/lit/ - Literature

Recommend me some insightful, obscure and interesting Classical Studies books.

>>16568933
CLINIAS: Correctly argued.
ATHENIAN: So it was an equally correct, final and complete statement of
the truth, when we said that soul is prior to matter, and that matter c
came later and takes second place. Soul is the master, and matter its
natural subject.
CLINIAS: That is indeed absolutely true.
ATHENIAN: The next step is to remember our earlier admission that if
soul were shown to be older than matter, the spiritual order of things
would be older than the material.
CLINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: So habits, customs, will, calculation, right opinion, diligence d
and memory will be prior creations to material length, breadth, depth and
strength, if (as is true) soul is prior to matter.
CLINIAS: Unavoidably.
ATHENIAN: And the next unavoidable admission, seeing that we are
going to posit soul as the cause of all things, will be that it is the cause of
good and evil, beauty and ugliness, justice and injustice and all the opposites.
CLINIAS: Of course.
ATHENIAN: And surely it’s necessary to assert that as soul resides and e
keeps control anywhere where anything is moved, it controls the heavens
as well.
CLINIAS: Naturally.
ATHENIAN: One soul, or more than one? I’ll answer for you both: more
than one. At any rate, we must not assume fewer than two: that which
does good, and that which has the opposite capacity.
CLINIAS: That’s absolutely right.
ATHENIAN: Very well, then. So soul, by virtue of its own motions, stirs
into movement everything in the heavens and on earth and in the sea.
The names of the motions of soul are: wish, reflection, diligence, counsel, 897
opinion true and false, joy and grief, cheerfulness and fear, love and hate.
Soul also uses all related or initiating motions which take over the secondary
movements of matter and stimulate everything to increase or diminish,
separate or combine, with the accompanying heat and cold, heaviness and
lightness, roughness and smoothness, white and black, bitter and sweet.

>>16512237
>TFW you didn't live in Alexandria in the early 500s AD when Isidore and Damascius decided traverse the whole eastern mediterranean, visting now ruined or abandoned or rarely visited temples and holy sites, meeting and befriending strangers.
>TFW you weren't with them when they revived Philosophy in Athens for a few short glory decades.
>TFW you couldn't travel with the Philosopher exiles to Persia.
>TFW you couldn't live as Damascius assistant in his final years in Syria, then walk deep into the deserts where you bury the major Platonic scriptures in the dry sands.