What does “Start with the Greeks” really mean? What exactly? That’s so much fucking literature.
>>24870843If you didn’t start with the Greeks and the Bible earlier in life you’re fucked as an adult. Just like how a man who never had sex by a certain age will always be emotionally stunted even if he manages to later in life.
>>24870843Just read Homer, Plato, and Aristotle's Politics and Ethics. Preferably read some of the tragedies / comedies and other authors (Xenophon for instance) but Homer/Plato/Aristotle are good enough.
>>24870847I’ve read the entire Bible, multiple times throughout life. Primarily in the English Standard Version. I lost my virginity at age 21. I however, don’t actually know which Greek literature I’m supposed to have read.
>>24870843It means go to that park. Sit on whatever bench you like.
>>24870843>That’s so much fucking literature.It really isn't. It's two books by Homer, Hesiod, several books from Plato and Aristotle, several books with the plays, the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, a couple of books on poetry and maybe something about the other philosophers and that pretty much covers it. It's something like maybe 15-20 books overall, some longer, some shorter. If you're a bitch and only read the most famous works by Plato, Aristotle and the playwrights it will be half that.
>>24870855>I’ve read the entire Bible, multiple times throughout lifeNigga, why did you waste your time like that. Instead of re-reading the Bible you could have read all of the famous Greek stuff + Harry Potter.
>>24870855It’s too late. What anons don’t tell you is that you can’t just START with the Greeks. You have to GROW with the Greeks. Even if you tried, you just wouldn’t get it the way somebody who first read the Iliad and Odyssey in childhood would.
>>24870873I’ve seen Troy (2004):)
>>24870847this isn't true, i saved myself by learning how to read and write koine greek at age 35. anyone can do it!
>From Harold Bloom's canon:>The Ancient GreeksHomer (ca.800BC)Iliad; Odyssey.Hesiod (ca.700BC)Works and Days; Theogony.Sappho (ca.600BC)Aeschylus (525 BC — 456 BC)Oresteia; Seven Against Thebes; Prometheus Bound; Persians; Suppliant Women.Sophocles (c. 496‑c. 405 BC)Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone; Electra; Ajax; Women of Trachis; Philoctetes.Euripides (480 or 484–406 BC)Cyclops; Heracles; Alcestis; Hecuba; Bacchae; Orestes; Andromache; Medea; Ion; Hippolytus; Helen; Iphigenia at Aulis.Aristophanes (ca. 446 BC — 385 BC)The Birds; The Clouds; The Frogs; Lysistrata; The Knights; The Wasps; The Assemblywomen.Herodotus, 485–420BCEThe Histories.Thucydides, ca.460 BCEThe Peloponnesian Wars.Plato, c.427‑c.347 BCEDialogues.Aristotle, 384–322 BCEPoetics; Ethics.>Hellenistic GreeksMenander, ca. 342–291 BCThe Girl from Samos.Plutarch, 46–120Lives; Moralia.Aesop (620 — 560 BC)Fables.Petronius, c.27–66
>>24870847>brainwash yourself with the ramblings of brown-eyed, circumcised, grain eating sodomites.No thanks. You only need the Eddas, Brothers Grimm, Tolkien, and dreams.
>>24870843Presocratics -> Plato -> Aristotle. Thats it. Everything else is extra credit
>>24870884Petronius wasn’t a Greek. He was a Syrian who wrote in Latin.
>>24870843It’s not that much really. Core reading are the Illiad and Odyssey, the dialogues, Histories, and some Xenophon. Beyond that you can take in some lectures on western civ (try Great Courses or Modern Scholar series) that paint a picture of the greeks and romans including the major thinkers (presocratics, plato to aristotle and the influence on early christianity). It shouldn’t take you more than a year even if you’re slow as shit.
>>24870843It means start with the Greeks retard
>>24870884>no Pindar, Archilochus, Anacreon, Alcman
>>24870843It means reading the starting point for most forms of Western literature. That includes epic, lyric, drama, history, rhetoric, dialogue, philosophy, etc. You won't really understand Christian literature if you don't understand where most of it was coming from. To fully appreciate Shakespeare, I believe one must understand the significance of Aeschylus, to fully appreciate Milton one must understanding the beginnings of epic in Homer, etc.
>>24870884Holy fucking shit when will you retards stop sucking off Harold Bloom? He even explicitly said the Western Canon list he wrote is worthless and that he only wrote it in one afternoon because the publishers insisted a book about the Western Canon wouldn't sell without a literal list. EVEN HE says it's a meaningless list, and retarded Jew dicksuckers still use it anyway. People like you can't think for yourselves, you understand NOTHING about anything you read, you have a pathetically minute knowledge of literature, you just defer to Harold Bloom instead.
>>24872534much of greek brainfart was practically ignored in western tradition until the 13th century
>>24870843Just read anything that seems interesting. Filter everything with skepticism and logic. Everything written over the past 2000 years was heavily influenced by the Greeks so you're going to experience their writing regardless.
>>24870843Just read Homer and Plato. The rest is fluff
This YouTuber has a study guide for something similar you might be interested in.https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannelHis guide:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1caKNlW7sogEF7lAeYNbOQF9pt5O5b70yAXa-icUJO3o/edit?tab=t.0
>>24870884>>From Harold Bloom's canon:Is there a single collected download of everything in canon anywhere?
>>24870964This anon knows.
>>24872721He's a jew lmfao.
>>24872729And? They know plenty about this kind of thing given the entire Western tradition is based on swaggerjacking their shit.
The only books by a Greek I've ever read were St. Luke and Acts.
>>24872736You’re a faggot.
>ugh so many books how will i ever read them all?
>>24873922
>>24870954I respect you immensely for this opinion.
>>24872727That would be amazing. Like 500mb but amazing.
>>24870851>missing out on heraclitus
>>24870847>Just like how a man who never had sex by a certain age will always be emotionally stunted even if he manages to later in life.What age is that?
>>24870847I briefly lived with a grandfather who was a pastor in middle school, and got a BJ at 17, and laid at 18. how off am I? only had read the book of job as a kid, and am knocking on 40s door. where do i stand?
>>24874772You're fine. That retard doesn't know what he's talking about
>>2487473918 at the latest
I believe 'start with the Greeks' was a meme specifically about philosophy, I can see no reason to start any engagement with literature generally by reading Homer or whatever. It just reminds me of the autodidact from Sartre's Nausea, who is reading the contents of a library in alphabetical order. Just follow your interests. If the issue is 'getting references', the beauty of the internet is that if you see or even sense intuitively a reference to other literature you can...look it up. Even in the context of philosophy I don't really see the point. Primary Greek philsophy texts use words in specific ways that would probably just confuse the virgin reader. A lot of things are presumed without argument as well - much of Plato rests on the assumption of the existence of an immaterial soul. In my opinion you would be better served by picking up introductory, secondary literature and going from there.
>>24870843“All of Western thought is Aristotle vs. Plato. The rest is just commentary” is a meme I’ve heard So start with themThe pre-Socratics also exist if you want to go backwards a bit
>>24875223I'll add - Western philosophy is, in a sense, a long conversation with its foundations in Greek thought, so it certainly shouldn’t be ignored. But it’s a waste of time to think, for instance, ‘I want to learn about the philosophy of media and language, but before I even touch McLuhan or Wittgenstein I have to read Heraclitus, Plato, Plotinus, and so on.’
>>24870843Just read the epics and Plato
Homer, the tragedians, Plato and Aristotle. There are many more authors which are worth reading but I'd say those are the fundamental ones.
>>24870954You are retarded if you think you can go around in life thinking you are cultured without having read and understood the most important books of the bible, either to endorse it or to criticise it.
>>24874876The more accurate benchmark, or deadline in this case, is 25, the age when your brain fully forms. This leaves plenty of time to lose your virginity either in high school, college, or in the early stages of your adult life. If you can't accomplish sex within that time, there's no hope for you because many women won't want to be with a virgin pushing 30.
>>24874081Yes. Anyone that honestly suggests the presocratics as if a definite philosophical view could be extracted from the tiny fragments we have available is a pseud. The presocratics are interesting on their own but not even remotely essential when Plato alone gives an okay enough characterization of the philosophical climate at the time and is much more influential to Western philosophy. Yes, I am calling many authors I like a pseud for lavishing the presocratics with praise. I'm sure the idea in their mind (which is fundamentally distinct from whatever the presocratics actually believed) is ingenious and praiseworthy, but not necessary for understanding Greek philosophy.
>>24870843If you start with a Greek who refers to another Greek whose writing still exists you started too late.
>>24870847So true. You have to indoctrinate em early.
>>24875223The early Platonic dialogues are good as your first primary sources imo. They introduce the dialectic method and aren't too difficult, while also tackling some questions that many people find meaningful. Secondary literature is pretty much required for serious study, but the primary sources feel special to me, even just for the historic significance.I actually don't think you have to read Homer early, but it's cool to at least read him at some point and think about how it shaped western literature. The books are also fun to read.
>>24875223You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Your entire post is just worthless. Greece of antiquity is loaded with many benchmarks which lay the groundwork for what comes later. That’s all people are saying.
>>24870964If you wanted to simplify it further if you wanted all of Platonist thought in as few books as possible you only need like Timaeus and Seventh Letter and Republic.
It means start with Play Dough.
>>24875467>the age when your brain fully formsMyth
Start with the Classics Illustrated versions of the Greeks when you're 6.
>>24870843it means start with Homet
Literally just read Plato and people around him as you see fitting. Start with Plato, you can ignore the pre Socratics until you want, but you really only need Plato and then Aristotle as your core, all the other guys like Parmenides or Plotinus can come later to better understand Greek philosophy as a whole.
>>24875467Only women's brains are fully formed by 25. Men's brains continue to develop until about 40. This is why women seem so childish; in a sense, they always are.
>>24870847>a special hindrance to salvation is added by that knowledge of literature which I seem already to have in some slight measure attained, in which the efforts of my tutor, or my attention to continual reading have so weakened me that now my mind is filled with those songs of the poets so that even at the hour of prayer it is thinking about those trifling fables, and the stories of battles with which from its earliest infancy it was stored by its childish lessons: and when singing Psalms or asking forgiveness of sins either some wanton recollection of the poems intrudes itself or the images of heroes fighting presents itself before the eyes, and an imagination of such phantoms is always tricking me and does not suffer my soul to aspire to an insight into things above, so that this cannot be got rid of by my daily lamentations.
>Hesiod>The Iliad>The Odyssey>Aeschylus>Sophocles>Aristophanes>a poetry anthology>Herodotus>Thucydides>the presocratics>play-doh>ArryThat's 12 books and you have practically everyone worth reading covered. A lot of them are more compact than the average book too, like Hesiod, Sophocles or the presocratics.
>he didn't start with the protoindoeuropeansngmi
>>24870843Forget the Greeks, just read Ovid and move on
>>24870851No. Pre Socratics are easy. It's all fragments. Hesiod and Aesop are not to be missed either.>>24870855As we said. Don't worry about what the gatekeeper autists around here say. You'll still be better off than 90% of the plebs who haven't read the greeks.
>>24870843Its a red herring to stump you from reading anything. You will eventually get to them.
Why about Euclid?
>>24881432What*
