Appian's opening pages. Does he mention the empire? Yes, absolutely. "The empire is bigger and longer lasting than anything the Greeks ever made" and so on. His mentioning the empire and writing during the empire does not make his books about the empire. His books about other countries lead up to and culminate in the Roman civil wars, and his account of the latter subject doesn't even see the matter through. His schtick with the foreign nations is to familiarize the reader with the peoples conquered by Rome, but it is in no way a history of them or even of Rome during the empire.

"The order of these histories with respect to each other is according to the time when the Romans began to be embroiled in war with each nation…the foreign wars have been divided into books according to the nations, and the civil wars according to the chief commanders."

>Name true primary sources from the ancient world. Xenophon, Caesar, Cicero... Hardly a treasure trove.
This is what happens when you read for style instead of for facts. Plutarch isn't as good a source as Polybius (except where we're missing books) because Polybius extensively lists his sources. It's like trying to compare Diogenes Laertius to Plutarch as source god I realise he won't get that, but a miracle would be nice
>Yeah, because Livy wrote about the Republic, and Caesar wrote...about the Republic. So that would make them both good sources about the Republic...and would make them bad sources about the Empire...Are you fucking stupid?
oh yeah I forgot we don't track Hitler's Germany before they voted him in. You need to know about Caesar to understand any of the early Empire and most of the key players from a point of view which isn't post Cicero's fudging through of "the Empire only starting with Caesar's heirs". It's not like everybody died when Caesar couldn't write about them. They went on to form the Empire.
>Livy may have been a source on the empire one day, for, oh, I don't know, maybe those secondary source authors you apparently love to vilify. But I know you know none of his books about the empire are extant.
It's almost like you think I'm saying Plutarch is a secondary source to Polybius because we still have those Polybius books. That couldn't be right though, because you know, right, that Plutarch's Philopoemen (which isn't even the original o.o) is our main source for Polybius' probably more annotated version? fuck you're so basic you don't even know why all these "thx polybius" references are noteworthy in sourcing

>lmao what. Are you retarded?
No, it's just that if you opened the books of Appian's Roman History to the start, you'd think a bit more about saying he literally never mentions the Empire. Because you wouldn't want to look like a complete idiot and have people laugh and point if they did the same thing and found out the intro is all about the Empire. It would be worse if I'd mentioned that's how you can date his work. His opening is all about how he's required to outline the current empire for the reader having any chance of understanding it. So, no, I don't think I'm being autistic when the author specifically states "it's necessary to basic understanding to mention the empire" to say maybe you didn't read or didn't understand somehow that there was mention of the empire. Maybe if you didn't retardedy mouth off that Appian literally never talks about empire, it would be less awkward that he spent his whole intro on it.

Spain has a Greek motif right there in their fucking flag. The Hercules' columns sitting at each side of the Gibraltar strait with the "nihil ultra" warning, only modified later to "plus ultra" to reflect the existence of America beyond the safe waters of the Mediterranean sea. In the Aeneid, Aeneas finds Ulysses shade in the underworld because Virgil added to the Odyssey story by making Ulysses go on an adventure again after arriving in Ithaca, crossing the Gibraltar strait and thus dying on the uncharted waters of the Atlantic since it was dangerous going beyond that point.

This is only one reference. Spanish playwrights during their Golden Age constantly referenced Ancient mythology and works. The most retarded peasant in Spain knew who Dido was or what the figure of the swan represented in Greek tradition, because theatre drama for entertainment wouldn't stop using these things (because playwrights were cultured as fuck). Shakespeare knew about Aristotle and Greek tradition by other means also (Italian translations), but the British later opted out in favor of le science and empiricism and cold hard facts because feelings and sympathizing with your fellow human beings is a women's thing. Shakespeare then was lost in time until German Romantics rescued him and saw in him his powerful delivery on human issues and practically meme'd him into what he is today. But the Germans meme'd about many things, the Greeks among them also.

I should clarify I meant
>It's almost like you think I'm saying Plutarch is a secondary source
and that is a bad thing.

I'm not trying to vilify secondary sources; they aren't a bad thing, but Plutarch as a major source isn't right apart from where he's copied things now lost, and where you can, you ought to read who he's quoting and we still have a lot of those sources through other means.

Nietzsche then in his youth studied the Greeks and went to write Die Geburt der Tragödie and the whole apollonian/dyonisiac shit.

As for South America and Spanish colonization, Spanish conquistadors were required (literally, the official documents are called Requirements) to write letters to the King detailing their work as a bureaucratic measure to keep things in order in the New World. The conquest of America is a little bit too complex, but the worldview of the Greeks was still strong by that time and there was also the medieval Christian tradition, resulting in a weird mix of both which was the norm during the Renaissance.

Obviously the Spanish knowledge of the Ancients passed with them to America with a lot of elements of other shit namely Jewish and Muslim culture. Native Americans didn't have much of a say wether they liked Greeks or not because their own cultures and people were nuked out of this plane of existence almost entirely.

Latin American architecture in the begining was always outright Neo-Classical with some Arab architecture influence thanks to their Spanish heritage.

I knew about the Gibraltar thing, but I fail to see how Spanish culture was more influenced by the Greeks than, say, French or German culture.

The fact that the USA founding father were huge Hellenaboos (and Byzaboos) during its inception should highlight the fact that it wasn't just a Mediterranean thing.

Is there some sort of equivalent "Start with the Persians" or "Start with the Chinese"?

There's a image of Chinese works. I don't have it, but read these:

The Four Great Chinese Novels (Google em)

Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy - Ivanhoe & Van Norden

>The Four Great Chinese Novels (Google em)
Journey to the West, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Suikoden (Water something) and the fourth one not many people care about.

Anybody should know these just from cultural osmosis.

Do you mean this? I was hoping something more like a flowchart. It's also weird it starts with four novels written last millennium when there's stuff written before China's unification under the Qin.

What about Persia? Not enough surviving works? I know there's Shahnameh and Rumi's poems, but both date from after the Arab conquest.

Forgot my image.

>Shakespeare then was lost in time until German Romantics rescued him

Oh come on, this is ridiculous. "Lost in time"? He never went away in England. Johnson's commentaries came out before Schlegel was even born.

I've read Mythology, Homer, Hesiod, Sappho and some Pindar, Oresteia (plus some commentaries on each, which took much longer than the actual works) and now I'm in the middle of Sophocles' Theban plays. Everything so far has been great to amazing, and lots of fun to boot.

I guess I could say I'm almost a pseudo-non-pseud now.