Need help choosing Greek/Roman authors

[Mudhammam]

If you are wanting books about the ancient Greeks, a truly great one is Before and After Socrates by F.M. Cornford. The book is very short, and very expensive for how short it is. But it is worth the purchase price for the chapters on the Presocratics and on Socrates. He is concise and clear and very informative. This may well be the best introduction to the Presocratic philosophers ever written. Cornford was a great scholar.

Thanks for the suggestion. Are you familiar with G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven's The Presocratic Philosophers? I recently read that and it was pretty great. They basically went through the relevant Presocratics in considerable depth, including basically every important source document we have for each one. After Herodutos, and before I jump back into Plato to read Gorgias, Meno, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, Ion, Menexenus, Clitophon, and Republic (which then I'll be taking another break from Plato), I'm going to read Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, an unfinished work by Nietzsche that was published posthumously. Anyways, I think I'll be ready to bid the Presocratics farewell for a while, but I'll keep that one in mind for a later date (my list of wanted books seems to grow exponentially...)