So I'm starting with the Greeks. After this I have the Iliad and Odyssey. What next?
>>25207550Plato and Aristotle, the original chuds. Don’t bother with the rest it’s for women and gays
>>25207556Ok. What do you move on to after the Greeks?
>>25207632Plotinus, Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Kant.You can stop at Kant.
>>25207632The neo-greeks
>>25207639I forgot, Ovid and Virgil before Plotinus.
>>25207550You were supposed to start with Hamilton's Mythology, and then read Illiad and Odyssey before moving on to the tragedians.
No one ever starts with The Epic of Gilgamesh *sigh*
>>25207550Aeschylus, Euripides, AristophanesVirgil, Ovid. Maybe some satires: Horace, Petronius, JuvenalDanteShakespeare, Milton. Maybe Chaucer and SpenserGoethe
>>25207702Not Sophocles?!
>>25207705Look at OP's pic. Although I guess it's missing some real gems like Ajax and Oedipus at Colonus.
>>25207711Silly me, I didn’t even care to enlarge it and my eyesight is awful. Though you can infer he’s at least aware that Oedipus is a must read.
>>25207699That’s because it’s not congruous with western thought like Greeks are (Plato builds on Homer, Aristotle on Plato, Aristotle himself influenced all medievals). Gilgamesh is just sort of cool to have read.
>>25207550Fuck the philosophers. Read the historians.Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon for starters.
>>25209112Nah I know… but I feel if you’re autistic enough, it’s a fun short read (a prelude if you will) before getting into the canon.
>>25209142Sumerians sort of suck in a big way. They had one thousand years to write and all they left were Gilgamesh and that joke with the blind dog.
>>25207550jason and the argonauts is the next to take up the torch of homeric tradition, if you're interested. remember to read epics in verse.
>>252075502026...... i am forgotten.........
>>25209171literally not true and you're stupid.
>>25207550Usually the other early stuff, like Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns. All three tragedians are essential to at least touch on, philosophers, three historians if you’re inclined. There’s a lot more if you want it, but you’ll have to look up a reading list.
>>25209123“Pray, now,” with a sort of sociable sorrowfulness, slowly sliding along the rail, “Pray, now, my young friend, what volume have you there? Give me leave,” gently drawing it from him. “Tacitus!” Then opening it at random, read: “In general a black and shameful period lies before me.” “Dear young sir,” touching his arm alarmedly, “don’t read this book. It is poison, moral poison. Even were there truth in Tacitus, such truth would have the operation of falsity, and so still be poison, moral poison. Too well I know this Tacitus. In my college-days he came near souring me into cynicism. Yes, I began to turn down my collar, and go about with a disdainfully joyless expression.”“Sir, sir, I—I—”“Trust me. Now, young friend, perhaps you think that Tacitus, like me, is only melancholy; but he’s more—he’s ugly. A vast difference, young sir, between the melancholy view and the ugly. The one may show the world still beautiful, not so the other. The one may be compatible with benevolence, the other not. The one may deepen insight, the other shallows it. Drop Tacitus. Phrenologically, my young friend, you would seem to have a well-developed head, and large; but cribbed within the ugly view, the Tacitus view, your large brain, like your large ox in the contracted field, will but starve the more. And don’t dream, as some of you students may, that, by taking this same ugly view, the deeper meanings of the deeper books will so alone become revealed to you. Drop Tacitus. His subtlety is falsity, To him, in his double-refined anatomy of human nature, is well applied the Scripture saying—‘There is a subtle man, and the same is deceived.’ Drop Tacitus. Come, now, let me throw the book overboard.”“Sir, I—I—”“Not a word; I know just what is in your mind, and that is just what I am speaking to. Yes, learn from me that, though the sorrows of the world are great, its wickedness—that is, its ugliness—is small. Much cause to pity man, little to distrust him. I myself have known adversity, and know it still. But for that, do I turn cynic? No, no: it is small beer that sours. To my fellow-creatures I owe alleviations. So, whatever I may have undergone, it but deepens my confidence in my kind. Now, then” (winningly), “this book—will you let me drown it for you?”“Really, sir—I—”But you carry Tacitus, that shallow Tacitus. What do I carry? See”—producing a pocket-volume—“Akenside—his ‘Pleasures of Imagination.’ One of these days you will know it. Whatever our lot, we should read serene and cheery books, fitted to inspire love and trust. But Tacitus! I have long been of opinion that these classics are the bane of colleges; for—not to hint of the immorality of Ovid, Horace, Anacreon, and the rest, and the dangerous theology of Eschylus and others—where will one find views so injurious to human nature as in Thucydides, Juvenal, Lucian, but more particularly Tacitus?
>>25210018When I consider that, ever since the revival of learning, these classics have been the favorites of successive generations of students and studious men, I tremble to think of that mass of unsuspected heresy on every vital topic which for centuries must have simmered unsurmised in the heart of Christendom. But Tacitus—he is the most extraordinary example of a heretic; not one iota of confidence in his kind. What a mockery that such an one should be reputed wise, and Thucydides be esteemed the statesman’s manual! But Tacitus—I hate Tacitus; not, though, I trust, with the hate that sins, but a righteous hate. Without confidence himself, Tacitus destroys it in all his readers. Destroys confidence, paternal confidence, of which God knows that there is in this world none to spare. For, comparatively inexperienced as you are, my dear young friend, did you never observe how little, very little, confidence, there is? I mean between man and man—more particularly between stranger and stranger. In a sad world it is the saddest fact. Confidence! I have sometimes almost thought that confidence is fled; that confidence is the New Astrea—emigrated—vanished—gone.”
>>25207699putting gilgamesh, baal, etc before homer never made much sense. the point of starting with the greeks isn’t ’start with the oldest’, it’s about the start of western tradition, where the canon begins, and when literature became self-conscious, shaped, and foundational to the tradition you’re entering.
>>25207550The Enchiridion is short, focused on the human and a nice little tangent. Read it.
>>25207702This.
organon
>>25207632After Aristotle you should read Cicero, because he summarizes all philosophy after Aristotle.Then Alcinous Handbook of Platonism because it will give you the background logic of what everyone in late antiquity worked from.Then Epictetus Enchiridion (can read this whenever).Sextus Empiricus is nice.The Alexander of Apgrodisias if you want to initiate the delve into "Neoplatonism" (all philosophy after Origen and Plotinus).
>>25210208>CiceroBoring, retarded>Alcinous Handbook of Platonism((secondary source))>EpictetusBrophilosophy>Sextus EmpiricusWorth reading desu but still quite reddit>Alexander of ApgrodisiasYou can't even spell his name lol. He is extremely dense and his most interesting commentaries are lost. I can't tell you not to read him but I can tell you that very few people do unless they are academics specializing in Aristotle and/or Neoplatonism. Your recommendations suck.
>>25207641wow, didn't expect anyone non greek to have read this! It really is wonderful, I hope the way Papadiamadis writes is shown as best as possible in the english translation
>>25207641>>25210477I've heard people call him the Greek Dostoevsky. Also that he is hard to translate.
