I'd like to start to read more from ancient philosophers.

>>1726012
Do you know Greek?

If not, learn Greek first.

>>1726020
Can't I just read the translations?

>>1726024
Most translations are quite bad and/or clumsy. Many technically good older translations were made by the educated and for the educated (who would be familiar with the source material anyway) and are less concerned with faithfulness and more with the literary skill of the translator. You will always be reading "Ancient Author as interpreted by Translator" rather than the original.

Some translations can be good and faithful for the most part, but you will be unable to judge this without knowing Greek/Latin. For this particular point, you don't even have to read it in Greek/Latin normally, you could stick to a translation - but it's immensely useful to be able to simply look at the original text if there's some sort of ambiguity in the translated text you're reading.

Basically if you don't know Greek and Latin you are functionally illiterate with regard to the foundations of Western thought.

>>1726024
No.

You want to read the greeks? Start with learning ancient greek.

>>1726047
Note that I'm not trying to push some sort of classical literature fundamentalist sola-scriptura-read-and-interpret-on-your-own line here. Commentaries and interpretations are immensely important, as many scholars better than you have pored over the same texts for centuries and their observations can be enlightening.

It's just that in translation you get the same thing, only with the interpretation embedded in the text with no way to distinguish the intent of the author from the voice of the interpreter.

How hard is it to learn Ancient Greek?

>>1726012
If you want to be woke like my nigga De Villepin, read Heraclitus.

>>1726369
>How hard is x language?
When will this meme die?

But yes Ancient Greek is very hard since it has very little in common with any modern languages. Learn Latin instead. If your native language is a romance one or a language with cases it won't be that difficult. If not then good luck.

>>1726575
For classical sources Greek is more useful though.

Read Montaigne, he quotes all the best philosophers and thinkers.

>>1727523
>useful