/lit/ - Literature

The Romans

What do you mean by working?

>>12888313
Resume with the Romans

>>12888656
then continue with the Christians

Retreat to the pre-Socratics

>>12888313
you've read all of plato?

>>12888313
Is there a flowchart on where to start then where to go?

You'll learn more by reading Paulo Coelho than the outdated greeks.

>>12888313
Regress to the egyptians

>outdated greeks
One learns more by reading 50 shades of grey

>>12888313
continue with the revolution

>>12889562

>>12889581
>Read at least 3-10 books, before even getting mention of philosophy and philosophers
Why?

>>12888662
Move to the middle ages

>>12889598
lol

>>12888313
If you've already read Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, move on to Augustine and the scholastics (Boethius, Aquinas etc.)

Have some Hume, Continue with Kant, and Enter the Enlightenment

That depends entirely on your areas of inquiry. For example someone interested in poetry might proceed to Virgil and Ovid, while someone interested in philosophy might go on to Augustine.

Also the Greek corpus is large enough to spend an entire life studying, and chronological study is a meme for small minds.

Learning takes place vertically and horizontally, with greater and lesser focused, and should be guided always by a disciplined and earnest curiosity.

>>12889619
>Learning takes place vertically and horizontally, with greater and lesser focused, and should be guided always by a disciplined and earnest curiosity.
You can't learn valuable skills with sporadic aims and order

>>12889624
I agree that learning should not be sporadic. I dont know what valuable skills has to do with it.

>>12888313
Start and finish with Schopenhauer.

/thread

>>12889581
>no parmenides
>no heraclites
>no xenophanes

This list is shit.

>>12889674
Nevermind. They're in there. Where's euripides though? Epicurus? Xenophon?

>>12888313
i started with the greeks but now i'm stuck there. i don't feel like i want or need to read anything else. how do i move on?

>>12888662
and finish with the Germans

>>12889699
I thought the frogs were the last philosophers

>>12888313
julius evola
soljenytzin
léon degrelle

>>12889681
Finish with the scholastics and Kierkegaard, there's nothing else to philosophy or knowledge

>>12889705
Half true, frogs are not philosophers but the end and degeneration of philosophy into comparative literature.

>>12888313
how exactly does it "work?
what did he mean by this?

>>12889613
Absolutely disgusting.

>>12888313

/pol/ representative here, don't listen to these litwits, go on to the ancient Aryan literature and religions of the Zoroastrians and Sanskrit Vedic culture. After that perform a thorough reading of relevant etymological and archeological evidence for the culture and worldview of the ancient Proto Indo-Europeans, whose worldview informs the essential framework of Western thought from law to rationalism to the nuclear family to genetics. Additionally, by seeing where this primary culture differed from Western thought in the Indic tradition you will gain a more genuine appreciation of what makes Western thought unique and valuable.

After that you can go onto the Romans, etc., but if you just start with the Greeks you'll have a skewed perspective regarding the development of Western thought.

>>12889720
it’s Current Year. Finish with the Faggots or Take it Down with the Trannies like everybody else...

>>12888313

As PIEs were just absolute chads and they deserve to be recognised by posterity.

>>12889835
>>12888313

Also PIEs were just absolute chads so they deserve to be remembered by posterity. Introduced China to the wheel, may have independently invented said wheel, probably the first to create the concept of a preeminent God like figure, etc.

>>12889843
why would anyone want to do that?

>>12888662

cucked and bluepilled

Who do I read after Tacitus? Sueton? Who do I read after Sueton?

Started with the greeks last summer following the meme chart and now I'm half way through Plato.

>>12888316
keep it 300

>>12890090

I found that Tacitus and Suetonius complement each other well, so yeah.

As for what to read next, Cassius Dio is the obvious one as I think he's had the biggest influence on posteriority. He has also been traditionally regarded as a very reliable eye witness to everything you'd be reading if you jump in at book 68 which starts where Suetonius drops off. His reliability has been more contested lately exactly because he was an eye-witness, though, and especially his depiction of Elagabalus has increasingly been regarded as a rhetorical exaggeration. If you really want to read the whole thing, it's more doable than 80 books might sound as several of them are very fragmentary and survive only in summaries. His history finishes with Elagabalus.

Herodian is a somewhat forgotten historian whose reliability is somewhat contested, and as such mostly of interest if you want to contrast his version of the events with Cassius Dio or the Historia Augusta. Anyway, his history starts with Marcus Aurelius and finishes with the Year of Six Emperors.

The Historia Augusta is notoriously unreliable, but unfortunately our only source for much of the period it describes and seems to have been read surprisingly often by the early moderns. It takes from the reign of Hadrian up to the death of Carus and his sons and the rise of Diocletian.

If you're looking to read something other than history, then both Apuleius and Petronius wrote their novels around this time. Seneca and Marcus Aurelius are the obvious ones from philosophy. There's also the letter collections of Pliny the Younger and Fronto. There were quite a few poets: Martialis and Juvenalis were probably the foremost, Silius Italicus and Statius are surprisingly influential given how mixed their reputation is, as are Persius and Florus, but they are almost universally panned as second-rates.

>>12889674
>xenophanes
Why start with people that moderns have no way of understanding? Poetry and Plato are the best start for the Greeks, perhaps the tragedies. The Presocratics think in such a different way from moderns, especially the ones you listed, there is no point in reading them until you get a good grasp of philosophy in general and the myths. Most of the greats don't even understand the early Greeks.

>>12888313
>still being a dumb frogposter
Clearly it didn't work

>>12889613
The Reddit of philosophy

>>12891246
Based classical lit user. I really appreciate your help. Guess I'm going to get Sueton on Monday from the book store. I've already got Cassius on my bookshelf because his name kept coming up when I did some research about Roman history. I have read Livy a while ago so working my way through Cassius should not be a massive problem. Where do Flavius Josephus and Ammianus Marcellinus fit into your reading list? Should I read your authors first and wait until the Landmark edition of Ammianus comes out or does that not matter?

As for philosophy, I'm pretty much a brainlet. I've got the complete works of Plato but I can't get too deep into it, I just prefer history works. Apuleius I have also read, funny but bizarre kind of shit. I need get my hands on some Martial because I've heard his stuff is really funny.

>>12890062
>>>/r/eddit

>falling for the "start with the Greeks" meme
you've ruined your ability to read. you'll literally never be able to read a book correctly again, and your ability to empathize with others will deteriorate within a month. you broke your own brain. you have no idea how sorry I am to see this happen again, I thought we were passed this

Start with Greeks end with Nick Land

>>12892831
kill yourself mate you're clearly in a lot of pain, empathy dictates that you should go for it

Is this how I start if I want to be a pompous dick who pretends to care about philosophy?

>>12893126
what are you right now?

>>12893126

If you actually read through the history of philosophy you probably don't have to 'pretend' to care about it.

>>12888313
Start and stop with the Greeks. Everything after them is just a bad remix.

>>12889598
Philosophy is usually a reaction or counter-reaction to culture. If you know nothing of the Greeks and the Greek mindset, jumping straight into reading active arguments between prominent Greeks is quite literally like showing up late to a party.

ARGHHGHGHGHGHG BUTTERFLY I WANT YOU TO HAVE A GOOD TIME JUST DONT DO ANYTHING SEXUAL

>>12893927
>"Welcome! I'm glad you can make it to my party!"
>"Thanks, is anybody else here?"
>Nope. You are the first one to show up."
It does feel pathetic to hear those words. Only losers show up on time for parties.

>>12892633

The Jewish War goes to the same block with Tacitus and Suetonius chronology-wise. I don't know enough about Jewish Antiquities to comment.

Ammianus Marcellinus goes chronologically after those I mentioned and also after Eusebius of Caesarea's Church History. That said, Ammianus and Eusebius are the real giants after Tacitus and I think it's quite common for people to skip straight to them and ignore everything in between. Nothing wrong with that, but if you like reading histories, then why not go roughly chronological?

As for Eusebius, his Church History became the model all later church historians. It starts with Jesus for obvious reasons and ends with Constantine becoming the sole emperor of Rome. The Life of Constantine is then kind of a spiritual sequel. It seems to have been also fairly popular and inspired later Byzantine historians quite a bit. The Chronicle doesn't "survive", that is, people continued their copies as time went on and as a result there are several different versions of it with later additions. It's also a chronicle, so not necessarily a fun read. However, if I recall correctly, it is the oldest work of its kind that survives. Since the surviving portion of Ammianus starts with the reign of Constantine's son, it forms a natural enough continuation.

I don't know about editions, I read stuff in my native language out of principle and have been content with Loeb or whatever's the newest for the rest. Lacus Curtius and Perseus are good sites as long as you can actually read while at computer and not immediately open a tab to shitpost here which is what I do too often.

Read the Hindus to get a bit more perspective on what kind of crazy Aryan ideas were influencing the Greeks.
Resume with the Romans, then Arabs and Persians. Afterwards, you may as well just jump into continental philosophy and french theory.

>>12890944
300 BITCHES, WHERE THE TROJANS

>>12888313
Just read every major work by every philosopher or every major philosopher chronologically, eventually you'll reach modern philosophy and can skim through most of them to see which ones are worth reading.

Assuming one is resuming with the Romans, where's the best place to begin? Should you jump right into Caesar and Cicero? Virgil? Livy? Horace?

>>12888313

>>12889720
tbqh, This.

>>12889581
is socrates necessary to understand plato? and if he is what are some good books about his philosophy

>>12896631

socrates is like the protagonist for the majority of plato's dialogues, don't worry about it

>>12894020

It's considered polite to arrive 10 minutes to 45 minutes late to an informal party's designated start time.

Any longer than that and you're the loser who missed the event's start, and if it's a dinner party, you probably missed the main course too or pissed everyone off by keeping them waiting to serve.