best order in which to starting reading the greeks?

>>7538929
>to starting reading the

Start at the beginning. With the Greeks.

start with the greeks

>>7538929
restart with the romans

>>7538929
First, read a general history book about Ancient Greece and study a map of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.
Then, you can go in chronological order or choose authors at whim(Homer one week, Thucydides another, Plato the next month, Aristotle after that, etc).

File: 1435326943189.jpg (159KB, 1024x683px) Image search: [Google]

159KB, 1024x683px

begin and end with oedipus rex.
memorize it.
quote it constantly.
live it.
fuck your mother.
you know you want to.

It's best to start with the Greeks.

File: 1410622362089.jpg (1MB, 3672x3024px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 3672x3024px

Lol here OP.

>>7538929
my diary, to be honest.

>>7538996

who is this cappuccino fap-machine-o?

>>7538996
>fuck your mother.
I'm not going to actually fuck my mother but I'll live out incestuous fantasies with older women one of these days. I'm glad all my sisters are older than me so I can also live those out too, without much difficulty. The hard part isn't really getting a girl in front of you, but having her go along with your weird fetish, tbqh

File: START WITH THE GREEKS.jpg (2MB, 3240x3600px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 3240x3600px

think this is the most updated version

>>7539481
>Preferred translation is Alexander Pope

into the fucking trash lmao

>translation
>Pope
aaaaaahahaha

>>7539484
I agree. Just saw this somewhere, didn't really look at. I have Fagles, but I've heard Lattimore is also good.

>>7539492
Pope is good in his own right but his version is not a translation, it's a remake.

You might as well watch 2004's Troy at that point, it has about as much to do with the original as Pope's "translation"

>>7538996
Fuck Greeks, start with the Teeth.

>>7539500
Comparing Pope with the movie Troy. Do you think honestly that you will ever come close to th "real" translation you fucking dweeb.

>>7539500
>>7539524
Pope's translation does an amazing job at conveying the orotund qualities of the original, the language used was punchy, visceral, and rhythmic in ways that Lattimore or Fagels couldn't recreate. Remember, the original stories were performed on stage for hundreds of people at a time over the course of several weeks, and it was never done the same way twice. Pope's version is as legitimate as any one of the poets in ancient Greece before Homer set it in stone.

Also, if you knew anything about the Trojan war, you'd have no problem reading Pope's translation right off the bat

>>7539481
That one has an awful philosophy section. Pope sounds too silly imo; I can imagine a small little high pitch man singing it.

>>7538929
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Read wikipedia articles on Greek Mythology
The Illiad
The Odyssey

>>7539648
The Epic of Gilgamesh isn't necessary at all.

>>7539648
lmao

and what about the romans?

>>7539127
>>7539481
is there any reason I shouldn't just start with "the first philosophers"?

>>7540287
You need to put them into context and understand their culture

Reading what they said and thought without knowing what inclined them to say those things and what directed their thoughts is rather pointless don't you think

>>7540292
Not really, the context of the culture in which they lived doesn't change the validity of their ideas. Does it?

>>7540214
What did they ever do for us?

>>7540297
You don't need much context for the pre-socratics at all really, but I'd definitely advise reading the literature for Plato and Aristotle. Also, The First Philosophers: The Pre-Socratics and the Sophists, is better than the penguin one.

>>7540315
thanks. I'm probably going to read mythology and homer at the very least before I go onto the philosophy since it interests me anyways.

File: Captur.png (55KB, 684x210px) Image search: [Google]

55KB, 684x210px

>>7540214

start with the egyptians

>>7540327
WE

>>7540325
I disagree

>>7539223
Le nice meme, fellow redditor!

>>7538929

Well according to these faggots it's this

http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Philosophy

>>7540297
This is correct sir, truth is you can start where ever you like and read whatever you want. If you want to read plato, then you can just read him and you'll be alright but the more you read the more you know and the truth is you just have to ask yourself, what are you trying to achieve by reading this? Do you just wana know aristotle and plato?
Do you want the origins of philosophy and logic?
Or do you want to all those things, the history and the literature of that era?
After you have figured that out, read accordingly.

Also this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8_RRaZW5X3xwztjZ4p0XeRplqebYwpmuNNpaN_TkgM/pub

How important is Herodotus exactly for a philosophy student?

>>7539500
That's because you are never going to make a translation that is properly 'faithful'. Most of the supposed faithful translations aren't even in dactylic hexameter for gods sake.

>>7541025
Not important. You should still read him anyway.

I don't know why you wouldn't read all of the extant greek stuff. There isn't exactly loads of it.

Historical order of course.

>>7538929
Read Catullus. Skim through Homer. There, done.

Seriously, being a participant of his western culture already means you know everything you need about the greeks, unless you are a potato who never read anything.

>>7540325
Yeah it's not like there are any other styles of writing worth reading.

>not reading Livy
>not reading Cicero
>not reading Virgil
>not reading Ovid

Get fucked

>>7541133
Lol is this a joke? If you're talking about only classical Greece then yeah, but if you dip into Roman-era Greek works, you've got loads to do. Polybius, Pausanias, Strabo, a shitload of orators, etc. Relatively speaking it's admittedly "not that much," but it's a lot more than Herodotus, Thucydides, a few dozen plays and some philosophers. Most of /lit/'s Greek charts don't even mention Xenophon, and I think the only one that does only suggests Anabasis; I've literally never heard someone here mention Hellenika, let alone Cyropaedia or one of his shorter treatises.

>>7541225
Bruh I been searching for his complete works but can't find it, could you tell me the names of atleast the main ones?
Got hellenika and anabiasis!

>>7541249
Oeconomicus
Apology of Socrates
Memorabilia
On Horsemanship

Take a look at his wiki page, it lists his various works.

>>7540301
good post

>>7541225
I know that, but even with the Romans it's still not a lot.

The Romans and Greeks are such a small part of the canon quantity wise. Mainly because so much shit just didn't survive. You mention Polybius for instance, but most of his work isn't even extant.

Like you said, i guess there is still a decent amount of reading, but if you are interested in literature or the humanities in general i don't know why you would skip any of them. Why would you skip Herodotus for example? He literally only has one book.

>>7541263
Thank you Mr. Sir
I shall do this for the glory of all of mannkind but also so that I can be smarter than all the fags. Uno mas questiono porfavore seniore, do you recommend any other stuff of the greeks other than the mainstreams?
But also (I'm going for the greeks now) I wanted to do a complete history cycle of it aswell, picking like a book on spartans, a modern run through of pelopenesian, a book on each of the 300 stories, and aswell the trilogy on alexander the great.
Spartan/athens books are from cartledge and strauss except from pelopennesian is that K something real respected book.
Anything you would add?:)

>>7541286
Don't forget Plutarch.

>>7538929
I'm gonna be honest.

Illiad>Odyssey>First Philosophers>The Trial and Death of Socrates>The Republic

is the only order I really think needs to be imposed

>>7541297
Read Kagan's book on the Peloponnesian War, and his individual books if you want. Read some of the later Greeks, like Appollodurus, Polybius, Plutarch, Isocrates.

>>7541306
Why must that order be imposed? What if one wants to read the historians? What if one is more interested in theatre than philosophy?

>>7541312
Dogr I said pelopennesian by K something other suggestions are good though, nothing mindblowing since I've heard of em all
Since you mentioned cicero earlier though, which books should I read of him cus I really can't find any that interest me in an exquisit way, modern complete works would be hnng

>>7541312
Really looking forward to plutarch though, he just seems sp interesting with the way he tekls the history by telling it in the form of a few peoples point of view

>>7539544
I have no qualms with popes translation he portrays ot in the poetical sense it should be, however i deteste the fact he used roman god names like Jove instead of Zeus and stuff like that.

>>7541327
I haven't mentioned Cicero buddy, and quit taking drugs before posting on 4chan lol

>>7541249
This guy >>7541263 just about covered it, but don't forget about Cyropaedia/Education of Cyris. Loeb publishes everything, but you can get cheaper editions of Cyropaedia from Agora, and Penguin sells everything else.

>>7541286
Dude you are out of your mind. Have you ever seen the full list of books offered by Loeb? 500+ volumes. You're right that a lot is lost, and you could definitely argue that most texts don't have too much influence on canon (for all the talk of the Aeneid, nobody ever mentions Punica), but a lot is extant.

Like, you're right that Polybius is largely lost, but between his few complete books and the fragments of everything else, you're still faced with ~1200 pages of content.

Although I totally agree that there's no reason to skip stuff like Herodotus. Polybius and the like can be boring as shit and have significantly less influencs (although still some) on later works.

>>7541297
Honestly I'm still working through this stuff myself. If you're set on only Greek history, maybe consider Arrian, Appian and Pausanias, definitely Polybius, and Diodorus and Strabo if you're a masochist.

But I would recommend some Latin writers, too. Anything after the 3rd century BC, esp after 146BC, will be very centered on Rome, and Greek historians obviously won't have the only perspective available. Polybius is great for 264-146BC, but I would definitely start with Livy just because it's fun as hell, if not totally accurate.

Also I've heard good things about Holland's "Rubicon" and the two books "the roman republic" and "the roman empire" by crawford and wells, respectively, but I haven't read them yet.

>>7541327
Also yeah complete Cicero would take ages and literally cost you $700+ from loeb. The most common works will be published by penguin and oxford, so just browse. "On the republic," "on the gods," "on living well," etc., are ones I've seen a lot (but also haven't read).

Also browse the list of offerings from loeb (on the loeb wiki page) just to see what's out there.

>>7541349
I don´t like you anymore and have found a new mentor goodbye.

>>7541407
>>7541419
Yeah I know I just want to work my way through the greeks and then to the roman era although I might end up sort of mixing it all up together or atleast mixing it up so that I read every other book on this journey and then the ones inbetween would be like modern stuff which is also really interesting, there is just so much to read. I mean I´m turning 20 in a week, starting law school in like 8-9 months so I wont be able to read that much on the lit project since I have to do really well in school to get into the top law firms. There is just so much to do and so much I want to do. I don´t feel so good.
On cicero though I agree, I have looked into those and combining some books from oxford, cambridge and penguin you get a lot of his works but I feel like I should be able to find more of his speeches, like there are some defense speeches, those are like 5 in one book and then there is the book on political speeches which has only like 3, anyway thanks for great answers bro.

>>7538958
Use the Romans for historical background. In the end they are responsible for what has survived to modern day for good or ill. The Egyptians may have had some hand in it as well ergo the Library of Alexandria y Coptic tambien.

>>7541992
Yeah I totally understand; I started with the Greeks last May thinking it was only a dozen or so books, and instead I've ended up with a backlog of like a dozen Greek and Roman writers I hadn't even heard of when I first started.

You really have to pick your battles, especially if you have less than a year to really read.

>>7542040
I've been reading Diodorus Siculus and was surprised to see just how extensively Greece drew on Egypt. Egyptian influence definitely survived to Rome and from Rome down to us, but there just aren't many, if any, extant texts to which one could point and say "that's where this idea started."

>>7542040
Thank you Moses Hadas by the way.
AW Verrall is my favorite translator of Aeschylus so far.
No
greentext
here
,
.

>>7542041
One of the things is though that it might be a good idea to sort of try to rush into plato and then just some cicero since it might give me some baseline for the law?
Although I might just read biographies and novelles and perhaps ciceros speeches, like the biography of Lincoln/jefferson and then like a biographical story on napoleon or something and perhaps tolstoy/dosto.
I just got crazy interested in reading again, which is gonna help me a lot in law so I´m really grateful for that desu.
What is your occupation atm like job/education etc?

>>7542046
Sitchin makes the connection between Sumerian, Egyptian and Greek Pantheons in a way I think I can trust.
There are some cave drawings in France that may be of help. Food, food, remember food. Damn! the drink and remember food.

>>7538929

Saganaki, Souvlaki, moussaka, bullet.

>>7542079
Plato and Aristotle could be good for some legal/political philosophy, but a lot of their texts won't be relevant to that; just pick and choose, and maybe supplement the primary sources with a secondary text (relevant volumes of Copleston's history of philosophy, bloomsbury companion to Plato). Machiavelli is also a fun political philosophy read with obvious Greek influences (I'm thinking of his Discourses on Livy moreso than The Prince), but it depends on your focus in law. What kind of law will you be studying? Machiavelli was apparently a huge influence on the guys who actually wrote the constitution, so if that's your focus, he's worth checking out.

I'm a worthless NEET. Finished undergrad in 2015 and now I just work out, read books, buy books, think about which books I should buy next, etc.

When reading the Greeks though I find it important to remember how completely enraptured I was by Virgil's The Aeneid.
I need to return to the original Latin.
Oh the cataclysms of the ancient world!

>>7542315
Apollonius of Rhodes, don't forget Appollonius of Rhodes...

>>7542314
Yeah I figured as much of the plato/aristotle dilemma. Politics in general interest me a lot maybe not in the way that I actually want to get into them just so that I want to understand them because politics are essentially leadership and economics and I am very interested in those things. But also it´d be grate to be so well read that I really know where I stand on things and can have my own opinion based on knowledge not just this guy says this and I´m gonna roll with him.

I will be going into sort of a business oriented law focus, like international banking law, mergers and acquisitions etc. Will get a L.L.M degree aswell after the M.law which is sort of like international recognition based thing but also specializes you further and makes you more prepared for perhaps getting rights to practice law in a different country.

What was your major though and where did you go to school?
Any plans for the future?

>>7538929
Start with the Doric order.
Move on to the Ionian order.
Finally, round it up with the Corinthian order.
Post on /pol/ with your results.