Author: Homer

Rendered into English Prose for the use of those who cannot read the original.

Author: Homer

Published: 1900

This ancient Greek epic poem centers on the hero Odysseus (or Ulysses, as he was known in Roman myths) and his long journey home following the fall of Troy. In the ten years it takes him to reach Ithaca his family assumes he has died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of unruly suitors, the Mnesteres, who compete for Penelope's hand in marriage.

Author: Sophocles

Antigone
Oedipus at Colonus
Oedipus The King
Translated by Francis Storr, 1912.

Translated by Gregory McNamee. Copyright 1997 by Gregory McNamee

Published: 431 B.C.

Translated by Richard Crawley.

The first tragedy of Euripides was produced when he was about twenty-five, and he was several times a victor in the tragic contests. In spite of the antagonisms which he aroused and the criticisms which were hurled upon him in, for example, the comedies of Aristophanes, he attained a very great popularity; and Plutarch tells that those Athenians who were taken captive in the disastrous Sicilian expedition of 413 B.C. were offered freedom by their captors if they could recite from the works of Euripides. Of the hundred and twenty dramas ascribed to Euripides, there have come down to us complete eighteen tragedies and one satyric drama, "Cyclops," beside numerous fragments.

Translated by G.C. Macaulay

Translated by G.C. Macauley

Published: 423 BC

Translated by William James Hickie.

This Dialogue begins abruptly with a question of Meno, who asks, 'whether virtue can be taught.' Socrates replies that he does not as yet know what virtue is, and has never known anyone who did. Translated by by Benjamin Jowett

Socrates, who is attended by his inseparable disciple, Chaerephon, meets Callicles in the streets of Athens. He is informed that he has just missed an exhibition of Gorgias, which he regrets, because he was desirous, not of hearing Gorgias display his rhetoric, but of interrogating him concerning the nature of his art. Translated by Benjamin Jowett

Translated by Benjamin Jowett.

Translated by Benjamin Jowett.

The Crito seems intended to exhibit the character of Socrates in one light only, not as the philosopher, fulfilling a divine mission and trusting in the will of heaven, but simply as the good citizen, who having been unjustly condemned is willing to give up his life in obedience to the laws of the state...

"The dead are first of all judged according to their deeds, and those who are incurable are thrust into Tartarus, from which they never come out."

Translated by B. Jowett.

The awe with which Plato regarded the character of 'the great' Parmenides has extended to the dialogue which he calls by his name. None of the writings of Plato have been more copiously illustrated, both in ancient and modern times, and in none of them have the interpreters been more at variance with one another.

Translated by B. Jowett.

Translated by Benjamin Jowett.

Of all the writings of Plato the Timaeus is the most obscure and repulsive to the modern reader, and has nevertheless had the greatest influence over the ancient and mediaeval world. Translated by Benjamin Jowett.

The Phaedrus is closely connected with the Symposium, and may be regarded either as introducing or following it. The two Dialogues together contain the whole philosophy of Plato on the nature of love, which in the Republic and in the later writings of Plato is only introduced playfully or as a figure of speech. But in the Phaedrus and Symposium love and philosophy join hands, and one is an aspect of the other. Translated by Benjamin Jowett.

Author: Aristotle

Published: 1920

In the tenth book of the Republic, when Plato has completed his final burning denunciation of Poetry, the false Siren, the imitator of things which themselves are shadows, the ally of all that is low and weak in the soul against that which is high and strong, who makes us feed the things we ought to starve and serve the things we ought to rule, he ends with a touch of compunction: 'We will give her champions, not poets themselves but poet-lovers, an opportunity to make her defence in plain prose and show that she is not only sweet--as we well know--but also helpful to society and the life of man, and we will listen in a kindly spirit. For we shall be gainers, I take it, if this can be proved.' Aristotle certainly knew the passage, and it looks as if his treatise on poetry was an answer to Plato's challenge.

Translated by Ingram Bywater, with a preface by Gilbert Murray.

The Ethics of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of which his Politics is the other half. Both deal with one and the same subject. This subject is what Aristotle calls in one place the "philosophy of human affairs;" but more frequently Political or Social Science. In the two works taken together we have their author's whole theory of human conduct or practical activity, that is, of all human activity which is not directed merely to knowledge or truth.

Translated by S.H. Butcher.

(tr W.E. Leonard)

Translated by Arthur Hugh Clough.