(February 21, 2015 at 12:14 pm)Cato Wrote: 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:
(February 20, 2015 at 6:20 pm)Nestor Wrote: ... 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.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
