Chapter 24
In This Chapter
● Perusing plays
● Delving into history
● Getting philosophical
● Pondering poems
At this point, maybe you’ve nearly finished reading this book - if so, congratulations and thanks for sticking with it! Or maybe you’re just starting to get to know the ancient Greeks. Wherever you are in the process, one of best ways to explore the ancient Greeks is through their own words, in the plays, poetry, and prose they left behind.
So if you’ve enjoyed The Ancient Greeks For Dummies or you want to gain a better understanding of some the topics, events, or people I cover in this book, here are ten things to try next.
When reading ancient Greek literature the translation is vitally important! Many translations are available of all the works that I mention in this book but I always recommend choosing the Penguin Classics. A real attempt has been made to capture the spirit of the originals in the translations. Also, all the editions have excellent introductory notes and many have indexes.
If possible, get an audio version of Homer’s works. Both The lliad and The Odyssey were originally composed to be listened to. Only when you hear the words spoken do you get a real sense of the poetic devices and tremendous powers of plotting and construction that the poet had.
The Iliad: Homer
As I state in Chapter 20, The Iliad is the most important work of Greek literature. The ancient Greeks looked to Homer for guidance on the widest possible range of issues - everything from fighting and shipbuilding to hospitality and honourable behaviour.
Although a relatively simple story, the poem is a treasury of mythological characters and human and deity relationships. The central figure of Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior, is powerfully dramatic as he sits out the fighting and struggles with his own pride and anger before personal tragedy brings him back into the war.
Interesting Fact: Book Two ‘The Catalogue of Ships’ is often a difficult read for modern readers, but the ancient Greeks regarded it as the most impressive of the entire poem for its tremendous listing of warriors and their families.
The Odyssey: Homer
The Odyssey is the companion piece to The Iliad. You can read one or the other individually, but reading them together brings Homer’s genius to light.
In many ways, The Odyssey is a better story than The lliad and reads much more like a modern novel. The poem is full of great stories and characters and is very evocative of a mythological time when almost anything could happen. And the dramatic conclusion, when Odysseus returns home to Ithaca to deal with the arrogant suitors that have taken over his home and are making a play for his wife Penelope, must be read to be believed.
Interesting Fact: Many modern critics have suggested that the last two books of The Odyssey aren’t by Homer! They’re slightly different in tone compared to the preceding 22 books and deal with the fallout after Odysseus has retuned and defeated the suitors. I’m not sure myself - have a read and see what you think.
Oedipus the King: Sophocles
If you read just one Greek tragedy, try Oedipus the King. In many ways the play is the archetypal story of how a man who is too proud is brought down by the gods. Important questions about destiny, fate, and the role of the gods are examined in detail - and aside from this the play is brilliantly constructed.
Oedipus the King is also most likely to give you the full experience of the ancient Greek dramatic concepts of pathos (suffering) and mathos (gaining understanding) because you already know the ending and therefore can give your full concentration to the process.
Interesting Fact: Aristotle regarded this play as the most perfect of all tragedies and used it to scientifically analyse the process of writing tragedy in his Poetics. See if you agree with him!
The Histories: Herodotus
Herodotus’s Histories are a fantastic read. Setting out to explain the reasons why the Persian Wars started, Herodotus ends up writing a history of Greece up until his own times. (See Chapter 6 for my take on the Persian Wars.)
Histories isn’t historical writing as scholars regard it today. Herodotus’s text mixes history, mythology, and hearsay - sometimes even in the same paragraph! But Herodotus was incredibly widely travelled and he’s sometimes the only surviving source for some of the places and events he mentions. Histories is a perfect holiday read because you can pick up it up, dip into it, and find some interesting place or story.
Interesting Fact: Early in his life, Herodotus was involved in an attempted revolt in his home city of Halicarnassus. The revolt failed, Herodotus went into exile, and began his travelling. Politics’ loss was history’s gain!
Parallel Lives: Plutarch
Plutarch (circa AD 50-120) was a Greek who lived in the Roman Empire and wrote about the lives of great men from history. He wasn’t a historian in the conventional sense but more like a modern biographer whose interest was in the characters of the individuals he wrote about.
Plutarch’s life of Alexander the Great is a particularly good place to start, but he also wrote lives of many other Greek figures such as Alcibiades, Pericles, and Demosthenes.
Interesting Fact: All of Plutarch’s biographies were originally published as Parallel Lives, in which the biographies of two men are contrasted with each other, such as the lives of Theseus (Athens’s mythological founder; see Chapter 20) and Romulus (Rome’s equally mythological founder).
Early Socratic Dialogues: Plato
This recommendation isn’t actually a book by Plato but a collection of some of the earliest of Socrates’s dialogues that he wrote down. It’s an interesting and accessible collection of discussions that give a really good idea of the way that Socrates’s method of discussion worked (see Chapter 22).
Topics include the difference between love and friendship and the true nature of aesthetic beauty. These dialogues are a really good introduction to Plato’s style and a great place to start if you want to eventually read his book The Republic.
Interesting Fact: All the dialogues are named after the friends of Socrates who took part in the discussions such as Lysis, Charmides, and Euthydemus. These folk don’t get much of a word in edgeways after Socrates gets going, so it’s nice that they get their tribute in the title at least!
The Ethics: Aristotle
The Ethics is by far the best introduction to Aristotle’s style of philosophy and scientific method. Aristotle sets out to establish what makes some people good and others bad and then tries to argue why happiness through doing good should be everybody’s goal. It’s a cheerful argument, well illustrated by a number of sections that try to define qualities such as modesty, prudence, and generosity.
Interesting Fact: The book includes a table of virtues and vices that also incorporates a suggestion of the middle course between them that readers should take. You have no excuse for bad behaviour after you read this classic!
Frogs: Aristophanes
Frogs was produced in 405 BC and won first prize in the Lenaea comedy festival (see Chapter 16). The comedy is typical good, riotous fun from Aristophanes. The plot involves the god Dionysus travelling to the underworld to bring back the dramatist Euripides. On the way Charon the Ferryman, a greedy Heracles, and the other great Greek dramatist Aeschylus all make comic cameos. Nearly 2,500 years old and still very funny, Frogs is a great introduction to Aristophanes and Greek comedy. Even better, try to see a production. The most recent was a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s version that played on Broadway in 2004.
Interesting Fact: The play gets its title from the chorus of frogs that live in the swamps around the entrance to Hades. Their rhythmic songs are one of the best examples of how musical the comedies were when they were originally performed.
The Idylls: Theocritus
Theocritus (circa 300 BC) was born in Syracuse but spent most of his life in Alexandria. Not a great deal of his work survives, but The ldylls are beautiful, sensitive examples of a very different type of poetry to the epic poetry of Homer. Set in the Greek countryside and the world of shepherds and goatherds, Theldylls are said to be the first examples of the bucolic genre. Very lovelorn and quite melancholic, the poems show a personal and sensitive side of Greek literature. (The beautiful poems of Sappho are worth looking at for the same reason.)
Interesting Fact: The selection of poems also contains a comic dialogue between Alexandrian women making their way to a festival. Very different from the rest of Theocritus’s surviving work, this conversation is quite amusing and a nice snapshot of life in ancient Alexandria.
The Romans For Dummies: Guy de la Bedoyere
The companion book to The Ancient Greeks For Dummies, this book introduces you to ancient Rome and its incredible story. Although the Romans may seem like the bad guys who brought glorious ancient Greece to an end, they were actually responsible for adopting and then preserving a huge amount of Greek culture. The story of Rome is amazing - take a look!
Interesting Fact: During the second century AD, it became very fashionable among the Roman aristocracy to develop a big cultural interest in all things Greek. This was partly motivated by the emperor Hadrian. The name given to such an individual in Latin was a philhellenicus.