The Classics

Plutarch does feally accessible biographies, especially if you like character studies.

>>2950739
Came here to say read Plutarch.

>>2950733
Herodotus is awesome

But to read Herodotus, Plutarch and the like you need a brief background and a good understanding of geography. Especially ancient names for places (Corcyra for Corfu, Aethiopia for Sudan)

I think Arians biography of Alexandros magus is a good start

File: babylonian nights.jpg (555KB, 900x1271px) Image search: [Google]

555KB, 900x1271px

>>2950899
also you have to take a lot of things Plutarch says with a grain of salt, he just went around visiting temples and markets and interviewed people, writing down whatever they told him. A lot of the things are clearly folk tales.

>The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger at least once in her life. Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of attendants. But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads; there is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, “I invite you in the name of Mylitta”. It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her. So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfil the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four. There is a custom like this in some parts of Cyprus.

Now that's a religion I can get behind

>>2950919
whoops, meant Herodotus not plutarch

>>2950919
That's from the Histories of Herodotus no?

Both plutarch and herodotus have folk tales but in my opinion thats what makes reading them cool. It's a closer look into what the ancient world was like

>>2950921
Just saw that. You're OK in my book anon.

>>2950919
To continue I think herodotus claims they did this to build a dowery. Personally I wouldnt be surprised if something of the sort actually happened on Cyprus. One of aphrodites claimed birthplace was Cyprus.

have another from Herodotus

the setup here is that the architect who built the pharaoh's treasury made it with a design flaw only he knew about and he told it to his two sons on his deathbed. The sons robbed it a few times but the king decided to set traps in there which one of the brothers gets caught in, he tells the other to chop his head off so they wont recognize his body and destroy the whole family. The king then hangs the body from the walls and tells his guards to arrest anyone mourning in front of it. The thief's mother commands him to find a way to get the body so they can give it a proper burial and he devises an elaborate ruse to get the guards drunk and cuts down the body, then this

>When the king learned that the body of the thief had been taken, he was beside himself and, obsessed with finding who it was who had managed this, did as follows—they say, but I do not believe it. [2] He put his own daughter in a brothel, instructing her to accept all alike and, before having intercourse, to make each tell her the shrewdest and most impious thing he had done in his life; whoever told her the story of the thief, she was to seize and not let get out. [3] The girl did as her father told her, and the thief, learning why she was doing this, did as follows, wanting to get the better of the king by craft. [4] He cut the arm off a fresh corpse at the shoulder, and went to the king's daughter, carrying it under his cloak, and when asked the same question as the rest, he said that his most impious act had been when he had cut the head off his brother who was caught in a trap in the king's treasury; and his shrewdest, that after making the guards drunk he had cut down his brother's hanging body. [5] When she heard this, the princess grabbed for him; but in the darkness the thief let her have the arm of the corpse; and clutching it, she held on, believing that she had the arm of the other; but the thief, after giving it to her, was gone in a flash out the door.

as long as you have an edition which has an into that gives good historical context you will be fine. just jump in wherever you like.

>>2950949
devilish

I'll give you some options:
1. Start with the Iliad and the Odyssey. The two most important works of Greek culture (largely the Iliad). I like this version (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0226470490/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1497456971&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=the+iliad&dpPl=1&dpID=41c3TApkhHL&ref=plSrch) because of its huge background information, annotations and translation. It was personally recommended by Classics professor who was a Epic specialist
2. Pick up Landmark herodotus and use the hundreds of maps and Annotations and essays to get better context.

>>2950733
Reading Homer seems a good start to me, but don´t get bored by the beginning of the Iliad, when he describes how many ships and men were sailing to war, it gets better later on, but in my opinion there is too much describing of fights and less good thoughts than in the Odyssey.