/clas/ - Classical Greek and Roman Literature Thread

[Anonymous No.10527116]

It's been a while.

>classics that you are reading right now
>expected future readings
>interesting scholarship you’ve come across, old and new

CHARTS
Start with the Greeks
>https://i.warosu.org/data/lit/img/0086/04/1476211635020.jpg (Essential Greek Readings)
>https://i.warosu.org/data/lit/img/0099/17/1503236647667.jpg (Start with the Greeks 1)
>https://i.warosu.org/data/lit/img/0098/47/1501831593974.jpg (Start with the Greeks 2)
>http://i.4cdn.org/lit/1511555062371.png (What Translation of Homer Should I Read?)

Resume with the Romans
>https://i.warosu.org/data/lit/img/0103/04/1511545983811.png (More thorough than the other two)

>https://i.warosu.org/data/lit/img/0080/46/1463433979055.jpg (Resume with the Romans 1)
>https://i.warosu.org/data/lit/img/0086/97/1478569598723.jpg (Resume with the Romans 2)


ONLINE RESOURCES
>http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ (Translations, Original Texts, Dictionaries)
>http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/home.html (Translations)
>https://pleiades.stoa.org/ (Geography)
>https://plato.stanford.edu/ (Philosophy)
>http://www.mqdq.it/public/indici/autori
>http://www.attalus.org/info/sources.html
>https://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/GreekGrammar.html
>http://www.attalus.org/translate/index.html
>http://digiliblt.lett.unipmn.it/index.php (Site in Italian)
>http://www.library.theoi.com/ (Translations)
>https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/a_chron.html (Site in Latin)
>https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/
>http://www.earlymedievalmonasticism.org/Corpus-Scriptorum-Ecclesiasticorum-Latinorum.html (CSEL)
>http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/POxy/ (Oxyrhynchus Papyri)
>http://db.edcs.eu/epigr/epi.php?s_sprache=en (Epigraphy)
>http://epigraphy.packhum.org/ (Ephigraphy)
>http://papyri.info/

THREAD THEME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6-0Cz73wwQ [Embed]

[Anonymous No.10527151]

>>10527116
bro why does one of the charts say that people who are completely new to literature should start by learning ancient greek and reading 42 books from ancient greece

[Anonymous No.10527165]

>>10527151
>bro
παράνομος

[Anonymous No.10527178]

>>10527165
gurl why does one of the charts say that people who are completely new to literature should start by learning ancient greek and reading 42 books from ancient greece

[Anonymous No.10527420]

>>10527165
L O N D I N I U M

[Anonymous No.10527472]

>>10527178
Your reading comprehension is being tested

[Anonymous No.10527505]

When do I actually NEED to read Aristotle? By which I mean, which philosophical school(s) are directly built on his works? Is he necessary to neoPlatonism?

My understanding is that he's critical to both Islamic philosophy and Christian philosophy, but went largely underappreciated in the Classical era, but I'm probably wrong.

[Anonymous No.10527562]

>>10527505
In the Classical era Plato definitely had more of an influence. As you said, people like Aquinas for Christianity and Avicenna for Islam built a lot of their work on Aristotle.

[Anonymous No.10527564]

>>10527116
>reading the classics instead of farting on them like Henry Miller

[Anonymous No.10527748]

>>10527505
He is pretty much the founder of virtue ethics: one of the three major branches of ethics. Contemporary philosophers like Hursthouse rely on him heavily.

[Anonymous No.10527765]

>>10527505
Ethics and poetics

[Anonymous No.10527817]

>>10527748
>>10527765
Thanks for the responses. Since the main topic of interest for me in philosophy is ethics, I guess I'll tackle Aristotle once I finish Epictetus and The Meditations.

[Anonymous No.10528474]

Someone in the previous thread asked what language could help with getting an idea of the pronunciation of vowel timing and accent in Classical Latin.

So I've found Lithuanian to be helpful with understanding how to time long and short vowels. Its vowel -qualities- are on average close to those of the restored Latin pronunciation as well, so you can safely internalise them and you'll only have a slight barbarian accent (to a reconstructed Roman you would, that is).

As for accent, Lithuanian has pitch accent, which some would argue existed in educated classical Latin under the influence of Greek, so that's pretty much perfect.

[Anonymous No.10529094]

Best thread.

[Anonymous No.10529494]

>>10529094
>tfw you ignore /lit/ memes and jump into modernist Top 100 reading charts
>it turns out they're all fucking shit
>go back to the Greeks like you should have in the first place
At last I truly see

[Anonymous No.10529507]

>tfw trying to train myself to read in dactylic hexameter

[Anonymous No.10529637]

Halfway through the Iliad, the Fagles translation specifically. Glad I found the pdf online because there was no way I was going to read the Pope translation.
I've had Plotinus' "Enneads" and Iamblichus' "The Pythagorian Life" lying around for a few months, so I'll most likely get to them in the near future.

[Anonymous No.10529677]

>>10527116
Reading pic related, she talks about Ancient bio/chem warfare world-wide, but spends most of her time on the Greeks and Romans. Sheds interesting light on passages of myth, especially regarding Hercules that others might find interesting.

[Anonymous No.10529726]

>>10527116
Rrading Herodotus, currently on book VII.
>mfw Xerxes' army is about to reach Thessaly

[Anonymous No.10529734]

>>10529726
Reading*

[Anonymous No.10529760]

>>10529726
>tfw still in Book IV
Currently reading about Libya.

[Anonymous No.10529838]

Has anyone else noticed that Euripides stops refrencing a divinity as "the god" and starts just using the expression "god" instead in The Suppliants? Is this related to the new "monotheistic" theology in the vein of Parmenides and Anaxagoras' thought? Since we know that Euripides was deeply involved in philosophy this seems plausible but I'm not sure wether I'm reading too much into a translation or not.

[Anonymous No.10529848]

>>10529838
It's probably a delineation between two different greek forms translated as God/Gods, or else a holdover from two or more conflicting translations used in reference.

[Anonymous No.10529853]

>>10529677
Stealing this recc, thanks

Hesiod anons, I made the unfortunate choice of picking the Selincourt Penguin version over Landmark; are there any good online resources (maps with text references, especially) to make the pure unadulterated monolith of text more easily parsed?

[Anonymous No.10529893]

>>10529853
I assume you mean Herodotus? No idea why you would need maps for Hesiod...

[Anonymous No.10529899]

>>10529893
Yeah meant Herodotus, The Histories
I've been at work today and my brain is melting out my ears

[Anonymous No.10529901]

>>10529893
A map for the part in Theogony were he starts listing out the rivers would make it much more interesting desu.

[Anonymous No.10530011]

>>10529853
Currently reading the Loeb version and using this as a reference for the Ionian revolt and Darius and Xerxes' campaigns. Also Google Maps and simply googling any place that requires it has been useful.

[Anonymous No.10530019]

>>10530011
Here's another one for good measure, plentiful resources can be found swiftly online. Haven't checked out the Landmark edition, but I'll stick with Loeb because I like the translator's style.

[Anonymous No.10530414]

Is everyone here reading translations or are you reading the original greek?

[Anonymous No.10530543]

>>10530011
>>10530019
O shit nigger thanks, may even start on The Histories take 2 tonight thanks to these

On an unrelated note, I've come to the end of the Discourses and a few Fragments on Epictetus, and there's been an issue with Epctetus' brand of stoicism that bugs me:
If the ideal stoic places no positive or negative value in externals, and values only the use of impressions which benefit and refine his own will, what was Epictetus' impetus to teach in the first place?
He discusses the dispossesion of his students at various lengths, criticizes the methods of many philosophical schools and Sophistic educators, and declares generally that a philosopher's school should be treated like a hospital, standing on the demand of patients - but he never addresses his own personal motivations for teaching, and this also leaves the question of when or how one should assent to impressions in the area of externals as a means of more greatly benefitting their will.

[Anonymous No.10530602]

I ONLY JUST REALIZED THAT "SOPHISTICATED" HAS SOPHISTIC AS ITS ROOT

[Anonymous No.10530619]

What translation of Thucydides, Herodotus, and Xenophon? I was originally going to go with Robert Strassler for all of them but looking more into it I'm less sure.

[Anonymous No.10530753]

>>10529637
>halfway through iliad
>"I'll get to Plotinus soon"
l m a o

Keep going but don't feel dejected if you literally take years to reach Plotinus. There are literally ages of content between you and him right now. Nothing wrong with that, as there's a lot to explore and enjoy and learn from; just pace yourself.

>>10529853
IMO you lucked out. Landmarks are valuable but the translations are iffy, whereas Selincourt is a famously well regarded classics translator. The maps at the back of your edition will probably cover 95% of your needs, and the (at first apparently annoying) requirement of flipping to them constantly, to remind yourself of what's where, will very quickly teach you Greek geography to the point that like 80-85% of future locations will be at least vaguely familiar.

>>10530619
Shop around. Can't really go wrong with most modern translations, especially with big name publishers, for these writers. Any penguin/oxford edition will be fine. I read and enjoyed Oxford Herodotus (Waterfield), Hackett Thucydides (Lattimore I think) and Penguin Xenophon (Warner). Other choices include the Landmark editions and Loebs (wouldn't recommend Loeb for such widely accessible texts).

[Anonymous No.10531374]

I read the Iliad, towards the beginning of last year (maybe March or a bit earlier), and tried to make an honest go at it. I read it through a few times, with two different translations, and tried to read (or listen to in a few cases) some secondary resources on it. Honestly I really did not enjoy the Iliad that much, it was such a fucking slog. Turned me pretty much completely off of "The Greeks" for awhile. Finally got myself to read the Odyssey, and holy shit is the Odyssey fantastic. Is the Iliad just something that completely doesn't work in translation but poetically is beautiful in the Greek? Obviously you're always going to miss something in translation (especially with poetry), but wow was the Odyssey ever on a completely different level of enjoyability.

[Anonymous No.10531459]

From Book 2 to 7 of Thucydides am I just going to be reading boring accounts of battles and the main events of the war? Will there be some information regarding the history of certain sites or policies be relayed at least? The last three books of Herodotus began boring me terribly and I dont know if I can read another 6 by sufferance alone

[Anonymous No.10531494]

>>10527151
This post should be a /lit/ banner

[Anonymous No.10532052]

I just did a paper on Stoic married life based on Foucault's History of Sexuality, and it has rekindled my interest in Stoicism. I reread Marcus Aurelius' Meditations every year, but Seneca's Letters are collecting dust. I might make work of it sometime.

[Anonymous No.10532059]

>>10531459
Get ready for some lit speeches man

[Anonymous No.10532092]

Does anyone have recommandations on texts that predate the classical era ?
I'm looking to get my hands on anything that was written during the Bronze Age and the greek dark age.

[Anonymous No.10532272]

>>10532092
Linear B (system used in the Mycenaean Age predating the Greek alphabet) was used mainly to record goods and shipments. Are you interested in grain and wool disbursements?

Also, the Dark Age has that name for a reason.

[Anonymous No.10532286]

>>10532092
>>10532272
This
You're pretty much going to have to read historical analysis, there's no real primary sources on the early Greeks.

[Anonymous No.10532336]

>>10531494
KEK We should do this, the current banner is complete shit

[Anonymous No.10533778]

I just finished reading Arrian's Anabasis Alexandri (Landmark edition). I haven't gotten to the supplementary material but its been a great experience learning about the exploits and some of Alexander's characteristics. The footnotes were great and I can't wait to jump into the epilogue.

[Anonymous No.10534414]

>>10527116
Hey OP, next time you make a new thread; can you remove the arrows at the start of the links? That way when someone wants to highlight a link, they can just triple click it to select the whole line.

[Anonymous No.10534464]

>>10529726
>mfw the dude who houses Xerxes' army in Lydia asks him to spare his eldest son from war
>mfw Xerxes proceeds to kill all of that guy's sons and splits the corpse of the eldest in half, nails the halves in pilars and has the army march between them

[Anonymous No.10534483]

>>10534414
Nigger, even 4chan's built-in scripts makes links clickable now. How about you just fucking click the god damn links?

[Anonymous No.10534505]

>>10527116
Is Cicero a good chap to start with?

[Anonymous No.10534535]

>>10534483
>It werks on MY machine.

[Anonymous No.10534562]

>>10534535
sucks for you faget

[Anonymous No.10534563]

>>10534414
>>10534483
>>10534535
Oh fuck. You're right. I'm sorry for being such an idiot.

[Anonymous No.10534573]

>>10534562
I'm so sorry. I don't deserve to be here.

[Anonymous No.10534591]

>>10533778
How is Arrian's writing style (as best it can be gleaned through translated text)?
I usually find Classical history rough to follow, and I know Arrian's writing beyond the Discourses is supposed to differ greatly from the style used to deliver Epictetus' rhetoric

[Anonymous No.10534627]

>>10527165

Good word

[Anonymous No.10534661]

>>10527505

The Peripatetic school was influential in all sorts of ways that aren't always easy to pin down.

Aristotle becomes very important for the later Platonists, and it is their re-Platonized Aristotle that is passed along to the Medievals.

If you are very interested in Neoplatonism, you'll need to grapple with Aristotle sooner or later.

You should note though that some parts of Aristotle's corpus got a lot more attention than others. Aristotle has a giant body of work, but a small portion these got most of the attention. The Metaphysics, The Categories, the logical works, etc.

[Anonymous No.10534664]

>>10527817
>Since the main topic of interest for me in philosophy is ethics, I guess I'll tackle Aristotle once I finish Epictetus and The Meditations.

Aristotle often has a bad reputation these days, but I found the Nicomachean Ethics to be an extremely thought-provoking read. I now understand why Aristotle proved to be so influential.

[Anonymous No.10534671]

>>10529507

Is English your first tongue?

You could try mastering iambic pentameter in English first. The modern mind is ill-accustomed to the metrical. Mastering dactylic hexameter may require a more graded approach.

[Anonymous No.10534701]

>This is a map showing where all of the characters originated in Homer’s epic poem The Iliad

Helps convey how wide-ranging the struggle was. Am I right?

[Anonymous No.10534732]

>>10530619

I can recommend this for Xenophon.

The translation is accurate and reads well. The book is also inexpensive.

[Anonymous No.10534772]

>>10531374
>Is the Iliad just something that completely doesn't work in translation but poetically is beautiful in the Greek?

The Illiad works on many levels. Some of these don't necessarily translate well. Many translations somehow diminish the hyper violence and the dark humour for example.

Consider the attached passage.

Phereclus gets stabbed in the ass. The spear goes through his ass and into his bladder. He starts spraying piss and blood all over the place as he dies. How is his death translated? "Death was a mist about him" Beautiful, but lacks a certain jocular punch.

[Anonymous No.10534788]

>>>10534770
>>>10534770

[Anonymous No.10534902]

>>10531374
The Odyssey is a psychological work, the Illiad an anthropological one. Of course both are intended to marry Classical Greek values to a sense of Bronze Age shared history and mythic culture, but the style is very different for doing so. I found The Odyssey quite boring in my original read in highschool, but took to the Illiad for likely the exact reasons you dislike it when I read it for the first time a year ago.

[Anonymous No.10534924]

>>10534902
>Illiad

[Anonymous No.10535451]

>>10527116
Where's the old Google drive document?

[Anonymous No.10535459]

>>10534772
What's this inline translation from?

[Anonymous No.10535526]

>>10534505
I'll axe again...

[Anonymous No.10535535]

i am 24 pages into The Histories, 9 pages into notes, and have been reading since about the time I got home at 11:00 last night.
I should be worried, but I have a fairly strong notion that the density of notes will lessen as I move from the meandering background history into the meat of the war itself. This whole thing has also been a crash course on early middle-eastern civilizations for me as well.

That said, Croesus is a fucking badass holy shit (let me just sacrifice trillions of dollars worth of gold no big D) and Herodotus is a lying son of a bitch (the Dorians migrated south from the continent over the early period of Hellenic development, oh by the way they also totally created Macedon and therefor Alexander is GREEK)

[Anonymous No.10535850]

>>10535526
If you have some knowledge of the history at the time, sure. If not, you should at least know the basics for many of his writings.
Read at least "The Catiline Conspiracy" by Sallust to have an idea what politics could be like plus maybe Plutarch's Life of Cicero to know what he was actually up to.

Unless you want to restrict yourself purely to his philosophical treatises (On Duties, On the Commonwealth...) and skip his political speeches completely but you would really miss out on some of his most well-known stuff then (like the Philippics or Against Catiline).

[Anonymous No.10535858]

Why does Pliny describe chinks as having blonde hair, blue eyes and harsh voices?Even if he actually meant something like Tocharians there should still be way more east asian looking peoples over there.

[Anonymous No.10535872]

>>10535535
But Herodotus lived like a century before Alexander the Great.
Maybe I am just naive but I usually gave Herodotus the benefit of the doubt. When something he says is inaccurate, I just assume that he didn't know any better, especially when talking about something like Egyptian history, he flat out says that he just talked with some priests and that is what they told him. Before history books, most history was just oral transmission and it's very easy to believe that people at some point start to modify their history to appear a little more special.

[Anonymous No.10536232]

>>10535459
>What's this inline translation from?

Taken from the Chicago Homer. A very useful site.

http://homer.library.northwestern.edu/

And while I'm recommending sites, logeion is great for looking up ancient Greek words. Just copy them into the search box and press Go.

http://logeion.uchicago.edu/index.html

[Anonymous No.10536322]

>>10535872
On the point of the founding of Mecedonia, isn't it a bit strange that he'd first place the origin of the land in the southward migration of the Doric people and then say that the kingdom was actually founded by a later northern migration?
It seems like a fumbled attempt to claim that the power of the Macedonians was inherently Doric despite the Dorians meandering about the place for a century.

[Anonymous No.10536330]

>>10536322
not that Herodotus himself was the inventor of this claim, but he does go out of his way to disclaim conflicting or mythologized events

[Anonymous No.10536408]

Oh no

[Anonymous No.10536758]

Started learning the passive voice in Latin. Will it be used more often than the active, or not?

Also, I've decided to start writing in Latin to help my command of the language. As far as narration is concerned, will I be more likely to use passive or active voice, or does it all depend on style and what I'm attempting to convey?

[Anonymous No.10536833]

>>10536758

>will I be more likely to use passive or active voice

Here's a frequency breakdown for ancient Greek. Latin will be different, but this should give you an idea. In short, active by far I would think.

[Anonymous No.10536891]

>>10536833

There's more info in this article including a similar breakdown for Latin, but I can't get to it right now.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/43938849

[Anonymous No.10537021]

>>10530753
>Keep going but don't feel dejected if you literally take years to reach Plotinus. There are literally ages of content between you and him right now.
>implying this hard
Kek. Why would you immediately assume, when someone tells you that he's reading the Iliad, that that was somehow his introduction to the greek canon? "Ages of content" he says..

[Anonymous No.10537265]

>>10536758
If you know nothing about Latin prose, you cannot write it.

[Anonymous No.10537488]

>>10536408
lmfao did this guy just try to transliterate "family" into Greek letters, using fucking beta code? I'd love to have a glimpse into the world of someone with an IQ that high.

[Anonymous No.10537506]

>>10534732
>tfw read that as "The Expedition Guys"
would read tbqh

[Anonymous No.10537916]

>the Persian War happened because Pisistratus liked giving it to his wife up the ass
Lmao Herodotus you absolute madman

[Anonymous No.10538189]

>>10527116
>>http://i.4cdn.org/lit/1511555062371.png (What Translation of Homer Should I Read?)
this link is broken, bro

[Anonymous No.10538271]

>>10538189
>bro
παράνομος

[Anonymous No.10538681]

>>10536408
How is it even possible to be this retarded.

[Anonymous No.10538846]

>Astyages dreams about his daughter pissing so much it sinks his city
>Marries her off to some Lydian fag
>Then he has a dream about a tree growing out of her pussy
>Immediately wants her back

What the actual fuck Media

[Anonymous No.10538864]

>>10538846
>Lydian
Persian, I mean

[Anonymous No.10538945]

>>10534664
nah Aristotle is very high regarded among academia. Im a philosophy major and he is probably the most referenced/discussed Greek philosopher. If anything, Plato is the one that has a bad rep, and its mostly because of the issue of essence he presents us with rather than his political views or his other arguments.

For of all you that are able, if you have a chance to take a class on at least Plato/Aristotle or if possible ancient greek philosophy as a whole, then take it. Im a big believer in self-education but the amount of complexity that is involved with reading through an already thick text that is also a translation of something ancient begs that these things are better learned with a professor that can point out when you are wrong about a subject. For example, Ive read the Republic about 4 times. the first 3 times were between highschool and my last ancient philosophy class. We read most of the Republic in class during the ancient philosophy class and i was astounded at how much I misunderstood or just plain didn't see in front of me. Sure, you get some people that are taking the class to fill up their schedule, but discussion about these works is absolutely essential to understanding the subject. If your goal is to understand later Greek and Roman philosophy and western philosophy as a whole, then you have to understand Plato and Aristotle. Simply put, 99% of western philosophers (at least until the late 1800s) applied Socratic and Aristotelian arguments to their theories.

[Anonymous No.10538964]

>>10535535
I think most historians disbelieve the Dorian theory. Either way, proto-Russians invaded Serbia, but I wouldn't exactly call a Serb a Russian, see what I'm saying? Alexander clearly came from a much different culture then the rest of the hellens, and the Greek world looks a lot different (from dressing culture to etiquette) after Alexander established his empire. Im Greek btw, but I would never let my nationality blur my rationality.

[Anonymous No.10540031]

>>10527116

Can't wait to dive into "the world of Odysseus" by moses finley. Fucking exams wish they were over, glossing over the table of contents made me erect already.

Anyone else read it?

[Anonymous No.10540366]

[Anonymous No.10540390]

>>10536408

Can someone give me a brainlet wojack with a supermassive black hole where the brain should be?

[Anonymous No.10540476]

>>10540390

[Anonymous No.10540499]

>>10532092
>Lament for Ur
>The Epic of Gilgamesh
>Theogony/Works and Days
>The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts
>Debate Between Bird and Fish

[Anonymous No.10541014]

About how many words do you estimate the collated works of Plato and Aristotle to be? Greek mythology is great entertainment to me, and history is very serviceable to my interests, politics is also up there with the others because I want to study as many governments of law, but I'm only interested in philosophy as much as I can divine the mentality of its contemporary or of later ages from it, for example however Socrates reacted to the prevailing opinions of his time or how Plato and Aristotle influenced the later Catholic Church.

With this in mind, how much material, that treats on ethics separate from what I mentioned above, would there be to skip? If I don't see it as too much I might even read it all out of curiosity and mend any lapses of study.

[Anonymous No.10541106]

>identified as a demagogue by his enemies
>pretty much every celebrity of the time objected to him, he was pariodied in dramatic works

Was Cleon the Drumpf of Greece?

[Anonymous No.10541129]

>>10541106
So, would Mexico be Sparta in that comparison?

[Anonymous No.10541148]

>>10541129
>KEEP THE WALL

[Anonymous No.10541150]

>>10541106
>CLEON CLUMPF GOT
>T
>W
>O
>SCOOPS
>OF FISH SAUCE! TYRANNICIDE HIM!

[Anonymous No.10541163]

>>10541014
>About how many words do you estimate the collated works of Plato and Aristotle to be?

About 1.6 million words.

[Anonymous No.10541186]

>>10541014
>>10541163

Extant ancient Greek philosophy is about 10 million words or 30 000 pages

Arrows for Plato and Aristotle's pieces of the pie.

[Anonymous No.10541206]

>>10541014
>>10541163
>>10541186

You'll note that these are pretty much all Platonists.
I'll add too that Platonism seriously shaped everything that came after.

>the texts which are conserved to the present day in direct tradition are those which were read and commented upon in the Neoplatonic school from the fourth to the sixth century, or which set out its doctrine, to the quasi systematic exclusion of other schools of thought. Plato, Aristotle and their commentators constitute almost the entire corpus of philosophical texts which is extant from Antiquity in direct tradition. The French scholar estimates at 4% the proportion of philosophical texts which are extant and do not belong to this Platonic-Peripatetic mainstream. Philosophical currents such as Stoicism or Epicureanism are almost all completely lost in direct tradition, despite the large number of their texts (for example, according to Diogenes Laertius (VII, 180), Chrysippus wrote more than 705 books, yet none are extant), let alone the writings of the Pre-Socratic philosophers.

[Anonymous No.10541213]

>>10541163
>French

LUL

[Anonymous No.10541237]

>>10541213

You have to learn French if you want to master the Platonic tradition my friend.

[Anonymous No.10541287]

>>10541237
>Implying I don't already speak French
>implying french is in any way necessary to learn 'The Greeks'
>Implying the english translations aren't objectively better

nice try though

[Anonymous No.10541328]

>>10541287
>Implying the english translations aren't objectively better

Not always. Damascius is a prime example.

[Anonymous No.10541605]

>>10541287

>>10541287

>Implying the english translations aren't objectively better

Would be a shame if Middle Platonism got totally ignored by anglophone countries

[Anonymous No.10541619]

>>10538964
Greeks learn to read in ancient dialect?

[Anonymous No.10542181]

Got a question here
Friend of mine asks to borrow my copies of Iliad and Odyssey for a college course
I only have Fitzgerald but have recommended Lattimore, Fitz and Fagles before
He says the professor recommends Lombardo for its simplicity to beginning readers; I checked it out and its pretty bad imo

Should I give him the Fitzgerald translation or recommend he pick up another? I know the Fitzgerald translation varies in accuracy and can be divisive. I'm just worried the Lombardo translation will kill his interest in the classics.
He needs an Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid.

[Anonymous No.10542199]

Can someone who is not very smart get into the greeks and philosophy?

Should I start with Ancient Greece or will it be too difficult? Can I read the "brief" version or is the full one recommended?

[Anonymous No.10542211]

>>10542199
the thing you gotta understand about the Greeks is that they weren't very smart either, they just spent a SHITLOAD of time theorizing and proof-checking their theories.
Anybody can read Plato and the post-Platonists, Herodotus and other early historians are very simple as well but disjointed in their delivery of history. Aristotle is the only real barrier.

[Anonymous No.10542212]

>>10541237
kek

[Anonymous No.10542359]

>>10542181

I don't know what you're talking about.
Lombardo is great.

[Anonymous No.10543319]

So I've got about 3k words of notes typed (transcribed from notebook) on the Histories.
Specifically, I have the background of the Lydians up to the rule of Croesus, and the background of the Medes up to the rule of Astyages, currently typed.
I still need to finish the background on the Medians and Persians and type up the entire background of the Lacedaimonians and Athenians prior to the Siege of Sardis, and by then I'll probably have 5k words.

Would anyone be interested in having these packed into a filesharer or Google Doc or something? I started doing this for my own reference use, but I fell in love with the Histories when I started actually getting a grasp on what the fuck is going on, and I know a lot of /clas/ anons struggle with Herodotus.

[Anonymous No.10543345]

>>10542181
Caroline Alexander's Iliad is the best tho

[Anonymous No.10543349]

>>10542359
Apparently his professor doesn't care much for Lombardo either, and only recommends that translation for people who struggle with the Epics, so I'll hedge my bets there

>>10543345
Haven't heard of Alexander's, is there an Odyssey and Aeneid to match? He's reading all three in one class so continuity of language matters.

[Anonymous No.10543352]

>>10543319
I feel like this kind of misses the point of taking notes. It's supposed to be your notes that force you to focus on what's important and to summarize, not just use what is essentially a summary from SparkNotes or something.
Personally, I am halfway through Book 5 and have around 20k words of notes.

[Anonymous No.10543360]

>>10543352
I see that, but I only intend to do these notes on maybe the first 50-60 pages of my Selincourt translation (I may do the whole book, but not in one stretch) and if I did put them up, it'd just be for people who initially struggle with Herodotus' non-existant chronology

[Anonymous No.10543364]

>>10543349
>Haven't heard of Alexander's, is there an Odyssey and Aeneid to match? He's reading all three in one class so continuity of language matters.

It's very recent (2015), but I've read some reviews and read some sections myself and I can assure you it's on par with Lattimore's. There's a review I specially like in the New Criterion, which analyzes some passages and compares them between translations and the original Greek, and Alexander's almost always comes out on top.

Sadly, she hasn't translated the Odyssey. Yet. I hope she will, since the fiasco of Wilson's translation left a bad aftertaste.

But if continuity of language is the most important thing, then tell your pal to just get Fagles and get done with it. It might not be the best, but it will do. Or get Alexander for Iliad, Lattimore for Odyssey and whatever else is the best for the Aeneid.

[Anonymous No.10543367]

>>10543364
Yeah I'll spare him the trouble of tracking down translations and just give him my Fitzgeralds

[Anonymous No.10543380]

>>10543352
Why do you people read Herodotus? Is it pleasure? How does it improve your perspective? Genuinely curious. When you know you could be reading picture related, why would you fiddle around with goofy factoids?

[Anonymous No.10543394]

>>10543380
Foundation of information on the various empires of the era
Appreciation for the birth of historiography and its early limitations and failings
Insight into the cultural values and biases of the Greeks

Also, shit is just fun. It's not every history writer who tells you about how Pissistratus boned his wife up the ass for fear of a prophecy that her kid would kill its father.

[Anonymous No.10543404]

>>10543380

That's a false dichotomy you've set up. Why shouldn't it be possible to read both Herodotus AND the works in your image? Do you expect to die before you finish them all?

[Anonymous No.10543405]

>>10543394
Makes sense. Sorry, dumb question. I just can’t appreciate history as much as philosophy

[Anonymous No.10543410]

>>10543405
>not appreciating BOTH

[Anonymous No.10543413]

>>10543404
(The dichotomy is philosophy/religion vs. History, and ya I think I will die before I’m able to read all of the philosophical/religious texts I want to read, unfortunately.)

[Anonymous No.10543423]

>>10543413
1 book a week = 52 books a year = 2600 books in a 50 year span, and that's with a super lenient number of books per year

[Anonymous No.10543484]

>>10543423
There are way more than 2600 books on Greek philosophy/religion alone that I would be more interested in reading than a book on history. But if you include the other greats (Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism etc.), there is no way I could come close.

[Anonymous No.10543505]

>>10543364
>I hope she will, since the fiasco of Wilson's translation left a bad aftertaste.
I don't know what you're talking about Wilson's translation is fantastic.

[Anonymous No.10543691]

>>10543484
>There are way more than 2600 books on Greek philosophy/religion alone
No there aren't, you're just going to end up retreading the same ground

[Anonymous No.10543872]

>>10543691
There are a number of journals just dedicated just to Greek philosophy, a few dating back to the 1800’s pumping out three issues a year. Each of those have detailed bibliographies listing all relevant works published that year. If you looked at just one of these bibliographies, you would realize how very wrong you are. The journals themselves (huge volumes) would bring you halfway to 2600, but the books and sources listed in the bibliographies would bring the number well beyond 10,000, but I wouldn’t be able to give an accurate estimate as to how far beyond.

[Anonymous No.10544061]

>>10537021
Because that is literally everyone's first Greek read, and he didn't follow it up with "But I've already read Plato and Aristotle."

[Anonymous No.10545032]

>>10543423
>I'll probably read less than 3000 books before I die

I did not come to this thread for such feels

[Anonymous No.10545128]

>>10527505
>When do I actually NEED to read Aristotle?
Nicomachean Ethics, Categories, De Interpretatione, Metaphysics
>which philosophical school(s) are directly built on his works?
He founded the Peripatetic school, but the correct answer is "Western philosophy", because he fucking invented its language
>Is he necessary to neoPlatonism?
They read his Metaphysics, yes
>went largely underappreciated in the Classical era
Nope nope nope. His stuff was translated to Latin by the Romans and that's how we got Medieval philosophy in the first place. In Late Antiquity, the Peripatetic school was the second school in importance after the Platonists, and the two there were four major schools together with Stoicism and Epicureanism.

>>10527817
>the main topic of interest for me in philosophy is ethics
Then skipping Aristotle was never an option, his virtue ethics experiencing a revival ever since G.E.M. Anscombe's Modern Moral Philosophy, and MacIntyre's After Virtue.

>>10538945
I believe Aristotle to be a colossal pleb filter, because despite all of this he still gets ignored, somehow.

[Anonymous No.10545147]

>>10543872
those are written texts we know of that have existed
not that still exist

[Anonymous No.10545151]

>>10545147
>>10543872
at least not translated to English or even any modern language.

[Anonymous No.10545152]

Reminder that you can't fully understand ancient roman and greek religion, political institutions and legal system without having read this book.

It is impossible to comprehend the origins of classical civilization without this book. No other writer has had such a complete and refreshing understanding of greek and roman religion and the importance it meant for their society.

[Anonymous No.10545189]

>>10545152
If its impossible to understand those things without that book, then how did the author of the book write the book?

[Anonymous No.10545379]

>>10545147
>>10545151
I’m refering to the bibliographies of secondary sources. Why would I only be talking about primary sources?

[Anonymous No.10545389]

>>10545189
it's a flat circle bro only the chosen can start or read the greeks.
sucks for you

[Anonymous No.10545573]

Thoughts?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1960484718/stoik-stoicism-reformatted-for-the-modern-reader

[Anonymous No.10545592]

>>10545573
>kickst-
stopped reading there

[Anonymous No.10545674]

>some passages of Hobbes' Peloponnesian War read like gibberish

I think I bit more than I can chew, but I really want to keep reading. Am I truly a bad reader or was Hobbes as laborious as I think?

[Anonymous No.10545690]

>>10545674
>And for the laws common to all men in such cases (which, as long as they be in force, give hope to all that suffer injury), men desire not to leave them standing against the need a man in danger may have of them but by their revenges on others to be beforehand in subverting them.

I had to re-read this a couple times, fuuuuck. The unorthodox syntax and apositions are completely startling for a 21th century nu-human like me

[Anonymous No.10545730]

>>10545690
>The unorthodox syntax and apositions are completely startling

These things make it especially valuable.
It's like you're reading something from an alien race.
Your mind may very well undergo strange transformations through exposure to such abominable word structures.

[Anonymous No.10545736]

>>10545573
This is actually the stupidest thing I've seen on this board. Why would I shell out for this when I can buy those translations for pennies? I feel like anyone who buys this couldn't even implement stoicism into their lifestyle.

[Anonymous No.10545819]

>>10545736

Is it just me, or are the translations slightly dubious?

[Anonymous No.10545956]

Plato Apologia

"You condemn me to a great misfortune. Tell me: does this also apply to horses do you think?
That all men improve them and one individual corrupts them?
Or is quite the contrary true, one individual is able to improve them, or very few, namely, the horse breeders,
whereas the majority, if they have horses and use them, corrupt them? Is that not the case, Meletus, both with horses and other animals?
Of course it is, whether you and Anytus say so or not.
It would be a very happy state of affairs if only one person corrupted our youth, while the others improved them."

"What follows, Meletus? Are you so much wiser at your age than I am at mine that you understand that wicked
people always do some harm to their closest neighbors while good people do them good, but I have reached
such a pitch of ignorance that I do not realize this, namely that if I make one of my associates wicked I
run the risk of being harmed by him so that I do such a great evil deliberately, as you say?
I do not believe you, Meletus, and I do not think anyone else will."


What exactly am I missing here, because for me neither of these arguments are exceptionally good?

[Anonymous No.10546434]

>>10545956
Spoiler Alert: Socrates was memeing the crowd into killing him on the grounds that this was the most masterful argument possible; a death sentence for so weak a case would be against the nature of most people, and Socrates by arguing for his own death by way of inferior argument would force them to realize the ignorance and ease of manipulation by which they arrived at the charge, postmortem.

Plato really tones down the shitposting and makes Socrates' arguments sound more reasonable and defensible, since it was a bad look for the grandfather of the Academy to have been an irl shitposter.

Read Xenophon's account for the real scoop on Socrates, Plato's for a foundation of coherent philosophy.

[Anonymous No.10546472]

>>10545128
Thank you for these responses; I've already tackled Stoicism on my journey through the 4 schools (need to grab Meditations but its secondary), and am intending to gear up for Peripatetics by rereading some Plato but I fell down the history rabbit hole with Herodotus and now his account's and Xenophon's will likely eat up a lot of my time.

[Anonymous No.10546685]

>>10545819
Why not read a translation of work in a vernacular a hundred years apart from yours? What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous No.10547006]

>>10537916
What edition are you using? I have the Aubrey de Selincourt translation from Penguin.

[Anonymous No.10547100]

>>10547006
It's a shitpost m8
I also have the Selincourt by Penguin, it notes that Pisistratus took the wife given him by Megacles and 'lay with her in an unusual way' to avoid fulfilling a prophecy by which Megacles' descendants would overthrow their fathers.

It's in Book I if you want to check

[Anonymous No.10547284]

What translation of Herodotus' Histories should I read? Also someone explain to me how and why to take notes while reading these books and in general.

[Anonymous No.10547339]

>>10547284
Aubrey de Selincourrt's translation is superior to Landmark, but Landmark's is the easiest to penetrate

The key difficulty of Herodotus is his digressive structure; much of the early events (all of Book 1) are written about back-to-front where an event is stated to have happened, and then the history about that event laid out from the furthest past point of relevance forward

[Anonymous No.10548646]

>>10545819
Why would they pay to license a good, modern translation for their shitty product when they could just go to Project Gutenberg and download a public domain one for free?

[Anonymous No.10548685]

When you lads take notes do you just take summarizing notes to keep track of what has happened, or do you also keep analysis notes?

[Anonymous No.10548705]

>>10548685

I like analysis notes.

I usually jot down point-form observations and thoughts. I later return to flesh them out and link them together. Lone sentences become paragraphs as you think through the implications.

[Anonymous No.10548912]

>Herodotus is a bluepilled cuck
"So that if there were snow in [Egypt]... there would necessarily be rain too; thirdly, the natives are BLACKED because of the hot climate" (Histories II, 22).

[Anonymous No.10549589]

>>10547284
All of the translations you're going to be able to buy are good enough that unless you're doing serious study on the work it really wont matter (and at a certain point if you're at a level where which translation you get matters, you're probably at a point where it makes more sense for you to actually be learning Greek). Just get whatever one you want. The Landmark edition is probably your best bet if you want a "batteries included" type volume.

[Anonymous No.10549829]

when do i actually resume with the bible my good fellas?

[Anonymous No.10549858]

>>10549589
>All of the translations you're going to be able to buy are good enough

The only caution I would add is that recent translations are often preferable when you approach a work for the first time. Main of the bargain translations you'll find in book stores will have much older translations since these are in the public domain and cost nothing to use.

Take Thucydides for example. You have at least 4 recent translations to pick from. All of them are good. If you push back further and dip into the 50's, 20's, or even the 1880s, you'll still find good translations, but these are much harder to read since they were written in very different times. In short, limit yourself to translations from the past 50 years for an optimal first foray.

[Anonymous No.10550780]

>>10549829
Whenever you want to move into understanding literature written post the Christianized Roman Empire.

[Anonymous No.10550876]

>Herodotus claims the Milesians founded the colony of Istria (t. Selincourt)
>oh I wonder where that is
>wikipedia puts me in Istria, Slovenia
I think this is the most confused I've been about this entire book so far, until some googling revealed the colony is called Histria and is along the Black Sea opposite Sinop.

[Anonymous No.10550902]

>>10543505
>complicated

[Anonymous No.10551202]

>>10550780
are the books in OPs Roman guide part of the Christianized Roman Empire?

[Anonymous No.10551224]

[Anonymous No.10551270]

>>10551202
Josephus's book on the Jewish War gives you context for early Christianity that is important to historians of the religion, Tactius' Annals and Suetonius' Twelve Caesars are some of the earliest historical records to mention Christ, because Nero is persecuting the Christians, Plotinus too is living in a world that is becoming more and more Christian and is a Pagan influence on later Jewish, Christian and Islamic philosophers.

But the christianization of Rome begins for real in the century after Plotinus' with Constantine, the first emperor to convert, and is finished with Theodosius I, the emperor that outlawed the pagan religions. It's with the Fall of the Roman Empire, Diocletian and Constantine that your typical history course on the Early Middle Ages would begin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC8JcWVRFp8&list=PL77A337915A76F660

[Anonymous No.10551297]

>>10551270
Thanks for explaining all those milestones friendo ill be sure to check that playlist aswell

[Anonymous No.10551328]

>>10536408

[Anonymous No.10551391]

>>10543423
holy fuck this is depressing to realise.

[Anonymous No.10551407]

>>10551391

Don't worry. Reading too many books is a bad thing, let alone simply owning them.

Watch Seneca wreck Didymus

[Anonymous No.10551442]

What did Plutarch mean by this?

[Anonymous No.10551513]

>>10551442
The analogy is that the octopus is delicious but even to the ancients it looks alien and Lovecraftian. As for the nightmares caused by poetry, if you read your Republic you'd notice Plato can't stop ranting against the poets, particularly Hesiod and Homer, which spread beliefs Plato finds disagreeable, like gods being killing their fathers or children, for Plato they have to be perfectly good; imagining a society where young boys are raised with this stuff he sought to do this education thing properly, and boy he did, he revolutionized education in Athens. Pic related is Chronos eating his offspring, it's a disturbing idea that even in and around Olympus there is little peace. Plutarch is a middle Platonist.

[Anonymous No.10551603]

Will starting with the Minoans ever be an option?

[Anonymous No.10551659]

>>10551603
The Minivilization didn't write anything that we know of beyond grain storage ledgers and the like

[Anonymous No.10551772]

>>10551442
Well shit, that's a good quote. I may have to bust out some Plutarch; I only have selections from Lives focused on the early Roman figures right now though.

[Anonymous No.10552977]

Does anyone know of a map or something outlining Sesostris' possible campaign as reported by Herodotus? I know he's entirely an inaccuracy of the Egyptian record, but I'm trying to rationalize the route of Herodotus reports of his naval and overland excursions and I can't fucking understand it.

In Selincourt's translation, Herodotus claims that he formed a Navy and disembarked in the Arabian Gulf to subjugate coastal cities throughout the Indian Ocean - but Herodotus gets the names of bodies of water backwards all the time, and there's not a footnote stating if he did so here. So I'm either lead to believe that he simply followed the bend of the Red Sea before running into impassable narrows around the modern city of Eilat, OR that the fucker actually built a navy out on the actual Arabian Gulf, followed the western shore south until it closed off near the modern city of Salwa in Saudi Arabia, and THEN MARCHED HIS ARMY ALL THE WAY OVER THERE to start his alleged Asian campaign.

And I really can't figure out which of these possibilities makes less sense

[Anonymous No.10553030]

>>10551442

Plutarch was a Lovecraftian.
I knew it.

[Anonymous No.10553100]

>>10529094
is that cap from the good place

that show knows how to land a cliffhanger very well.