How much of 'the Greeks' meme have you actually read?

I've read none of the Greeks

Plato
Homer
Sophocles
Aristophanes
Thucydides

I'm restarting with the Greeks soon.

Requesting an extensive list in an appropriate order, ideally with the essentials highlighted.

Thanks.

>Why does someone unironically read 2400 year old historians?
Do you really think people ironically read 2400 year old historians? Is irony a buzzword to you? There's more than one kind of irony, and the Greeks will explain them to you

Herodotus is a really great story teller. He tells better stories than your m8 who went to Thailand.
>modern historians
Modern historians thought Herodotus was lying about a lot of shit, and that's why it took us until this millennium to work out where 50,000 Persians vanished to.

You're operating on the idea of the modern historian which is that history = transmission of facts, pure and simple. This conception of history was foreign to the Greeks, who thought that the study of history could teach something universal.

You should read the first 20 paragraphs or so of both Herodotus and Thucydides, where they lay out their goals. Herodotus wanted to preserve great deeds, so that they would not be forgotten. His book also contains a wealth of information on different cultures and passages inquiring what it means to be a human being, what is the nature of freedom, is democracy preferable to tyranny, why or why not, etc.

Thucydides wrote on the Peloponnesian War because it was the greatest war of his time and, he thought, revealed, in extremis, the nature of human beings. He thought that it would prove useful (in what way, exactly, is debated in the literature) to future thinkers. Future thinkers have agreed with him. The first translation of Thucydides into English was done by Hobbes, who called Thucydides "the most politic historian who ever wrote," i.e., he read Thucydides not as a "historian" in the modern sense, but as a political philosopher. More recently, Thucydides came into vogue again in the Cold War, because US/USSR conflict seemed to mirror the Athenian/Spartan conflict (democratic, sea-faring, mercantile society vs. a militarized, land-based, closed society).

What I've read and is currently on the shelf (there's more but I don't have them on the shelf). I learned ancient Greek and most of these were read in both original Greek and English.

Pindar (Pythian), Demosthenes (Corona), Homer (Iliad, Odyssey, Homeric Hymns), Aeschylus (Orestia, Prometheus Bound, Persians), Sophocles (Theban plays), Herodotus (Histories), Euripedes (Medea, Hippolytus, Bacchae, Trojan Woman, Electra, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Alcestis), Thucydides (History of the Peloponnesian War), Xenophon (Hellenika), medical writings of Hippocrates, Aristophanes' complete plays, Plato's complete dialogues, Aristotle's selected works, Epicurus (letters, The Principal Doctrines), Epictetus (Enchirdion), Greek mathematicians (Pythagoras, Euclid, Appolonius of Perga, etc), New Testament, Graffito.

There's a few secondary source material that I have as well.

Good post, thanks

All the major Pre-Socratics and Sophists, all of Plato's dialogues, including letters and works of dubious authorship, Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione.

Not much, I know. But I'm making steady progress.

Its okay. I'm 24 and i've read the republic and book 1 of nicomachean ethics. Took me three months to get through the republic, I found it hard to absorb unless I cut out an hour or more at a time to read.

I don't think i'm gonna make it, you surprising men.

*only read

Jerry Mcpherson's 6 tomes of "Understanding the greeks through a Lacanian Gaze"
Most of Plato and Aristotle, including most of the Stagirite's apocriphal tomes that deal with early Dionysian mystics (about 4 tomes in total)

Also red "Understanding Hegel through Parmenides and George W. Bush" by John Albatross

Homer
Herodotus
Thucydides
Most of Xenophon
Wrapping up all the tragedies now
All of Plato
Pindar
Aesop
Homeric hymns
Hesiod
Theognis
Planning on Aristotle soon, although I've already read huge chunks of the Latin tradition and Roman-era Greek writers like Dionysius, Dio Cassius, Polybius, and Appian, and I'm hoping to get through all of Plutarch (lives and moralia) after Aristotle and the Bible.

The ancient world is so fucking cool.

describe your political views.

Same except im 19. I can't read any Plato unless I have over an hour of time to read and think of it in one go

Homer, half of Plato, Xenophon's Anabasis, Aristophanes, Hesiod

The Theban plays.

Best work of literature I read this year.

Republic is one of platos harderest dialogues, and is the most various in topics it covers. It's been argued that most of his later dialogues are him expounding on what he said in the republic, which is why its correctly used as a centerpiece for his philosophy. Don't feel bad
...148 poster here: I haven't aligned myself much with any political philosophy yet. A lot of my social and economical views would probably be considered progressive / liberal, but I consider myself to have a lot of conservative tendencies.

I'm completely apolitical, though, if I had to choose to favor a political system it would be absolute monarchy.

if you want to be, i think youre good dude

I read a bit of thales