Everybody says start with the Greeks, but where does one start with the Romans?

Everybody says start with the Greeks, but where does one start with the Romans?

In Rome, obviously.

With the Greeks, obviously.

Honestly, Boethius and Prudentius. Afterwards, go into the Medieval age.

Plutarch and Livy

Any good books on "the romans" before they absorbed the greek culture?

Plautus

You know what they say... when in rome

Vergil and Ovid are the only real essential Latin authors, but if you want more depth:
Lucretius
Horace
Livy
Caesar (Gallic War)
Seneca

I am sick and tired of this. Every day I come to Veeky Forums, and every day there is at least one thread up with an OP image of an attractive old man dressed sharply and posing seductively. It's probably the same one or two people who do it honestly. Let me tell you something, you faggot pieces of shit who are doing this: you are the poster child for everything that is wrong in literature, art, and society as a whole today. You are incapable of coming up with anything creative, thought provoking, or of substance, and you lack even the smallest modicum of intelligence, so you use "style" and "class" and "respectability" in place of it and to draw attention to yourself, because that's the only way your SHIT "creation" and ideas would ever get seen by anyone. And before you say anything, this has NOTHING to do with the fact that I am an hormone addled teenager. Anyway, I will be petitioning the owner of this website to ban your asses, so enjoy being able to post here while it lasts, because it's not going to last long, just like you that one time you convinced your Old English teacher to let you fuck him.

Cicero is good for understanding republicanism and his writings are relevant to American political thinking, at least the founding fathers

is this fresh pasta, or am I just out of the loop

With learning Latin obviously.

For this reason:

«Nun ve montate la capoccia, e ricordateve chi sete. Ma quale civiltà, romani? Pe' tirà su 'na casa che nun fosse 'na catapecchia avete dovuto ricorre a li greci (però prima je avete dovuto mena'). I ritratti, le pitture a sguazzo, i pupazzi de marmo e de bronzo, li nonni morti a mezzo busto... quelli ve li sete fatti fa' da li etruschi (a forza di sganassoni). Quanno, poi, s'è trattato de scrive' du righe de storia patria, avete dovuto pija' in ostaggio 'n artro greco, Polibio, perché a Roma quello che sa scrive' mejo, sì e no, sa fa la firma. Dice "C'avemo Plauto che scrive le commedie!"... un par de ciufole. Ma che scrive Plauto? Plauto copia, copia le commedie dei greci e dice che le ha inventate lui. Per cui, 'a giovanotti, io ve sto pe' dà 'na gran brutta notizia: tutta 'sta civiltà, 'sta coltura vostra non è altro che bottino de guerra.»

Romans are overrated tripe, recommend just skipping them

No discernable talent

Saving this, ty

kek

>Poets
Virgil, Aeneid
Ovid, Metamorphises
>Historians
Polybius, Histories
Livy, History of Rome (specifically books 20-30 on the second punic wars)
Suetonius, Twelve Caesars
Josephus, Jewish Wars
Plutarch, Lives
>philosophy
Lucretius, Nature of Things (highly recommend)
Cicero
Seneca
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Augustine, Confessions

da che film è tratto?

>poetry
Catullus

>History
Tacitus

>philosophy
Boethius

Cosa c'é una catapecchia? Ho capito che le romani sono ladri, però

Why bother? He will post it in every thread already.

All good advice.

There's a lot more Roman era content than there is Greek. The Greek chart, which all but exhausts classical Greek lit, has a Roman parallel which is a mere introduction, really just a taste of Rome.

You can and often should argue that Roman writers of many if not most genres weren't as good as their Greek counterparts, but they're still good, and you can spend ages reading them. To Greece's Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, you have Livy, Tacitus, Polybius, Appian, Sallust, Caesar, Dionysius, Dio Cassius, Plutarch, the Augustan histories, Suetonius, Marcellinus, and a few others. The volume is just outrageous compared to Greece.

So what you read depends on what you want to know. Every writer offers something different, and may or may not be worth reading accordingly. Livy can give you a taste of the glories of the Republic; Sallust can show you Rome's degeneration after the fall of Carthage; Polybius can show you the Punic wars; Appian can show you the civil wars; Caesar can show you the 1st person camp and battlefield; Tacitus can show you the struggles under cruel emperors; Dio can show you the maturing empire suffering under the caprices of total rule; even Diodorus, so Greek a historian, is unique in giving Rome only what is due to her on an international historical scale, where others focus only on Rome or world events as they relate to Rome.

There's much more of a burden on you to read selectively (or extensively). I think drama is the only genre in which the extant Romans don't totally swamp the Greeks. Check out the Roman chart, DON'T consider it exhaustive, but let it take you down a few avenues (history, poetry, drama, etc.) and from there just pursue further what you enjoy.

fresh pasta, served daily