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/lit/ - Literature

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22479288 No.22479288 [Reply] [Original]

>start with the Greeks
I hate this meme, this would take a lifetime to actually do. What can you read instead to summarize the essential Greek contributions to the cannon?

>> No.22479296

>>22479288
Shut your whining, there's a perfectly good reading list in the sticky

>> No.22479299

Depends on what area you are interested in, OP. :3

We only have so long to live. If you like history, or philosophy, or language, or mathematics there are indidvidual recs for that.

>> No.22479302
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22479302

Read about socrates, plato and aristotle on wikipedia. Then proceed to the Germans.

>> No.22479304

>>22479302
Also read about them on Wikipedia and proceed to the Analytics. Once you have read their Wikipedia entries you will be more than well read enough to contribute here.

>> No.22479305
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22479305

>>22479288
This is the entire extent of the important Greeks with surviving works. These are the books people mean here when they say “start with the Greeks.” Volumes 4 to 11 in the Great Books series. This should definitely not take you an entire lifetime to read unless you are borderline illiterate and have to phonetically sound out every single word.

>> No.22479306

>>22479288
It doesn't matter, just read what you want

>> No.22479308

>>22479302
Terrible, if you're interested in Socrates (Plato) and Aristotle, then you should read...

Plato - Laws
Plato - The Republic
Plato - Timaeus
Aristotle - The Organon
Aristotle - The Politics
Aristotle - Physics
Aristotle - Metaphysics

Almost in that order, really.

>> No.22479311

>>22479308
Actually tell you what, read The Organon BEFORE you read any of Plato's works, because Plato writes his works as a Socratic dialogue, the methodology of which is encapsulated by Aristotle's Organon.

>> No.22479314

>>22479308
Read the wikipedia articles of all these.

>> No.22479315
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22479315

>>22479305
>These are the books people mean here when they say “start with the Greeks.” Volumes 4 to 11 in the Great Books series.
>the Greek Books series
lmao@yourlife

why the fuck is the Iliad only like 20 pages here? Is this some kind of sparknotes regurgitation of the FOUNDATIONAL texts of human civilization?

>> No.22479318

>>22479315
No, that is the Iliad. The other tomes you see there are absolutely MASSIVE, they would contain everything listed here >>22479308 and more. I have one of the books in the Great Books series (the one with the mathematics - Euclid and Appollonius et al.) and it has VERY small print. It is not an abridged version, not like Barnes and Noble version or whatever.

>>22479314
Don't do this.

>> No.22479319

>>22479315
If you want to throw in Diogenes Laertius or Plutarch as secondary resources in addition to those texts that is fine but those are the prime first hand sources of Greek thought. They encapsulate Hellenic art and science of antiquity.

>the small Homer book

I own that book and I assure you it is all of Homers writings. The font is just really small.

>> No.22479324

>>22479318
Yes, the print is very small, the translations are antiquated and there is zero annotations or secondary resources within the books. I wouldn’t recommend those books for absolute beginners. Rather, I had posted the image to show the OP how little of Greek tragedy, poetry, math, science is left to us today and how “starting with the Greeks” shouldn’t take a lifetime. You could read those texts in a year if you were ultra-dedicated. I read all Plato in a month in 2020.

>> No.22479326

>>22479288
Working through the canon in chronological order is zoomer achievement collector mentality. That said, reading the Iliad and the Odyssey plus some stuff from Plato, Aristotle and the big three playwrights isn't a bad idea.

>> No.22479329

I started with the Greeks years ago
As a basic introduction all you need to read are the following
Homer
Hesiod
Sophocles
Aristophanes
Euripides
Aeschylus
Thucydides
Herodotus
A variety of Plato dialogues
That's not that much, it took me a few months to get through
Philosophy is a waste of time but Plato is still worth reading as literature

>> No.22479331

>>22479324
Hahaha, for the one on mathematics, the work On Conics, book III has like a million editorial errors. More errors than any other book on mathematics I have ever read. And that work is sitting on shelves at Harvard and Yale et al.

Just kind of funny. The quality is not great.

>> No.22479337

>>22479288
All of what we know about the Greeks is public domain and none of it is particularly difficult. This means it is free and easy to read. Reading a "condensed" version is literally just you paying more to get less.

>> No.22479348

>>22479288
For canon you can go with the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, covers most of the important stuff from the greeks to the present. 1st edition is all you need and can be had for cheap used but even the current edition new is not exactly expensive for a 3000+ page book.

>> No.22479362

>>22479331
The Plato translations are by Benjamin Jowett and the Hippocrates translations are by Francis Adams from the early 1800s. I feel like a pleb but I might have to buy the Penguin classics translations of Hippocrates because last time I read On Ancient Medicine, a lot of it went over my head.

>> No.22479366

>>22479315
For the record, there’s also Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch and Plotinus in that series but I didn’t include them in the list because they weren’t classical Greek writers.

>> No.22479398

>>22479288
I hate frogs

>> No.22479445

>>22479314
Unironically what I did and I minored in philosophy. Wikipedia and Powerpoint slides basically tell you all you have to know about philosophy, didn't read a single fucking book.

>> No.22479465

>>22479445
Still more respectable than being an actual philosopher.
>>22479288
Just read what interests you. If you want to read philosophy, read Plato and Aristotle.
If you want to read history, read Thucydides and Xenophon. If you want fiction, read the Illiad as well as the Greek tragedians like Euripides, Sophocles, and some others. Comedy by Aristophanes, too.
Start with the greeks never actually entailed you read Spopocles and Eurarchus' dissertation on why the Athenian herms are a little tooclose to the statue to properly fellate. Plus ten billion treatises on shit you don't care about.

>> No.22479467

>>22479465
>Athenian herm's dicks are a little too close to the statue to properly fellate*