Start with the Greeks

>The Illiad
>Corinthian helmets

That's fine just read what seems interesting to you. If limited to only four I would thucydides, homer, king oedipus (or all three theban plays)

If I could only choose 4 Greeks:

Illiad, Histories, Acharnians, Symposium

You get genre variety and historical breadth. Also these are all very entertaining works. Don't get memed into reading the tragedies. They're boring for most people and overrated.

I also like Plutarch's Lives and the Homeric Hymns.

Get rid of the odyssey, and the iliad. Replace with Epictetus' golden sayings and the meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

>Plato didn't like fiction

Really? Can you source this cuz that's really interesting

but reading plato's previous works, before the republic, will make you grasp a lot of his thoughts and logic. it will give you a background, then making easier to understand this work. even not thoroughly, but still will help a lot.

could ya clarify me more about iliad being a work of dogma? i think it is pure art though

>Greeks
>Marcus Aurelius

U know he was roman. Or does that not matter? I have his meditations, I liked it but not really a page turner u know

>there are people itt who think the Republic is straight political theory
>there are people itt who didn't read the Allegory of the Cave before reading any further Plato
Start with a highschool education for fucksake

>hurr durr republic is best when its human made bigger :DDDD
and r'terad you need to apply cave allegory to republic in context of its political nature, not in context of plato's overlal philosophy, and when this happens you get filosopher meme KANG which is a FUCKING FAILURE which means REPUBLIC IS A FAILURE

Plato outright states that The Republic is an allegory for how one ought to comport themselves, or more literally how one's spirit ought to be. It is NOT political theory.
It does contain ELEMENTS of Plato's own political theory, as transference of subject matter and all that, such as the idea of the Noble Lie and the idea that the military can and should be shown propaganda so that they can most effectively do their job. And, funny enough, damn near nobody in the realm of political theory has seriously dislodged these fairly basic concepts.

As far as the Philosopher King - again, it's not literal. Its something Plato himself says cannot be done, or at the very least he could not do it. To understand, Plato's Philosopher King requires direct knowledge of the Platonic Forms, which as raw ontologic concepts at best (or perhaps kooky religious metaphysical elements) cannot literally be understood. The title of Philosopher King is something to be strived towards, then, and is only politically grounded insofar as it is commentary against the Tyrannical rulers of Athens in Plato's day.

Why would you read the Republic as a starter?

>could ya clarify me more about iliad being a work of dogma?

athens had a law that made professional artists regularly perform the homeric poems, for example

art back then was not your personal link to self-fulfillment like it is today. the iliad is a national identity, it is performed to compliment other community events and describes the relation of the people with their history and the idea of warfare in general

People who are triggered by the Republic either dont understand it or are too clouded by their modern liberal biases to honestly consider it.

You're better off starting with the Iliad, then Hesiod's Theogony and then read the Victory Odes of Pindar.

do the oposite:
start with post-post-modern and go all the way to the greeks

I would suggest at LEAST hesiod's theogony after homer (its very short), 1 major play from aeschylus, sophocles, euripides and aristophanes, presocratics (I suggest stanford's article or history of philosophy without any gaps podcast on presocratics, its pretty good) and a few introductory plato's dialogues, like apology and the 4 dialogues about socrates.

with only those 4 books you are barely touching the greeks. put some effort and you won't regret it

go Oedipus Rex -> 7 against Thebes -> Anitgone, they are all really short and this way you got that epic chronology

To expand on that, this is most likely a strong contributing factor in Plato's condemnation of art as propaganda. We see in several of Plato's surviving works a conscious attempt to rationalize the more metaphysical elements of Greek culture, so undoubtedly he perceived any work deeply entrenched in those same mythological elements as inherently deceptive.

Good start, I'd switch the Republic with some of his other dialogues and switch Antigone with Oedipus

I wouldn't start with philosophy right away.

I wouldn't start with the Republic either. He should start with Parmenides instead.

Jesus Christ what is it with people on here suddenly typing like complete retards?

Anybody with a western highschool education is capable of tackling Greek philosophy, short of blindly reading Aristotle.

Don't be a fuckin elitist user. I can write however i want to. Pseud.

Let me guess, you read Plato for plot and think you "get him".

No you complete faggot, Plato's works are literally in the highschool curriculum of any non-shit Western public school. I personally read The Cave and the entirety of The Republic in my Literature class in 10th grade, and covered the pre-Socratics in 11th grade Philosophy. And I live in fucking Alabama.

Of course I've revisited them with greater understanding since then, and I'm not suggesting that highschoolers come out the gate versed in the classics, but its evidently possible for the educated layman to pick up the Greeks. They serve as the foundation of Western thought, after all.

I personally love the tragedies. Sometimes the language goes over my head but the way the stories and characters are being portrayed are great. So far Antigone has been my favorite, I'm currently reading Medea and having a blast. I don't know much about Jason though or the Golden fleece, could someone give me some primary sources I could read?

>I read the Allegory of the Cave in High School
>I read The Republic when I was too young to understand Plato.
>I didn't read any of his other dialogues beforehand
>I "get" Plato
Whatever form of public education you partook in as a child is quite frankly inconsequential. If you think a child can even understand a small fraction of The Republic you are a delusional. Plato is not high school tier, even though some of his ideas may be "taught". No matter what your opinion of your 10th grade philosophy class, the truth is that your teacher did a major injustice to Plato. You might as well have not read him at all.

Keep plugging away at that strawman to distract everyone from your fallacious assertion that nobody can be in your super sekret smart guy club, user.

>Fallacious assertion that nobody can be in your super sekret smart guy club.
No, only adults, not dumbass high schoolers who think they're well read in philosophy.

Keep plugging that strawman my dude

it's the myth of the argonauts you should prolly read up on it since it's one of the greek staples

Is it one of those myths that you can only read about in fragments/secondary literature/internet? I would love to read about it some more.

>Cucked by english

lol I didn't get any of that

>1
Then you clearly have not read enough critiques of the Republic!

plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-aesthetics/
Especially look up the parts about the Republic itself.
college.columbia.edu/core/lectures/fall1999
I don't like this essay at all, but you might get some quotes of Plato about fiction out of it.
You may find a lot more if you just google for it.

>Hesiod's Theogony
Thanks for this great suggestion

>only adults

Pleas stfu

Let me guess, you're another one of these High School Plato "experts"?

If I was I would be mature enough not to dish out the kind of responses you would make, mr.adult platonist

Gtfoh

>Platonist
Platonist? Platonist??!! I loathe that vile fucking insect called Plato. It's only out of humiliating respect that I defend the cur. But you, you are something far worse. It's quite convenient to slander a dead man isn't it? Aren't you just the perfect form of cowardliness? I suspect that you would tremble in fear if Plato were still alive. You did know that he had a passion for wrestling, didn't you? And wherever Plato traversed, Socrates was not far behind. Ah yes, Socrates, the brutish scourge who laid waste to Potidaea. I can just imagine it, Socrates grinding your soul into dust laying on question after question revealing your intellectual feebleness to the world. I can see it now, your knees trembling and sweat pours from you brow...Once again, it's convenient of you to slander the dead. Maybe you should think things through before you go running your mouth, Tommy Tough Guy.

Unironically using the word cuck

Not a bad place to start, read some of Plato's earlier dialogues before The Republic though, that will give you a better understanding of how Plato operates.

Autism Speaks

Is this a pasta?

kek

Srsly

Holy shit read the fucking Histories of Herodotus you goddamn maniac cause jesus fucking christ its so fucking good the crazy bullshit that happens and greece and its surrounding regions actually start feeling like real goddamn fucking places instead of old as fuck myths and that crazy motherfucker Herodotus literally invented an academic discipline out of thin fucking air and applied critical thinking and a discerning ense of fucking myth that the other greeks just took on its face I mean fuck the histories are as important as fucking homer and that faggot plato but he's pushed to the backburner every single time even though this nigga was KILLING it so you know you gotta hit him up and you know you aint reading the Histories without the Landmark edition with the maps and extensive commentary and appendices you piece of shit

>tfw I bought the Landmark Histories but it was the paperback because I was too shit to know any better
>now I wanna get the Landmark Thucydides too but that will be in hardcover so I'll end up with one Landmark in paperback and one in hardcover and knowing that riles me to no end

autism is suffering

>start with the Greeks
I love this meme. There's so much talk about starting with the Greeks, but there's no talk about what comes after. It's pretty obvious that most of this board gives up halfway through starting with the Greeks, and then just pretend like they understand it all.

What's wrong with Theogeny

No I was being serious I like that book

>Landmark Thucydides

YES

well, i fell for this meme and i've started reading the greeks. until now i'm appreciating very much

Laws is also essential reading.
mc.maricopa.edu/~davpy35701/text/plato-homo.html

Autism

i'd say read all of plato, its really not that much.

>what comes after
You just follow Western development chronologically you dumb cuck

>hardcover Thucydides
Thanks user, I didn't even think of it. The paperback was pretty awkward to hold since it's a square. Good thing I don't have autism hangups over it.

kek, underrated post

Well obviously. You can tell no one follows through with that though. You get people discussing 18th century philosophers and onwards, and Greek philosophers. No one discusses whats in between except the few moments when St. Augustine is mentioned.

Someone had to defend Plato's honor.