/lit/ - Literature

sextus is also a bit sad, though he has no reason to be since he was the winner. technically

>>20768433
Let's assume we've all started with Caesar and Tacitus by age 9,

>>20768340
I'd say for a real deep cleansing of your brain of error on what a Book even is, to start with
1) Catos handbook on farm management.
It's orientated toward practical real-world things and differs quite a lot.

Whilst you're busy with this book, developing your education in household management, agriculture, viticulture, business and the like, you'll want to dip into
2) Epigrams (of) Marcus Valerius Martialis
as these twelve to fourteen books make for excellent light reading and comparisons of the foolish habits of persons unconcerned with real-world things; foibles and vanities of people, etc., which you will be able to compare to the people around you.

After this you should be in a fairly superior position by contrast to the others around you; having becoming reasonably wealthy and respected for your work, where you go after this depends largely upon your own mood. Sadly many of the most infulential authors to the Roman have been lost to time or otherwise burned by later heathens,

Petronius Arbiter, for example, would have been a great resource on how to take your wine and manage your leisure hours.

Perhaps, however, your mind turns to the practicalities of these things;of the differences that are now noticable between you and others who read but don't seem to gain anything from reading; I would suggest,
3) Institutes of Oratory, Marcus Fabius Quintilian
to approach from a contemporary of Martial and Livius the 'mindset' of the subsequent Imperial School of the subsequent Emperors; Hadrian and Trajan and so on, learning about speech and reason as rhetoric and logic, to discern things at a commonsensical and not a 'effete false-scholarly' level. Whether you ought have begun with this book before Catos handbook is a matter of choice, of course.

There are, then, really only three,
1) Cato
2) Martialis
3) M.F.

in addition to the lesser known Hellenes of Kos and Sicily, and so on, and the good Romans who wrote of other things; Cassius Dio, Appian, Lucien, Galen, for instance.