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.

[Jackie]

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]

[Mudhammam]

[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]

[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.