Need help choosing Greek/Roman authors

[Pyrrho]

Nestor,
I understand your quest to be straight philosophy or history; however, I'll recommend some of the more well known playwrights. I've always found that fiction of a period can provide historical insight, particularly regarding political and social moods.

Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plautus and Terence. Seneca also wrote plays, but has already been mentioned for his other work.

I must have missed something somewhere. If he is wanting just philosophy or history, he should never have read Homer. Which brings me to:

... As Bernard Knox puts it in the introduction to Fagles' translation, "One ancient critic, the author of the treatise On the Sublime, thought that the Odyssey was the product of Homer's old age, of 'a mind in decline; it was a work that could be compared to the setting sun---the size remained, without the force.' He did, however, temper the harshness of that judgment by adding: 'I am speaking of old age---but it is the old age of Homer.'"
...

It has been a very long time since I read Homer, but I much preferred The Odyssey to The Iliad. I found it much more interesting. His adventures on his way home are surreal. And yet it is very revealing about ancient Greek attitudes about society and what constitutes a good man. The Iliad is less varied in what happens.

As an aside, I read these books long before Fagles translated them. If I remember correctly, I read the translations by W.H.D. Rouse. I have no idea which translations, among the many that have been done, are best. If you look at wikipedia for "English translations of Homer" you will see a very long list of people. I doubt that there is anyone who has read them all, which makes me hesitant to accept anyone's pronouncements about which is best. But I did a quick search for "best translation of homer" (without the quotation marks) and came upon an interesting article on this subject by William Harris, Prof. Em. Middlebury College, who seems to think highly of both your chosen translation and the one I used, among others. Of course, he judges none to be perfect; I suppose if one wants perfection, one must learn Greek and read it that way.

[Brian37]

Nestor,
I understand your quest to be straight philosophy or history; however, I'll recommend some of the more well known playwrights. I've always found that fiction of a period can provide historical insight, particularly regarding political and social moods.

Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plautus and Terence. Seneca also wrote plays, but has already been mentioned for his other work.

I must have missed something somewhere. If he is wanting just philosophy or history, he should never have read Homer. Which brings me to:

... As Bernard Knox puts it in the introduction to Fagles' translation, "One ancient critic, the author of the treatise On the Sublime, thought that the Odyssey was the product of Homer's old age, of 'a mind in decline; it was a work that could be compared to the setting sun---the size remained, without the force.' He did, however, temper the harshness of that judgment by adding: 'I am speaking of old age---but it is the old age of Homer.'"
...

It has been a very long time since I read Homer, but I much preferred The Odyssey to The Iliad. I found it much more interesting. His adventures on his way home are surreal. And yet it is very revealing about ancient Greek attitudes about society and what constitutes a good man. The Iliad is less varied in what happens.

As an aside, I read these books long before Fagles translated them. If I remember correctly, I read the translations by W.H.D. Rouse. I have no idea which translations, among the many that have been done, are best. If you look at wikipedia for "English translations of Homer" you will see a very long list of people. I doubt that there is anyone who has read them all, which makes me hesitant to accept anyone's pronouncements about which is best. But I did a quick search for "best translation of homer" (without the quotation marks) and came upon an interesting article on this subject by William Harris, Prof. Em. Middlebury College, who seems to think highly of both your chosen translation and the one I used, among others. Of course, he judges none to be perfect; I suppose if one wants perfection, one must learn Greek and read it that way.

Why would you need to read Homer? He's on Fox every Sunday and you can get the repeats on sites like Hulu.

[Mudhammam]

Philosophy is not complete like scientific method is, and even science constantly adapts to changing data.

The problem with the word "philosophy" itself is that unfortunately anything can be a "philosophy", from economic views( which compete and the different followers can become dogmatic and fight over them). Religion also does the same thing.

I don't really see how that is different than the way the term "science" is used by people who otherwise aren't scientists. To be a philosopher is more than just understanding syllogisms and deductive/inductive arguments and sitting around contemplating what it means to exist. It's to understand the existential character of the self as it relates to what we perceive as reality, and to understand how all the phenomena we experience is connected through a logical framework, a framework science must take for granted to proceed. Philosophy is the general term that encompasses other branches of inquiry such as science, which is why the first scientists were known as natural philosophers. You may say that philosophy has outgrown its usefulness, but like any language that replaces another, to understand the historical development of science and the concepts it employs, one almost always begins with the Greeks, who, above all else, considered the principles they formulated to be the work of a philosopher.

Our pattern seeking and grouping is evolutionary, that part will not go away. Our diversity also will not go away. But again, the most pragmatic thing humans can do to be more civil is to put our common problems that overlap first, and shift our priorities to that rather than our personal patterns we create clubs we call nations and economic views and religions.

Not saying we have to be emotionless robots, but our tribalism is simply way to divisive especially now that our entire planet is being affected by our actions.

We have to be a planet of problem solvers, not a planet full of competing gangs. There is no more room to conquest, the world is much smaller. The more humans who understand Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech, and the more we accept we are the same species, the more civil and manageable the world can be.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at here in relation to the topic of ancient authors and specifically, philosophy, which you seem to hold in contempt.

Also when you say, "We cant put all our weight on their ideas," I would hope that is a rule you apply to anything and anyone; meaning, you should always be ready to admit that ideas evolve and replace older versions. This is true in philosophy as well as science, the larger difference being that core distinctions formulated by the various presocratics still remain relevant in modern debates.

[bennyboy]

Philosophy is not complete like scientific method is, and even science constantly adapts to changing data.

The problem with the word "philosophy" itself is that unfortunately anything can be a "philosophy", from economic views( which compete and the different followers can become dogmatic and fight over them). Religion also does the same thing.

Our pattern seeking and grouping is evolutionary, that part will not go away. Our diversity also will not go away. But again, the most pragmatic thing humans can do to be more civil is to put our common problems that overlap first, and shift our priorities to that rather than our personal patterns we create clubs we call nations and economic views and religions.

Not saying we have to be emotionless robots, but our tribalism is simply way to divisive especially now that our entire planet is being affected by our actions.

We have to be a planet of problem solvers, not a planet full of competing gangs. There is no more room to conquest, the world is much smaller. The more humans who understand Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech, and the more we accept we are the same species, the more civil and manageable the world can be.

That seems like a very long way of saying you don't understand what philosophy is. If you think science and philosophy are competitors in the intellectual arena, and science has won, then you should follow Nestor's example and make a serious study of the subject.

[Mudhammam]

So last week I finished Herodotus' The History, translated by David Grene, and Friedrich Nietzsche's Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, translated by Marianne Cowan.

The History was a fascinating and enjoyable read, and I recommend it to anyone interested in how a 5th-century Greek with a relatively skeptical viewed the world, but more importantly, how they reconstructed history. I think Richard Carrier summed it up well in his essay "Why The Resurrection Is Unbelievable" when he wrote:

Fifty years after the Persian Wars ended in 479 BC, Herodotus the Halicarnassian asked numerous eyewitnesses and their children about the things that happened in those years and then wrote a book about it. Though he often shows a critical and skeptical mind, sometimes naming his sources and even questioning their reliability when he has suspicious or conflicting accounts, he nevertheless reports without a hint of doubt that the temple of Delphi magically defended itself with animated armaments, lightning bolts, and collapsing cliffs; the sacred olive tree of Athens, though burned by the Persians, grew a new shoot an arm’s length in a single day; a miraculous flood-tide wiped out an entire Persian contingent after they desecrated an image of Poseidon; a horse gave birth to a rabbit; and a whole town witnessed a mass resurrection of cooked fish!

There's also some pretty disturbing stories about fathers who were tricked into eating their sons and another few about people getting mutilated or castrated that aren't for the faint of heart. But Herodotus really transported me as a reader into his world, especially when he describes seeing the ancient pyramids which were already 2,000 years old in his day! I can't wait until I come to Thucydides, who apparently takes a few shots at Herodotus in his History of the Peloponnesian War because he thought his rival inferior.
Overall I give it 4/5.

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks is a short work, as Nietzsche never got around to finishing it, at just over 100 pages. It's kind of depressing to me that a throw away work of Nietzsche's is still written better than anything I could imagine myself being able to do. This to me is better than The Gay Science or Beyond Good and Evil, when Nietzsche was in his Zarathustra phase, which---though good overall--felt scatterbrained and littered with cryptic aphorisms. This, on the other hand, is like the Nietzsche of The Dawn or The Anti-Christ, when he knows what he wants to say because his target is in full view and all he has to do is unload his pent up insights with typical Nietzschean intensity. I can almost guarantee, I think anyway, that even if you think you know everything about the presocratics, you will find something innovative in Nietzche's thought. He makes them come alive in his adoration, especially Anaxagoras.
5/5

Since I haven't rated the other works, I'll do so now. Keep in mind I'm also considering translation:
The Iliad and The Odyssey - 5/5
The Nature of Things - 4/5
The Presocratic Philosophers - 5/5

[Mudhammam]

So I have two more books ready for brief review. The first is James B. Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament with Supplement. For a long time this book has been the definitive compilation of ancient near eastern texts such as those by the Sumerians, Egyptians, Akkadians, Hittites, etc., and it's very easy to understand why. This volume is like walking through a museum with a tour guide, the commentary is typically brisk but crucially helpful. There are hundreds of ancient documents from epics and myths, to law, to wisdom literature, letters, histories, proverbs---and much more. It's a great reference book as well, including an index of biblical verses that either find parallel or in some way relate to the (usually) older texts. However, out of sheer curiosity I had to read every single one from start to finish---a monumental task that you will feel proud to have accomplished. Most of the material comes from the second millennium though there are a number of documents both older and younger, mostly up until the New Babylonian empire under the Medes and then the Persians. Creation myths that predate Genesis and involve many of the same plot elements: there. Numerous Flood stories: there. The predecessors to the Cain-Able fable: there. Job-motifs? Done. Egyptian and Babylonian psalms and proverbs that read like the best in the Bible? You'll find it here. The Code of Hammurabi and other barbaric laws that read exactly like the Torah? There (btw, the Hittite code was by far the most pacifistic, seemingly with an aversion to the death penalty and handling most criminal matters with financial restitution, contrary to the claim that the Old Testament law was an improvement over their neighbors, though many of them are certainly just as cruel). The oldest mention of Israel---and the only one found in ancient Egyptian documents---the so-called "Israel Stela," which dates to approximately 1206 B.C.E. is also here. There's also a memorable siege of Jerusalem written by the Babylonians that is also chronicled in the Old Testament, and watching both sides believe their God has victory in store is amusing. This book literally has everything...well that's where we come to the downside:

This book was originally published in the 50s, and then updated in the 70s, which is the latest version. Apparently there are newer books on the market as there undoubtedly have been important finds in the past 40 years. I haven't looked at them or their prices, but you might want to, as this Pritchard version---considered a classic by scholars---is $75 used on Amazon. I paid about $120 for it. Still, it was worth every penny and is an essential text to the student of religion, history, theology, and even, I might suggest philosophy.
5/5

The other book I just completed about an hour ago contains Aristophane's plays Clouds, Wasps, and Peace, and is translated by Jeffry Henderson. Other people online apparently thought highly of Henderson's version, and though I only compared it to one other translation, it seemed superior...like edgier. And I get the sense that the spirit of Aristophanes' work was edgy in a way that this translation preserves. All the plays are enjoyable, and laugh-out-loud hilarious, but I think my favorite was Clouds, if only because I got to witness a portrayal of Socrates in stark contrast to the one in Plato's work, which at one point (in the Apology) refers to Aristophane's play as one of the reasons public perception turned against Socrates. I think I am able to see how Socrates was viewed by the public versus his own student, and yet there is undoubtedly convergence: Socrates is still a figure that employs "The Better Argument" and "The Worse Argument" in ways that "corrupt the youth" by making them question essential traditional values, on top of his irreverence for the gods by questioning "What is the beautiful, the just, the good?" Of course, Socrates is made to be a star-gazing philosopher in the mold of a Thales or a Democritus, which is not at all his concern in Plato's dialogues. I'm convinced that I will have to read Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates now.

Aristophane's also makes quite a lot of use of vulgar (note: potty) humor but it works here. I have to recommend it to anyone who's interest likes in classic literature.
4/5

Next I'm going on to Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War, translated by Steven Lattimore. After that I have about 500 more pages in Plato: Complete Works and then I'd like to wrap this era up. That means I need to order more books. This is what I plan to order next week:

Xenophon - Memorabilia. What translation?
Aristotle - Nicomachian Ethics. What translation?
2 other works by Aristotle. Metaphysics? Politics? What else? Translations?

Thanks guys! You've been a big help already!

[Pyrrho]

So last week I finished Herodotus' The History, translated by David Grene, ...

There's also some pretty disturbing stories about fathers who were tricked into eating their sons and another few about people getting mutilated or castrated that aren't for the faint of heart. But Herodotus really transported me as a reader into his world, especially when he describes seeing the ancient pyramids which were already 2,000 years old in his day! I can't wait until I come to Thucydides, who apparently takes a few shots at Herodotus in his History of the Peloponnesian War because he thought his rival inferior.
Overall I give it 4/5.
...

There is a directness and immediacy about much of the ancient Greek writings that I find quite appealing. Their sensibility has not been tainted with Christian thinking (because Christianity did not yet exist, for those who need this information), which makes it quite refreshing.

And the shots at Herodotus are just, as Herodotus is a bit uncritical in his acceptance of wild stories. Giant ants....

---

...

Aristotle - Nicomachian Ethics. What translation?
...

You should go back and reread the thread from the beginning. Here is my post recommending something for that, with added bold for the relevant part:

So, for a while now I have wanted to go through some of the monumental voices of ancient Western civilization. I just ordered Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (translated by Robert Fagles) and I own Virgil's Aeneid (trans. by W.F. Jackson), which I haven't yet read, and Lucretius' The Nature of Things (trans. by Alicia Stallings), which I have read. I'm looking for the following (please recommend translation if you have preference):

1 pre-Socratic philosopher and 1 historian.
1 book by Plato, not including the Republic (which I plan on buying already).
2 books by Aristotle
1 or 2 other Greek philosophers and/or historians
2 or 3 Roman philosophers and/or historians
1 book by Cicero.

I think that should be a good entry collection. Thanks for your help.

I recommend getting an old copy of The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers: The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epicetus, Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius edited by Whitney J. Oates. You can buy this from web sites that sell used books, and it can be currently had from Amazon for about $22 including shipping, though you may be able to find it cheaper elsewhere. It contains a very good translation of Epicurus' works, which I highly recommend to everyone.

For one of your books on Aristotle, I recommend The Nicomachean Ethics translated by W.D. Ross, put out by Oxford. You can currently buy a paperback of that from Amazon for about $7.

For Plato, I would go with the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo, which you can get all together in a Dover Thrift Edition for about $3. They call this The Trial and Death of Socrates, and it is the Benjamin Jowett translation. Jowett is one of the most poetic translators of Plato, and is well-suited for a work like the Apology.

You can also find most of these works online, for free.

I have not filled your list, but it should get you started.

[Mudhammam]

You should go back and reread the thread from the beginning.

I've been meaning to!

Here is my post recommending something for that, with added bold for the relevant part:

I recommend getting an old copy of The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers: The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epicetus, Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius edited by Whitney J. Oates. You can buy this from web sites that sell used books, and it can be currently had from Amazon for about $22 including shipping, though you may be able to find it cheaper elsewhere. It contains a very good translation of Epicurus' works, which I highly recommend to everyone.

For one of your books on Aristotle, I recommend The Nicomachean Ethics translated by W.D. Ross, put out by Oxford. You can currently buy a paperback of that from Amazon for about $7.

For Plato, I would go with the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo, which you can get all together in a Dover Thrift Edition for about $3. They call this The Trial and Death of Socrates, and it is the Benjamin Jowett translation. Jowett is one of the most poetic translators of Plato, and is well-suited for a work like the Apology.

You can also find most of these works online, for free.

I have not filled your list, but it should get you started.

Good looks. I will definitely order that Whitney Oates text once I get through Aristotle...speaking of which, I recently picked up The Basic Works of Aristotle, a massive volume (1,500+ pages) that I will probably begin next week. I ran to my shelf and VOILA! Looks like I lucked out:

[Pyrrho]

That is supposed to be a good collection of Aristotle, and probably more Aristotle than one needs. I have instead the 2 volume Oxford complete works of Aristotle, though I admit I have not read it all or anything close to all of it. I bought it primarily to be able to use it for reference, as it has an index which enables one to find where Aristotle discusses various things throughout his works. And for that, it has been handy occasionally. But I do not have a great love of Aristotle, so I am unlikely to ever read it all. And now, of course, one can use the internet for searching things. I bought the Aristotle a long time ago. I also have an exhaustive concordance of the Bible that I would not purchase today because of the internet, but it is nice to have in book form and has no particular value (because of the internet), so I have no incentive to get rid of it. Come to think of it, I would not go far out of my way to buy the Encyclopedia of Philosophy that I have, either, due to various online encyclopedias of philosophy. Still, there is something nice about having an actual book, whose text never gets altered into something else.

[Pizza]

Books are nice to have because if they are big enough you can kill people with them.