/lit/ - Literature

We all know that the Bible is a canon of multiple texts, including myths, genealogies, histories, poetry, letters, and even philosophical texts like Ecclesiastes. The Bible contains texts that can trace their origins to Bronze Age Canaanites all the way up to Cosmopolitan, Hellenized Jews like St. Paul. The book is a tremendous achievement in encapsulating a culture through time and serves as a basis for morality in the West. What do you think would be the difficulties of compiling a similar multi-text book based on the canon of ancient Greek texts? This board is obsessed with "starting with the Greeks" and yet starting with the Greeks would be a lot easier if all the relevant texts were compiled in one book that could be easily distributed. If an effort to compile such a book were undertaken, what texts would be included and discluded? Obviously the Homeric epics would be included, as would Plato and Aristotle and Herodotus' Histories. But should any of Plato or Aristotle's many works be excluded? Should less popular philosophers like Epictetus be included or historians like Thucydides? Should the book contain Latin works like the Aeneid or the Metamorphoses or the Meditations? What are your thoughts on the feasability of such a project?

>>18825555
Homer.

>>14658004
Big morphology, hard grammar in classical texts. But worth it.
>>14658061
The language actually plays a pretty big role in Plato etc. tho.
Then there's Homer, which is just about the most important work of the Western canon, and is a different thing in translation. +other poets & the playwrights

ITT: We discuss the Homeric epics

Did anybody else think the Iliad was way better than the Odyssey? I honestly found the Odyssey quite boring, even when I read it the second time, in prose. The Odyssey definitely had more philosophical depth though.

I know this is probably the thousandth iteration of this thread but fuck it. What's the best translation of Homer?

So was Homer a real person or not?

How long would it take to learn ancient greek well enough to read Homer?