The ancient Greeks are thrown around a lot here, as well as on Veeky Forums.
My simple question is this: where should I start? I intend to take some time off more modern works so I can understand the roots of it all a little better.
I have the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Plato's Republic. If there's a preexisting guide to this all any pointers would be appreciated.
Also I guess general classical literature thread once I've had an answer.
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Why do you guys have so much trouble with the greeks that this question has to constantly be asked?
There aren't many extant greek texts to even read so it's not a question of something being hard to find.
Literally just google it and you will come up with all of them.
>There aren't many extant greek texts to even read
Don't make me cry user.
The great Hellenist Moses Hadas has a book I see from time to time in good used book stores (I also still possess a copy) called Ancilla to Greek Reading, which might prove helpful. If I were (you) I'd read Hesiod first (quick, easy, informative) and then move on to the historians Herodotus (fun) Thucydides (great) Xenophon (conclude with Anabasis) after which (you) can read the major plays and early lyric poets, etc.
USE THE THOROUGH CHART FFS
>thorough chart
>only listed work is for aristotle is metaphysics
dont
start with the sumerians
Start with Hume, Descartes, Kant & Nietzsche.
Then with Leibniz, Frege, Wittgenstein.
>not starting with the sticky
Illiad -> Oddysey -> Aenid -> Oedipus Rex
Odyssey > Metamorphises > Argonautica > Histories > Aristophanes
Would one endure irreversible psychological damage if they were to not start with the Greeks, and instead with the existentialists?
If you are sixteen that is fine. They look romantic and mysterious when you're young, but by the time you're in your mid-twenties you start to realize how dull they actually are compared to other writers and thinkers.
What if I'm 23 and find myself in awe that Nietzsche put to words a century ago all that I've ever felt?
Yeah, existentialists are usually just edgelords who think they reached some amazing new way of seeing the world when in truth they are just the natural symptom of the culture at the time.
Fucking buddhists and greeks were way ahead of them more than 2500 years before
He's a Greek philology teacher that can't shut up about the Greeks for 15 pages.
If it wasn't for the marxist and pre-analytic thinkers, the history of German philosophy from Romanticism to Heidegger would be: "People Discover the Presocratics and the Tragedians - The Animated Series."
>if it wasnt for how things are
really?
idk man, I started reading some Nietzche and his ideas seemed outdated, extremist, and overall obsolete. I understand where he's coming from, but with the spread of knowledge through means of mass communication, he just comes out as a bit ignorant to me.
I must be some sort of turbo-pleb because I get more enjoyment reading about the Greeks than reading the actual works themselves.
>not starting with the Sumerians
Secondary literature is great. Veeky Forums unfairly disparages it. It's interesting reading the thoughts of people who have dedicated a lot of their time to studying primary stuff.
Secondary literature is like having a discourse with someone who read the same shit as you, it's wonderful.
>not starting with Shakespeare and never reading anything else
>Veeky Forums unfairly disparages it
It's a desperate measure against the endless hordes of plebs and pseuds, terrified of approaching, reading, and interpreting works by themselves, who would rather have not only their own opinions, but the very writing of the author, replaced by the current Wikipedia article.
Veeky Forums is the voice of reason in a world where even the most seminal of writers face a trial in absentia.
add the bible too
job and ecclesiastes shits on all existentialist texts
>Ecclesiastes
1:10
>Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
I've read Gilgamesh, were do I go on from this?
Nowhere, you're done
Both of those charts are horrible, desu.
>no Aesop
>no Plutarch
>people out there actually reading Works and Days I mean what the fuck
Plutarch's lives are a (famous) abbreviation; his moralia are probably best relegated behind plotinus and proclus.
Aesop is good but not particularly "greek"; his fables have near universal appeal, but do little to shed light on the greek mind.
>doesn't like amd prioritize hesiod
The pleb filter caught another one, guys.
Works and Days is literally a guide to tilling fields, you can't be fucking serious.
pleb
Fuck the greeks.
There is literally no reason to study ancient greek metaphysics.
Their philosophies(ex. Epicureanism, stoicism, scepticism) are cool, but reading texts like The Republic forces you to trudge through the absurd metaphysics.
You can start with later stories and philosophers without being clueless. Thinking you have to read the entire philosophical cannon to understand any of the later parts of it is retarded.
Illiad/oddysey is nice though, as a lot of the greek and homeric mythological stories.
Start with "On Nature"
Nietzsche isn't an existentialist by anything other than technicality.
Greek philosophy really does only appeal to teenagers. I was forced to take an ancient philosophy course last term, and I kid you not every dumb boy that wasn't on their phones or skipping every lecture was gushing over Socrates and the Hellenistics.
And Veeky Forums wonders why I call these types '>reads philosophy once' philosophers. In this case, it was Plato's early dialogues. Something about Socrates insulting the court appeals to middle class kids with a love of the anti-state aesthetic (despite Plato being a ridiculous statist).
One can see these kids on Veeky Forums too, how many threads on stoicism or Diogenes do we get a week?
The 'start with the greeks' meme is kinda unclear. Some people mean the greek epics, some people mean the greek philosophers.
this makes me want to read it even more.
Hesiod is a bad poet.
Hesiod in one of the few ancient writers that I fundamentally hate as a person
>you gotta work for everything
>except me, the Muses just made me a great poet
>Sucks at poetry
>hobnailed hexameters
what a horrendous post
Stoic spotted.
the only people who say Nietzsche was an existentialists are existentialists who want to include the glory of Nietzsche in their lackluster roster
No, he technically is one, he just does not resemble the common type because he doesn't wine about how everything and everybody bullies him.
>existentialism
>denies free will
pick one
The Iliad is literally a story of guys running back and forth on a battlefield as their luck changes, you can't be fucking serious.
Plato's dialogues are literally a bunch of boy lovers talking at dinner parties, you can't be fucking serious.
Herodotus is literally a bunch of tall tales, you can't be fucking serious.
Did you read him in Greek?
Why not start with the Sumerians? (Or the Egyptians?)
Unironically, BEFORE the Greeks, you should get to know, in order:
Pettakere
Chauvet
Coliboaia
El Castillo
Lascaux
Grotte de Cussac
Pech Merle
La Marche
Les Combarelles
Chauvet
Niaux
Cosquer
Font-de-Gaume
Altamira
La Pasiega
Gargas
Don't forget Ajita Kesakambali.
>One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth standeth for ever.
Ridiculous. Long before you allow yourself to get to the early humans you must have already deciphered the veiled expressions of the logos in the winding pathways of trilobites in a younger mud.
How come all those charts fail to mention the most influential Greek work?
>2017
>Not starting with the Big Bang
Out! Out! Out!
He doesn't deny free will you dope.
No, I cannot read ancient Greek. I am relying on somebody I know fairly well that can.
Mathematics is for children.
Shit post and previous posts
kys
the problem with interpreting works yourself is the undeniable fact that you are certainly, absolutely certainly, incapable of coming up with new, genuinely intriguing opinions about the works. you cannot read greek. even if you can, are you erudite enough to grasp how the language's subtleties have transferred over thousands of years? are you so well-read in the field you have no need to read the opinions of others more intelligent than yourself?
probably not. decidedly not.
there isn't enough time on this hellish joke of an earth to specialize in every conceivable topic. read secondary lit.
I'm just gonna read the Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid, and Palto and Aristotle. Is that okay bros? Or rally just want to understand Nietzsche, Kant, Wittgenstein, and a couple of others.
If you just want to understand philosophy, skip all the stories and focus on philosophy! Essential texts are the Five Dialogues (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo) and the Republic by Plato, and Metaphysics, The Nicomachean Ethics, and Politics by Aristotle. The Symposium, Poetics, The Eudemian Ethics are also relevant, but not as crucial. You should also have a basic understanding of Greek mythology (I recommend "Mythology" by Edith Hamilton) and history.
However, if you want a more rounded perspective on intellectual and cultural history as a whole, especially to read more literary works, then the essential works are: The Iliad and The Odyssey; Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod; The Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers. Eumenides) by Aeschylus; The Theban Plays (Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone) by Sophocles; and Medea by Euripides. The works of Aristophanes and Sappho are also popular.