How are the Greeks going?

How are the Greeks going?

I have finally finished the first book after a month. It's going slow but it's very fun.

Starting to read bibliotheca now.

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do you have the pic without your scribbles? I decided to get my fix of more modern classics out of the way before the greeks, all I have downloaded is mythology.

>How are the Greeks going?
pretty good. just finished the Iliad, waiting on my other books to arrive in the mail.

this being said can anyone compare Mythology and Bibliotecha?

pretty good for me too.

i'm waiting on Republic to be delivered tomorrow, but i've made my way through 5 dialogues and a bunch of plays, and i'm reading the Cambridge Companion to Plato which is helpful and interesting. before, i just started out of a feeling of 'i have to do this to dig deeper into literature and philosophy' but now I'm liking it a lot.

Totally different. Hamilton intentionally makes her book easy to read, includes not just myths but very basic insights to Greek culture and values that they provide, and also cuts out a LOT of minor details and less interesting myths that will frankly make Apollodorus a real pain. He's only like 130 pages of actual text but he is so dry that the book is often terrible to get through.

With that said it is undeniably useful if you intend to read more fictional Greek content, drama especially.

PS the ride never ends. Get out while you can. I've been on "the Greeks" (i.e., the ancient world in general) for like 15 months and I'm nowhere near feeling like I've read enough.

>PS the ride never ends. Get out while you can. I've been on "the Greeks" (i.e., the ancient world in general) for like 15 months and I'm nowhere near feeling like I've read enough.

not OP but why not just read the important Greek texts instead of them all.
>inb4 they're all essential. From your experience how do you feel after reading soo much? do you feel you understand their point of view better? basically what have you gained after all that reading?

Because it's hard to know what the important ancient texts are without reading them first. In hindsight you can contextualize everything you've read and consider whether or not it was worth the time you spent on it, but that's impossible to decide before reading, without just taking someone's word for it. Obviously stuff like Homer is a no-brainer, but how do you decide which Platonic dialogues to skip? Which of Euripides' many plays? Maybe you read Thucydides, but do you try out Xenophon?

I definitely wouldn't say all the texts are essential, but almost everything you read will have at least some value to it, if only in reinforcing what you already know. Whether that's worth the opportunity cost of spending time to read it is a different question.

>how do you feel after reading soo much? do you feel you understand their point of view better? basically what have you gained after all that reading?

It's exhausting and daunting but satisfying. I've probably read more Roman history than I have any other single subject/genre from the ancient world, and find myself very easily making connections to it when reading histories from the modern world, and identifying common elements of humanity that go beyond the immediate circumstances of a specific historical event.

In short, it's fun, and definitely lays down a foundation for further reading and thought, just like it's supposed to do, by providing you with some of the earliest examples (history) or most stark portrayals (drama) or most basic investigations (philosophy) of human nature that will come up in absolutely every single other thing you read. How highly you value that ancient foundation is up to everyone to decide for himself. For all the time it's taken me, and will take me, I've had a blast and feel like I've learned and grown a lot.

thanks for your input good sir. I will keep it in mind when looking for the next ancient text i choose to read. I guess no time is wasted reading the genius of the ancients.

>m'big chart
Kys