Episode 330: Where to Start with Ancient Literature with Dr. Anne Phillips

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast:

Episode 330 – Where to Start with Ancient Literature with Dr. Anne Phillips
Originally aired: May 26, 2026 | Hosts: Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks, Cindy Rollins | Guest: Dr. Anne Phillips

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Main Theme and Purpose

This episode addresses one of the most common questions from listeners and readers: Where should I begin with ancient literature? Hosts Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy—joined by classicist Dr. Anne Phillips—aim to provide practical and approachable guidance for readers of all backgrounds, from beginners to lifelong learners. They discuss selecting first texts in the genres of epic, drama, mythology, history, and philosophy, recommend translations and adaptations, and offer rich commentary on how to make a successful entry into reading the ancients, both for adults and younger readers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Starting with Ancient Epics

• Which Epic First? (12:00–16:39)

  • Thomas: Recommends starting with the Iliad as the first written, though admits it's not dogmatic.
  • Dr. Phillips: Suggests the Odyssey may be structurally easier and less intimidating, especially for beginners.
  • Angelina: Emphasizes that “the Iliad and Odyssey go together... almost one full story.” For beginners, the Odyssey is more accessible due to its narrative structure and adventure.

• Role of Adaptations for Beginners and Kids (14:03–22:50)

  • Retellings like Rosemary Sutcliff’s Black Ships Before Troy and Roger Lancelyn Green’s Tales of Troy are highly recommended for children and also for adults who feel intimidated.
  • Angelina: Points out that mythic stories are meant to be retold and adapted—they aren't spoiled by adaptation the way novels are.

• On Translations (23:35–25:36)

  • Consensus among the panel for Richmond Lattimore as the preferred translator (though his audiobooks are difficult to obtain in the US).
  • Other audio options: Ian McKellen (Fagles translation) and Dan Stevens (Fitzgerald translation).

“The value of an old book is that it takes you out of the modern world, puts you back in the old world. … For 400 pages, you get to walk around ancient Greece.” – Angelina (41:10)

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2. Greek Drama—Tragedy and Comedy

• Context and Structure (26:13–30:08)

  • Dr. Phillips explains Greek drama’s religious origins and liturgical function.
  • Only three tragic playwrights survive: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

• Where to Start? (31:00–35:18)

  • For tragedy: Start with Sophocles (Antigone or Oedipus Rex) or Aeschylus (Oresteia trilogy).
  • Trojan Women (Euripides) and Antigone have been covered by the podcast and are highly accessible.

• On Translation Choices (35:34–38:45)

  • No single translator stands above the rest for drama. Fagles (Penguin Classics) is reliable.
  • Older translators like Gilbert Murray and Richard Jebb preferred for their faithfulness to form and reverence for the text.
  • Contemporary translations often jar with modern phrases or over-modernization.

• Practical Advice for Readers (33:02–35:18)

  • Accept you won’t catch everything on a first read—let the language and experience "wash over you."
  • Read more than once, enjoying the clarity of plot and emotional impact.

• On Comedy (45:24–49:29)

  • Aristophanes’ comedies (e.g., The Clouds, The Frogs) are bawdy and highly culture-specific—probably not for children.
  • Notable comedic device: the frog chorus “Brekekekex, coax coax!”—an example of ancient onomatopoeia differing from modern English (48:22).

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3. The Significance and Approach to Mythology

• Why Myths? (51:39–57:23)

  • All Greek and Roman literature is built on a mythic foundation; myths are the stories everyone ‘already knew’.
  • Myths vary in form and detail—expect differences in versions and genealogies.

• Recommended Primary and Secondary Sources (52:32–61:41)

  • For adults: Ovid’s Metamorphoses (A.D. Melville translation), Hesiod’s Theogony, website theoi.com (for source cross-references).
  • For all ages: D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, Bulfinch’s Age of Fable (public domain), and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Wonder Book.
  • For modern retellings: Stephen Fry’s series on myth and epic—fun, lively, but contains bawdy content faithful to the original stories’ tone.

• On Myths and Confusion with Religion

  • Myths are much more like fairy tales than scripture; children are unlikely to mistake Zeus for Jesus.

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4. Ancient History & Philosophy: Where to Start

• Classical Historians (68:21–82:56)

  • Thomas: Plutarch’s major lives (Caesar, Alexander, Themistocles, Pericles, Cicero) offer enduring insight into character and history.
  • Dr. Phillips: Herodotus is accessible and engaging (Landmark Herodotus edition recommended); “first historian” blending myth and fact.
  • Thucydides: More modern, drier, focuses on logic and realism—not suggested as a first read.
  • Xenophon (Anabasis) and Roman historians Tacitus and Livy also recommended; Livy’s early books are mythic in style.
  • For children: Biographical approach via Famous Men of Greece and Rome, Dorothy Mills, H.A. Guerber’s The Story of Greece/Rome.

• Philosophy (85:04–91:10)

  • Dr. Phillips: First read Plato’s “Deathbed Trilogy”—Apology, Crito, Phaedo—before tackling the Republic.
  • Other Plato dialogues to begin with: Euthyphro, Meno, Symposium.
  • Thomas: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Poetics (which the podcast has covered).
  • Dr. Phillips: “You can build up to [Aristotle]… You might find later on it will dawn on you—‘Oh, I see it now.’”

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5. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Literary Humility and Transformation:

  “Literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, do some good to the reader—quicken his perception though dull and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.” – Dr. Anne Phillips, quoting A.E. Housman (07:00)

• On Over-preparing:

  “There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to tell you what mutton tastes like.” – Thomas Banks, quoting W. Somerset Maugham (09:35)

• On Translation Choices:

  "A translator basically has two choices. They can either present the work in a way that makes the modern reader feel like he's been transported back to ancient Greece, or he can try to make ancient Greece seem like the modern world." – Angelina, referencing C.S. Lewis (41:10)

• On Myth and Adaptation:

  "You can still have a powerful experience with a myth in an adaptation." – Angelina (19:21)

• On the Frogs Chorus (Comic Moment):

  "The chorus is made up of frogs and they say what frogs say, which is brekekekex, coax, coax." – Thomas Banks (48:22)

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6. Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro & Purpose – 00:18–02:53
• Commonplace Quotes – 07:00–09:35
• Starting with Epics/Retellings – 11:59–22:50
• Translation Discussion (Epics) – 23:35–25:36
• Overview of Greek Drama – 26:13–31:13
• Tragedy Recommendations – 31:13–36:28
• Drama Translator Discussion – 35:34–38:45
• On Myths as Foundation – 51:39–57:23
• Modern Retellings & Stephen Fry – 62:14–63:00
• Ancient Historians – 68:21–82:56
• Approaching Ancient Philosophy – 85:04–91:10

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7. Recommended Resources & Reading

Adult Entry Points:

• Epics: Homer (Iliad and Odyssey, tr. Richmond Lattimore), Virgil (Aeneid)
• Retellings: Rosemary Sutcliff, Roger Lancelyn Green, Stephen Fry’s ‘Mythos’ series
• Drama: Start with Antigone (Sophocles) or Oresteia (Aeschylus)
• Mythology: D’Aulaires, Edith Hamilton, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (AD Melville)
• History: Plutarch’s Lives, Herodotus (Landmark edition), Livy, Tacitus
• Philosophy: Plato (start with Apology, Crito, Phaedo), Aristotle (Poetics, Ethics, Politics)

For Younger Readers:

• Myths: D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, Hawthorne’s Wonder Book, Golden Book of Myths, Roger Lancelyn Green, Andrew Lang.
• History: Famous Men of Greece and Rome, H.A. Guerber, Dorothy Mills.

General Guides:

• Louis Markos, From Achilles to Christ
• Peter Leithart, Heroes from the City of Man
• Moses Hadas, Ancilla to Classical Reading

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8. Final Advice

• Don’t be intimidated! Begin with retellings or adaptations if needed; sample different translations or versions until you find one that resonates.
• For adults and children alike, building a mythic foundation makes classics more approachable later.
• The key is to savor the experience—ancient texts can be read, enjoyed, and re-read for deeper insights.

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For more resources, episode guides, summer reading classes, and more, visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com.

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“Keep crafting your literary life, because stories will save the world.”

Transcript

[A]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the science, skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen and your commute. The literary life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Hello and welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford and today we have a very special episode for you. One of the things I've been trying to do more on the podcast is notice the sorts of questions we get repeatedly and try to have one episode devoted to answering all the questions and variations of the questions we get. You know, just so you can have like a one stop shop. And a question we get very regularly is where to start with the ancients? What epic should I start with? What translation? Which, which play should I start with? Which history? Which philosophy? So joining me today to answer the question where to start with the ancients are our two classicists here at the House of Humane Letters. So my very own mysterious Mr. Banks.

[B]

Good morning.

[A]

Is here. But we're also joined by our very own Dr. Anne Phillips, who's also a classicist. Welcome, Dr. Phillips.

[C]

Thank you for having me again.

[A]

Oh, no. We are excited about this episode. I've been joking in my head all week that we could call this episode Two Classicists and an English Major, you know, like, which either sounds like a, a really bad sitcom, like with just like a really narrow audience would be interested in what two classes is in an English major. But also maybe like it could, could be the setup of a joke. Two class assists an English major walk into a bar. And I keep thinking the punchline would be Homer. I hardly knew her, but you know, I don't. Yeah, so there you go.

[B]

We'll work on that.

[A]

We'll workshop it. We'll workshop it. So before we get started with this conversation, which I'm excited about because I just sit back and relax this episode while you guys do the, the heavy lifting. But before we do that, let me remind you guys of what we've got going on. So the Literary Life podcast is hosted by the House of Humane Letters, which employs all three of us and The House of Humane Letters is what allows this podcast to be free, a free resource for all of you. And it's a great place for you to go, if I do say so myself, to explore some of the topics on this podcast more in depth. And we just released our summer schedule, and I'm quite excited about that. So I'm just going to briefly go through the titles and give you a little tease, and then you can go to our website to read the full descriptions. So our end of May webinar is going to be by Heather Goodman. And this is. This is another one that's in response to a question we get. A lot. A lot of people ask us. What on earth is going on in Mary Poppins? What is happening in this book? And every time that question comes up, Heather Goodman was like, chomping at the bit. Let me answer, let me answer. So this webinar is going to be her. Honestly, I'm so excited about it. I think she's just going to blow this book wide open. The title is Mary Poppins, Venus in a Blue Coat With Silver Buttons. And she's going to argue that Mary Poppins is a goddess and a Celtic fairy and all kind of good stuff. And when we put her in that tradition, we can make sense of what's going on in those books. We've also got in June, a new mini class by Jen Rogers, the Chronicles of a Complete Transmutation. And she's going to be working through the Chronicles as a whole. What are they saying as a whole? Why are they Chronicles? And about all of the different things that Lewis is working on here. In addition to the spiritual themes that you regularly hear, she'll be talking a lot about his literary theory and how he's working it out. Well, what is a story and how are we supposed to read? So that's going to be great. In July, we have a mini class by Ella Hornstra. This is going to be fantastic. It's called Players on a Cosmic Stage, the Grammar of Nature in Shakespeare. So this is going to be a great class for Shakespeare enthusiasts, but also anybody who took her Grammar of the Natural World class and desperately wants more. She is going to just really bring these plays to life as we can explore all of the nature imagery in these stories and how Shakespeare is using them. And George McDonald makes the point that the two things that feed and nurture an imagination are stories and nature. And we are woefully deficient in both of those. As moderns, particularly, the more and more we get disconnected from nature, the More. We are puzzled by so many things in stories that would have just been blindingly obvious, glaringly obvious to the original audience. We're like, this is obscure. I don't understand. Why does he keep referencing the Sun? So she'll blow that up for us. Also in July, we're going to have a webinar by Ella's twin sister, Addison. What Became of the Weaving Maid Spindle? An Introduction to Chinese Folklore. This is going to be really cool. And then in August, I will be teaching the next class in my series on Harry Potter, gateway to the literary tradition. And I will be covering the Half Blood Prince. I had previously been doing two books at a time, but as we get near the end of the series, there's simply too much to cover in each book to try to cram both of them in a week so that we'll just be covering book six. And there's one more that's not on the schedule. You'll just want to sign up for our newsletter to find out about another fun webinar, which I didn't put it on the list yet because we did not figure out what month we're going to put it in yet. But that's what we've got going on this summer. So head over to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com click on the webinars mini class tab and read the complete descriptions there and sign up for these classes. All right, well, we like to start each episode by sharing a commonplace quote from something we've been reading. Dr. Phillips, do you want to go first?

[C]

Sure. So I. I was thinking a little bit about A.E. houseman recently. So we know him as a poet. But a lesser known aspect of A.E. housman is that he was a textual critic, which means he edited Greek and Latin texts and was phenomenal at it.

[A]

Oh, I didn't realize that.

[C]

Yeah, he had there. When I was in grad school, we had this huge multi volume set of all of his corrections to classical texts and he just had like a sixth sense for things, for missing words. And he. There's even one poem where it had a missing word and it was. The missing word was Greek and nobody had figured it out except he did. And then it was proven later that, oh no, he was right. They're the missing word that fit the meter. All those kinds of things was a Greek word and it fit the context of the poem. So he was just absolutely brilliant. But he had some lectures and I found. So the. So he. I guess he gave these lectures at Cambridge and one of the Quotes was so good. Literature continually read for pleasure must let us hope, do some good to the reader. Must quicken his perception through dull and sharpen his discrimination through blunt and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

[A]

Oh, excellent.

[B]

That's wonderful.

[C]

Excellent.

[A]

I will go second. And I decided today to pull a Mr. Banks. Okay, I'm pulling a Mr. Banks. You usually give the short, pithy one liner that requires no backstory.

[B]

I have another one today.

[A]

Okay. And I usually give some very long quote that requires a 15 minute backstory to put into context. And to today I'm just gonna go with the pithy, short, pithy comment function. I've usurped your function. Okay. That's one way to look at it. King Lear. All right. This is a quote from, not surprisingly, Northrop Fry in the educated imagination. And I thought. I thought that this was a great quote. No, I'm giving a backstory. Never mind. I'm just gonna read the quote. I can't read it.

[B]

You couldn't pull it off.

[A]

No backstory. You'll know why I picked it. A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that.

[B]

There you are. I think that's pretty self explanatory.

[A]

Yeah. Okay, there you go. So.

[B]

So you didn't need a whole lot of context.

[A]

There you go. It's killing me not to give the context, but I digress. So this podcast is devoted to the quest to not be an ignoramus. Okay, your turn.

[B]

So this is another one I've been. I think I've drawn from this two or three times recently. W. Somerset Maugham's Writer's Notebook, which he published towards the end of his career. This observation read, there is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to tell you what mutton tastes like.

[A]

Oh, that's like. That's like the anti method acting comment.

[B]

What does he mean by that? I think an example, Gustave Flaubert, who's best known as the author of Madame Bovary, an earlier book of his. He didn't publish very much, but he wrote a historical novel set during the first Punic War, which actually is kind of interesting, called Salammbo. And before he put pen to paper, I think he read over a hundred books on Rome, Carthage, that particular point in ancient history. And he might have over researched his book.

[A]

Possibly that also happens in scholarship. Yeah, I'm sure that happened with you, Ann, with your dissertation. I remember when I was working on my thesis having a meltdown in My advisor's office. And she looked at me and she said, oh, you've just over researched. You've over researched and you've lost yourself in all the weeds. And she was great. She asked me like four core questions about my thesis, which I answer, and then was like, poof. Fog was gone, I was back on the track. But yeah, very, very easy to get overwhelmed in the research. So this episode is called where to Start with the Ancients, not why Read the Ancients. We already had an episode devoted to that and we'll link it in the show notes. That one's the why Pagan Myths episode. I highly recommend you take a listen to that because then we won't have to explain to you why. Why we're giving you a list of places to start because we've already dealt with why read them. We also already have an entire episode devoted to the question, does translation matter? Which Dr. Phillips was on that episode? So we get all in the ins and outs of which translations and why and you can take a look at that episode as well. But today we're just going to jump right in. Epics, drama, mythology, history, philosophy. Like where does somebody start, right? So we've convinced them this stuff matters and then they just start googling, where do I start? Should we start with the epics, do you think?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Okay. So one of the cool things about the cool things, maybe it's one of the sad things because I'm going to say we have so few surviving epics, so maybe that's a sad thing. But one of the easy things for the teacher of ancients is that you only have three epics really to choose from. Right. And they are the three major ones. Oh, he's about to go with me. The three major ones.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, see, this is what

[A]

happens when an English major wades into Clepus waters. Go ahead, get me.

[B]

Yeah. So there's the two Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. And I assume you're thinking of Virgil's Aeneid as the third.

[A]

I didn't mean to suggest they're the only ones, but like, like anybody writing a syllabus, those three are going to

[B]

be, and I would say Ovid's Metamorphosis as well. The Metamorphoses, though, that's what it put

[A]

in mythology, but yeah, yeah, we're in agreement.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Okay. So, yeah, and as for Dr. Phillips, you're probably better situated than I am to talk about the different translations of these three. I have my opinions on. Well, some of them get too much

[A]

in the weeds for that, because we do have a whole episode devoted to that. Let's start with this one. Okay. So we'll take it from the perspective of I'm going adult, and I desperately want to recover and redeem my. My faulty modern education. Right. Which epic should I start with and why?

[B]

The first one, which I would say certainly the Iliad.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What's your reasoning for that?

[B]

It's the first.

[A]

It's the first. Okay.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't. It doesn't hurt if you want to read the Odyssey. I mean, honestly, I had the Odyssey read to me before the Iliad when I was a small child, but. And I kind of knew the basic grammar of the Trojan War already, I guess, so that was not a problem for me, but it seems. I just think it's a natural.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Order of things to read.

[A]

Dr. Phillips, which one do you think the average adult should start with?

[C]

Oh, that's. That's tricky. I mean, if you. So I'll say this. If you're really intimidated by, like, oh, my gosh, I'm so scared to jump into these. Read the retellings first and then jump in, and I'll come back to that question in a second. But the Rosemary Sutcliffe, Black Ships Before Troy, which encompasses more than just the Iliad and the wanderings of Odysseus. Really helpful. Just so you know the story, so you know what's going on. And then when you jump in, I mean, I also lean towards. I like reading things in chronological order, so I also feel like I would start with the Iliad, but at the same time, I feel like, structurally, the Odyssey is a little bit. A little bit easier as a first read if you're just trying to get a taste for the epic form. If you're trying to get a taste for sort of the central story, the journey story. So I. I can see a strong case being made for either one. Personally, I like reading things in chronological order, but I don't know if that is at all a satisfying answer. But.

[A]

So, all right, here's my. My. I'm gonna just timidly tip my toe in the classic squatters here, because I did used to teach the ancient class at House of Humane Letters before I got married to you, Mr. Banks.

[B]

Not.

[A]

Not Dr. Phillips. I'm not married to her. I'm married to Mr. Banks. And you took it over. And, of course, I was a stickler about teaching them in chronological order. I definitely have a strong opinion that the alien. The Odyssey go together, that they're. They're almost together, make one full story, and that you can't really understand the Iliad if you haven't read the Odyssey. You can't understand the Odyssey if you read the Elite. Like, I'm all on team that. At the same time, if you are somebody who's intimidated, like Dr. Phillips said, the Odyssey is the easiest. It's the one that requires the least knowledge of the epic form and the background of what he's trying to do. And you can just read it as a series of great adventure stories. It's more than that, but it's definitely the. The least intimidating of that. But then there's people like Emily Rabel shout out who read the Iliad first and is like, on. That's her hardcore hill to die on. She's the Iliad girl forever. Right. I, personally, when I tried to read the Iliad at 19, I had loved the Odyssey, and then I tried the Ilia, and the Odyssey is still one of my favorite books. And I was just like, why is everyone being pierced through the nipple with a spear? Like, I don't know how much more I can take of this. And I just didn't have the framework truly to understand it. You're not going to leave me now that I admit that was.

[B]

No, I. I don't think it's like, I. It's not one of those things. I really feel dogmatic about it. Yeah. I'll bring up more about this later on, but I was going to say. I was going to say whether you read the Odyssey or the Iliad first is kind of indifferent. I haven't. I don't know if I've ever met anyone who read the Aeneid first. I cannot imagine, however, reading the Aeneid first and not feeling kind of at sea.

[A]

Right. Because it's so.

[B]

This kind of makes sense, ripping off

[A]

of the Homeric epics. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with that. I agree with that. And I want to circle back to Dr. Phillips recommendation about starting with some of the retellings, which I think is very good advice. And just as I'm not going to get on a whole tangent here, but we'll touch on the appropriateness of adaptations as. As, again, if you're trying to overcome intimidation or, you know, we're going to actually talk about kid recommendations here shortly, so the same would. Would apply to that. There are some things that I absolutely will. To my dying day, I will be, you know, in hospice, yelling, do not adapt. The Count of Monte Cristo Okay. Like, someone gave my little sister a children's illustrated classic of the Count of Monte Cristo. And I just thought that was a crime against nature and humanity and everything that is good and right in the world. Because that ending of that book is spectacular and. And she was robbed of it being told in that.

[C]

Right.

[A]

So for novels. No, no, do not do retellings of novels for kids, because especially novels.

[B]

As long as the Count money.

[A]

Again, I'm giving my short version. There's more to it. The. The dumbing down of the language ends up that you lose it. A lot of the nuances. I just kind of feel like, what can happen? And, you know, don't come at me. I understand that you might have a kid who has learning difficulties and an adaptation makes. It builds up his confidence. Like, I can understand that there are special cases. We're just talking, like, in general. In general, a novel. You're meant to meet those characters for the first time in the pages of the novel. And if you're not ready, just.

[B]

Just wait.

[A]

Like, there's so many good children's novels. Just, you know, read those. But when it comes to myth, first of all, myth is not working on original characters and suspense. The audience knows these characters. Like, no one is like, is Odysseus gonna make it home? He tells you in the first paragraph, this is the story of Odysseus making it home, and he's gonna kill all the suitors. Like, he tells you the whole entire plot on the first page, Right. So you don't have to worry about spoiling it. And secondly, CS Lewis makes the point that the real power of myth is in its structure and in its kind of nutshell form. And so you can still have a powerful experience with a myth in an adaptation. Right?

[C]

Things coming out of the oral tradition, they were meant to be told and retold in a billion different ways. I mean, we have no idea the. The permutations that these stories underwent before being written down in the form that we know them today. But that's. That's an important. Because, you know, the Count of Monte Cristo is not coming out of the oral tradition. It's coming out of the mind of Alexandre Dumas. Whereas, you know, these stories are. And I think what makes the Iliad and the Odyssey so brilliant in the. In the form we have them now is they're so intricately structured. You know, in the Odyssey especially, the structure of. It's more obvious because, you know, the. The flashbacks and then Odysseus retelling his story. And then making it back to Ithaca and all that stuff is much easier to understand what's going on. But, you know, these things, these. All these different stories were taken and put together in this really, really intricate sort of ring structure. And, you know, that is something that myths can do where you can take all these different stories and cobble them together cleverly. So that's, you know, something that's important to keep in mind about epics.

[A]

And as long as we're talking about, you know, kids versions, let's talk about that. So, okay, so we talked about where to start if you're the adult and. But what about if you're the mom and you want to introduce these to your kids? So you mentioned Black Ships Before Troy, which I'm a huge fan of. My. My kids really, really enjoy that. Yeah, I would recycle is just fabulous.

[B]

I think that, yeah, Rosemary Sutcliffe is another one of those authors you're really thankful for. Homeschool moms and kids again, because I think Rosemary Sutcliffe mainly stays in print because of them.

[C]

She does a really good job of kind of capturing the. The feel of the language. So I've already read it to my kids. They love it. They love Black Ships Before Troy, which I was a little bit like, is this too intense for my kids? My oldest is seven. But they love it. So. Yeah. And she. She gets you into the feel of it, and it doesn't feel like she's dumbed it down at all. It feels like you've been transported. It's really good.

[A]

And. And she's. The Black Ships Before Troy. I'm sure there's only one edition of it. It's that big, oversized edition with, like, the huge, gorgeous color illustrations. It's just a great experience to. To read it and become familiar with those characters. I also really like Poirot column. Like, he's fabulous. The Irish writer just does a great job with the epics. It would be the children's Homer, but I mean, like, you name it. He's got the Celtic myths retold, and he's got. Yeah, he's. I mean, he's. Just say it again.

[C]

Jason Myth.

[A]

The Golden Jason and the organizer. Yep. Yeah. No, no, he's. He's fabulous. Another person who's working in that same vein of just trying to keep these old stories alive for a new tradition, a new. A new gener. Is Roger Lancelin Green, who also has a Tales. Tales From Troy, I think it's called.

[B]

So, yeah, I think that's like a puffin classics book along with his Robin

[A]

Hood and King Arthur. But yeah, so he's got a Tales of Troy one. And I believe Andrew Lang also has a Tales.

[B]

Andrew Lang had. Yes, stories from Homer or something. And Andrew Lang also did translate the Butcher and Lang translation of both the Iliad and the Odyssey. But yeah, I think, I think he had a children's Homer as well.

[A]

Yeah, you can, you can find so many good. And like you just said, like, I honestly think that's one of the great things that the homeschooling movement, if it's a movement, did, was revive an interest for publishers in, in publishing new versions of old stories for, for kids. Those are, those are all fabulous. And like Dr. Phillips said an adult could start there. Like, honestly, you could read one of these out loud to your kids and then. And try these two. Try to, try to dip in with an epic. All right, so from the epics, should we go to drama? And let's, let's. You guys can talk generally about drama, but then I would like you to give some recommendations of. Actually, we didn't mention a translator. I think we're all on Team Latimer.

[B]

Yeah, that's, that's something I've not been shaken from that particular position. I mean, years of. I've taught, I've taught other versions. I've taught the Robert Fagel's. I, I don't hate that one. I don't love it as much. That's the one I think you usually find in schools today. And yeah, I, I just, I, I don't know of any version in English recently. Any modern version in English which, which touches Lange when it comes to actually kind of capturing the movement of hexameter verse. I think he just does that really, really well, as well as it can be done.

[A]

And you guys can check out our whole episode on translations if you want to hear Dr. Phillips get really spicy about some of the new translations. Oh, her face, if you guys can see it. But yeah, we're all on Team Richmond Latimer now as far as audiobooks, because I get this question a lot. Sadly, we find ourselves in the crosshairs of copyright wars and I will never be able to understand why UK publishers and American publishers just can't get it together. But the Richmond Latimer audiobook, and there is one, it's just not for sale in the United States. If you're one of our lucky UK listeners, I'm not telling you to download it illegally and send it to me. I'm absolutely not telling you to do that, but we. We can't. You. You can't buy it. Now, I will tell you this. From time to time, some brave rebel uploads it to YouTube, and then the powers that be find it and take it down. So I have in the past actually posted links to the YouTube, but they always go dead after a while. So I would say just keep searching YouTube to see if it comes up. But I will say that there are. There are two good audiobooks if you're just absolutely like, I have to have this on audio and. And follow along in the book while I'm listening. Ian McKellen reads the Fagels version, and Dan Stable Stables. Dan Stevens reads the Fitzgerald version. And even though the Fitzgerald version is not my favorite, I can tell you that the Dan Stevens book is lovely. He's a fabulous reading.

[C]

It covers a multitude of.

[A]

That's exactly. That's exactly when I was choosing my audiobook, I actually downloaded samples of both Ian McKellen and Dan Stevens, and then Mr. Banks and I listened together. So first we listened to Ian McKellen. Of course, Ian McKellen's awesome. Like, I'm not criticizing him in any way. He's awesome. And then we did Dan Stevens, and he turned to me and said, you need a do that one. I was, like, so relieved he said that. I was like, I really want to listen to this guy read for 40 hours. So, yeah, those are. Those are fantastic. All right, now to the dramatists. Which one of you would like to describe for us the landscape of Greek drama? Like, if I'm brand new to this, and I don't even know where to start.

[B]

Dr. Phillips, would you like to open us up?

[C]

Sure. So the context of Greek drama is it has a fundamentally religious function. We don't know exactly where it comes from. So Aristotle gives us kind of the closest, chronologically closest explanation that it came out of the practice of what's called dithyramb, which is a type of poetry that develops into a religious form, and it eventually becomes part of the. And I'm using this word on purpose, the liturgy. Leiturgas is the Greek word where we get our word liturgy, from. It was part of the program of the Greek festival, the Dionysia, which is a festival to Dionysus, where these tragedies would be performed. Now, they would have a contest every year, and for aristocrats, part of their tax to the public is you would sponsor a tragedy, so you would pay for the actors, the production costs, supporting the playwrights, all that sort of thing. So historically, that's the, the context where these things came from. And the vast majority of what has survived is tragedy. And we only have three authors, and those are Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. And Aeschylus is the first one. He's. He's kind of the. The OG in one sense. He's. He's the one that innovated by having multiple actors on the stage. He innovated with the chorus, the role of the chorus. And then Sophocles and Euripides came after him. They were all winners at various points of the tragic contest. Some of them, you know, many years in a row or Euripides was kind of the perpetual second place winner because Euripides was a little bit controversial in some of his. Some of the things that he. The themes and the way that he dealt with certain things. So that's a little bit of background. So do you have any, anything to add to that, Mr. Banks?

[B]

Not really. I think that sums it up very well.

[C]

Then I guess the next question is. Okay, great, now. Now what exactly?

[A]

Where do I. Okay, so we'll use me as the example here. I'm like, oh, I would love to read some Greek drama. Where should I start? Let's pick an author.

[B]

Maybe I would say begin either with Aeschylus or Sophocles before Euripides. And that's nothing against Euripides. I think he really has some. Some wonderful and terrifying plays. But I think that Sophocles and Aeschylus are better beginning places, just for one thing. Euripides, outlook and religious. The religious sensibility you find at work in his representative plays is kind of an esoteric one, which was sort of unusual even in his time in some respects. So for that and other reasons, I would begin with Sophocles or Aeschylus first. Dr. Phillips, would you concur with that?

[C]

I think so, yeah. The Oresteia by Aeschylus. So that's a trilogy. It's the only surviving trilogy. Another detail I failed to mention is that these plays were all written as trilogies and then they would have a fourth play attached to them called a satyr play, which was more comic. It was meant to be kind of a palette cleanser after a tragedy. But Aeschylus, Oresteia is the only set of three that survives that go together. We don't have its satyr play, but. So it's important for that reason. Yeah, go ahead.

[B]

Oh, sorry, I was going to say, and the Theban plays of Sophocles, though.

[C]

Yeah. Those. Those. So those were not written together. It was. So they were actually written years apart as separate trilogies. And there's a little bit of.

[B]

That's true. Okay.

[C]

Controversy about that because it was. The order in which they were written was. Let me see if I remember this correctly.

[B]

I think Antigone was first.

[C]

Yep. Antigone.

[B]

Oedipus at Colonus is third. Even though they. That's chronologically different. Yes. It's a. Yeah, I guess you could say thematically and subject wise, it's a trilogy, but non. Sure.

[C]

Yeah. I think Oedipus at Colonists. Like, the third one was written like 20 years after the other two when

[B]

he was a very old man. Yeah.

[A]

I actually taught that Theban side that entire Theban cycle and the Oresteia when I taught ancients a million. A million years ago.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I'm big fans of those. So in terms of like, some hand holding. Okay, so let's say I'm listening to. To this podcast. I'm like, all right, I'll start with Sophocles. We actually covered a Sophocles play on this podcast. We did Antigone.

[B]

We did Antigone. Yeah.

[A]

We also did Euripides. The Trojan Women.

[B]

We did the Trojan Women as well.

[A]

Both of those are short, powerful.

[B]

Yeah, no, Greek plays are really long. Some of them are much more difficult than others, and I would say resistant to teaching in, like, a high school context.

[A]

Give me an example of one that you would say is resistant.

[B]

I would say that I actually think that the latter two plays in the Oresteia are difficult to teach to high schoolers. I know because I've taught them to high schoolers. And I remember much perplexity. I was a fairly young teacher then, but I remember thinking, the Agamemnon, that was great fun, very easy. And then we read the other two parts over the next couple of weeks, and try as I might, I remember just a lot of puzzled expressions. That's not to say that someone else couldn't do a better job of. Of bringing those plays into an imaginative framework that the students are, you know, able to. Able to deal with. But I. I struggled.

[A]

When we covered Antigone and the Trojan Women on the podcast, the feedback was awesome because people were again, that intimidation factor. People were shocked that it wasn't as hard as they thought it was going to be. And like the Trojan Women especially, deeply, powerfully emotional. And that shocked people. I remember people saying they were shocked that something this many thousands of years old could have affected them as deeply as it did, and they. We really connected with it. So, yeah, if you want some handholding, some free handholding, because we will, we will suggest some books as a resource later on, but the podcast is a great resource for you as we go through those, and they're fantastic. And of course, you know, Oedipus Rex is probably the one most people would know, right?

[B]

Oh, yes, certainly.

[C]

I think most people start with either Antigone or Oedipus Rex because. And so Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus. But thematically it's easier to enter the Antigone because the, the sort of. The central dilemma is so clear. It's very. It provides a lot of fodder for discussion. So family versus State, those kinds of themes. It's that and there's, there's a lot of pretty good commentary on it available. Oedipus Rex, similar thing, you know, fate versus free will. Like, there's, you know, people kind of latch onto the, the big themes in these plays, but, yeah, they're not, they're not as hard or scary as they sound. And you can find decent editions that have notes in them that explain certain things. And I think probably one of the best ways to read one of these in translation is to accept you're not going to understand everything. Just let it kind of wash over you plan to read it more than once. And because they're, they're short, so there are things that could be read in an hour or two. And you'll start, you'll notice that you'll get more out of it every time. Like, you'll notice different things every time. And, you know, the plots are very simple. Usually there's not, you know, like Shakespeare plays can be a little bit more complicated with subplots and things like that, but ancient tragedies, the plot is usually very simple. The exposition, the action is very clear and straightforward. I think what people just find so difficult about it is understanding conventions like the chorus. What is the chorus there to do? And some of the language can sound really strange because a lot of it is deeply religious language and because it's. These plays are being performed as part of a religious function. So those are those, those things can make it a little bit challenging. But if you're just prepared and read it a few times, you know, let it sit, let it wash over you, just enjoy the experience. I think it's, it's very worthwhile.

[A]

Exactly. And I should say on the podcast for the episodes for Antigone and Trojan, when we do talk about Those kinds of things, the conventions and the function of the chorus. And so, like I said, that's a free resource that'll really hold your hand through those. Any particular translators our listeners should look for?

[B]

Yeah, here I. So I use. When I teach. When I teach Sophocles, I teach the Penguin Classics translation by Robert Fagels, which I don't hate. I don't really love any of the contemporary Greek drama translations that I'm familiar with. I think that for some reason, yeah, it just like a dislike for verse leads a lot of modern translators to render them into something like. Something like a kind of formal and stiff prose or free verse. Yeah, I just. They're a very. I'll just. I'll just leave it there. Saying that I can't think of many contemporary translations of Greek tragedy by living authors that I. Living translators that I really love in every way.

[C]

Dr. Phillips, the additional difficulty here is that. Not like we can't say, because at least for the epics, for the Iliad and the Odyssey, we could say Richmond Latimore, he translated them both, and that's really easy. But for tragedy, it's quite difficult because you might have a good translator that only translated a small handful, but not the others. And that. That becomes kind of tricky. And yeah, I do tend to shy away from more modern ones because they. I noticed in reading some of them because I TA'd for Greek myth for several years in grad school, and I noticed they tend to really take you out of the action because they'll go along and it'll sound fine, but then they'll use some jarringly modern term because they're, you know, updating the language or whatever, and it just completely jars you out of. Out of the whole experience. But, I mean, I've typically liked Gilbert Murray, even though he's a little over the top, I think, at times. Richard Jebb. And again, these are older translators. They're easy to find in the public domain, which is also attractive.

[B]

I enjoy Murray as well. I mean, he's kind of. He's oddly pre Raphaelite almost at times, which also can give a false sense of what the Greek is like. But no, he at least has a kind of. He's not embarrassed by formalism and stateliness,

[C]

which I've grown to trust translators. So like Richard Jebb, so J E B B and Gilbert Murray because just looking at their. I read some of their scholarly works and I trust their instinct for accuracy and their instinct. I trust their. Their knowledge and that they are trying to represent what they saw as well as they could in a way that I don't necessarily trust that from all modern translators because there is such a push to kind of update things and view things through modern values. Another. More contemporary. But he seems. He's pretty good. David Greene.

[B]

Ah, yes, I forgot. David Greene. Yes. I.

[A]

Well, he did that whole series with Richmond Latimer.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I have it behind me.

[B]

Yes. And I think Green's translations are mostly from the 50s and 60s probably.

[C]

I think so.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I have. It's on the shelf behind me, but I have his. And the COVID for this has baffled me. So I. When we would teach the Orestea. I'm pretty sure it's David Green and it has a picture of General Douglas MacArthur and his. His triumph in New York City. And I just like. I don't really understand why this is on the COVID of the Oresteia.

[B]

I've done that a lot with. With Greek works. Like, I remember. Ah. I don't remember whose translation of the Iliad it was, but it shows the D Day invasion. It's those soldiers getting off a landing craft on Omaha Beach. Why they do that so much? Yeah, Everything is World War II.

[A]

That sounds like a publisher desperately trying to make this seem applicable to people.

[B]

It does. Yeah. It's like, like.

[A]

And I hate this too, but it's like when they re. Release like Jane Austen, but they put a movie cover, a film. Film cover. You know, I hate that, but I know. I know why they're doing it. And I mean, at the end of the day, I'm not going to argue with somebody who's trying to sell Jane Austen.

[C]

I read a book. I don't remember the title. This reminds. I read a book a few years ago about how they were using the Iliad as a way to treat PTSD in soldiers. Oh, wow. And I'm guessing that practice started During World War II, if I'm remembering correctly. I wish I could remember the title of this book. I borrowed it from the library, so I don't know if I could ever find it again. But. But it was actually really interesting because they. I'm guessing that, you know, and they were publishing a lot of these books for the soldiers to read overseas as well. And so I'm guessing, you know, they're probably trying to help. Help this appeal to GIs after the war as a way of, hey, this. This is, you know, what you're experiencing is an ancient feeling or, you know, and you've gone through this experience that so many people, thousands of years ago, have experienced. So, you know, maybe they're trying to go that way, but. So I guess the. The issue of trying to make things applicable is really not a new problem.

[A]

No, exact. Exactly. You know, I'm reminded of that a CS Lewis quote. Again, we talked about this at great length, an entire episode on why translation matters. If you're. If you're interested in going down this rabbit hole with us. But CS Lewis has a quote. I think it's in his review of Fitzgerald's Odyssey, or actually it might be Fitzgerald's Iliad. Anyway, it's the Fitzgerald version. It must be the Iliad because he talks about Agamemnon. Anyway, Fitzgerald's Iliad, in his review, he says that a translator basically has two choices. They can either present the work in a way that makes the modern reader feel like he's been transported back to ancient Greece, or he can try to make ancient Greece seem like the modern world. And that's really what it comes down to with these translations. All three of us very much feel strongly that the value of an old book is that it takes you out of the modern world, puts you back in the old world, you know, for 400 pages, you get to walk around ancient Greece. And the last thing I personally want is what CS Lewis said about the Fitzgerald, that it made Agamemnon sound like I'm an American frat boy. Right. And. But again, so that's the point that Dr. Phillips is trying to make when she says some of these attempts to modernize it sort of turn it into something it's. It's not. I mean, why read an old book if you just want to see your own modern self staring at you, Right. Like the whole point is to. To feel old. Now, as far as kids. Kids versions, I would say that don't feel compelled to get a bunch of kids versions of tragedies, if they even exist. I would think that the only one that exists really is. You will. Fine. Because we're going to get to this in just a second.

[B]

All of.

[A]

Again, we mentioned it already, but I'm going to make it more explicit here. None of these ancient works are dealing with original characters. They are really all dealing with characters that exist in mythology, with stories that exist. I remember one time, Mr. Banks, you said to me, a Greek audience would accept one of these characters doing almost anything, but they would not accept is a new character.

[C]

There's only one exception that I can think of as Aeschylus, Persians that had. And that in that story itself, the Persians is Aeschylus. Who was a veteran of the Persian wars, wrote that. And it's still a very mythical story. And the reason why you cannot write an original plot for tragedy. Now, comedy is very different, but for tragedy, it had to be a myth, and it had to. You know, there were certain boundaries that you just couldn't cross with that, partly because in the context of a religious festival, you as the audience watching a tragedy, you are participating in these myths, you're participating in the cultural rituals that all this represents. And I. For tragedies, I wouldn't worry too much about having your kids reading tragedies until they're older, but what you can do, you're going to get all these same stories from, for example, Dallaire's book of Greek myths as Oedipus in it. Again, they're told in a very, you know, safe, sanitized, appropriately sanitized way. I think maybe that's not the right word to use, but they're. They're totally appropriate.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

In an age appropriate way. So, you know, reading myths, I think sets students up really well for tragedies later because I think, you know, high school is an appropriate time to introduce a tragedy like Antigone or Oedipus Rex. But you can really set yourself up well or set up your students well. They know all these foundational myths. Absolutely.

[A]

And we'll recommend some myths here in just a few minutes. And if you're a regular listener to this podcast, you know, that is my hill to die on that. What the. The literary education of younger kids needs to be on those building blocks of stories, Bible stories, myths, fairy tales, fables and legends. And so, yeah, don't worry about getting the kids version of Antigone. Give them mythology. But we'll get to that in a second. All right, so how about comedy then? So we talked about tragedy and honestly, I think most people, when they think. Think Greek drama, they think tragedy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What about comedy?

[B]

So Greek comedy and, you know, we wish we had more of these things. I mean, we have three surviving Greek tragedians who, between them, I think we have a total of like 35 plays, roughly 33 plays and comedies. We have basically Aristophanes of the old comedy. He's the sole.

[C]

I feel, I feel bound to put this disclaimer. Aristophanes is not kid friendly. And it is not if you have a weak stomach. Because he's bawdy. Yeah, he's very bawdy. And a lot of it in a way that if you don't really know some of the context. It might go over your head, but with Aristophanes, yeah, you have to be careful, content, wise. I think most people, for him, they start with the clouds. That one makes fun of Socrates, so there's a little bit of that. And when we get into the philosophy stuff later, we can talk about that. But the teacher of Plato, Socrates, he gets made fun of there, so that's something that everybody should know a little bit about. So that one's fairly.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. The clouds is a good one to begin with. And once again, you do have to know a bit of the background of Athenian philosophy in the 5th century and who Socrates was. I mean, you don't have to be deeply versed in the Platonic tradition or anything like that. But it won't be funny if you just give this to a group of students who have no idea who Socrates was or what sophistry was. And also with Aristophanes, he wrote a lot. That play is not enough outlier. A lot of his plays deal with contemporary social issues, which would have been very funny to the audience of his days because they were live issues, but they need explaining to us. And when you explain them and contextualize them, they're very funny still.

[A]

Well, I mean, that's the thing about comedy. It's so culturally specific. It's one of the reasons why Hollywood makes big blockbuster smash up special effects movies instead of indie comedies. Because you, you, you can't sell an indie comedy in other. In other countries because it's too culturally specific. So, I mean, it's just like trying to get the jokes in Gulliver's Travels. It requires a lot more context and then it's hilarious, like you said.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Actually, Gulliver. Gulliver. Jonathan Swift. I think I would be surprised if he did not consciously take a few tricks from Aristo.

[A]

Oh, absolutely. Book three is definitely with the flying island city. That's definitely the clouds.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Cloud cuckoo land. That, that comes. That's straight out of Aristophanes.

[A]

Exactly. Just. Just for my own benefit, Mr. Banks, Dr. Phillis, Mr. Banks regularly just cracks me up. I laugh so hard at this. Do the chorus for the frogs. Frogs. Tell us what the chorus sounds like.

[B]

Well, it's. The chorus is made up of frogs and they say what frogs say, which is br. Kx. Coax. Coax.

[A]

Which cracks me up because onomatopoeias are culturally specific too. And that's fascinating because we think a frog says ribbit, and the Greeks thought a frog said say it again, Brickechekex.

[B]

Coax.

[A]

Coax just cracks me up. It just cracks me up. I think that's so funny. All right, anything else about the comedies before we move on? And at the very end, we're going to offer some resources to help you understand these things.

[C]

But as for translators, I mean, I. Let's see. I Actually, I made a list for myself somewhere of the translators. I think, really, for that any translator is fine.

[B]

There's. There's one. Whoever. Whoever they use for the Bantam Classics, paperback, Aristophanes. I remember being pretty good. And the. I remember liking the notes for some of the Penguin Classics, which I think might have been done by. I think at least one of those might have been translated by the guy who was. The guy who wrote Love Story.

[A]

Eric Siegel.

[B]

Eric Seagal. I'm not kidding. Eric Siegel was. Yeah, he was a classicist, and he did some. Yeah, and comedy. Ancient comedy, Greek and Roman was his area of expertise. I. How he wrote Love Story also, I don't understand. But anyway,

[A]

I feel like any argument we made for the value of classical life.

[B]

Okay, I know. And this is only funny if you're a boomer. I know. If you're too young. I'm sorry, I'm speaking a foreign language. But what makes that book even funnier today is I. For a long time, there was a rumor that it was about. About the Courtship of Al and Tipper Gore. I don't know. I don't know if, like, this urban legend ever made its way to you, but. But I was thinking that can't be true because, like, Tipper didn't die of cancer. I mean, she survived to ban music in the 80s, so, you know, that

[A]

movie came out the year I was born. I've just outed myself. And I just grew up with my parents saying how much they hated it.

[B]

Yeah, my parents, too. That was like. It was the movie that everyone saw and made fun of. It was like the Titanic. It was the titanic of the 1970s.

[C]

The Titanic. Because the Titanic was. You know, when I was a kid, it came out in the 90s when I was. Was born. And I remember everybody being like, oh, the Titanic is so dumb. I hate it.

[A]

Yes, it was like that. And I just remember the. I've never seen the film. You can Google it, guys, if you want to know what the film's about. I just know that it has this line in it because my dad would always quote this line as, this movie is garbage. Because it had the line, love is never having to say it. Thank God neither Of us.

[B]

What makes that okay? Another movie which also starred Ryan o'. Neill. What's the one with him and Barbra Streisand, the goofball? Comedy.

[A]

Oh, go.

[B]

What's up, Doc? Okay, at the end of that movie, she turns to him and says that line again, which had become proverbial by that time. And his character, he's like this very stodgy, professorial character this time around. He says, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard. And then the credits roll and it's the end. Anyway, how did we get here? Wow.

[A]

All right, all right. So we've covered Epic's tragedy, comedy. Now, it might seem strange that I saved myths for last, but myths is like, if. How do I want. If I want to understand epic, tragedy and comedy, what do I need to know? You need to know myth. The myths are not only just rip. Ruinedly fun in and of themselves, they're just an incredibly important building block, not just for ancient literature, but for all of literature. Again, if you. If you listen to this podcast, you know, this is my hill to die on. I'm Northrop Fry's disciple. All literature is mythic. And so, you know, myths give us the framework for literature and really for. For expressing human experience. So let's. We're going to start at the top, and we're going to work our way bottom. What I mean is that let's start with who are the actual ancient authors? If I want to just go right to the horse's mouth for mythology, tell me the ancients. And then we'll go all the way down to. I'm not ready for that. Give me the kids version.

[C]

Okay. I do have. Mr. Banks, do you want to start? Because I do have.

[B]

No, go ahead.

[C]

Okay. So Greek myth is very difficult because it's cobbled together from dozens and dozens of different places. I do have a book. It's quite thick. It's called. It is called Anthology of Classical Primary source of Sources in Translation. It's very good. And it's just primary sources, like where they get myths from, from authors like Pindar, who was a poet, or Bacchylides, who was another poet, or the tragedy Polydorus. Yeah, the Polydorus. Yeah, the. All these different authors that you've never heard of before, like Florus, just all the places. And it's really helpful just because it's all. All this stuff is in there. So that resource does exist. And then another source that I really, really like. Now, this is. This is a website, and I can make sure this is linked is theoi.com. this is spelled t h e o I dot com, which theoi in Greek means gods. But it's. It's basically an online myth encyclopedia. And what's fabulous about it is it lists all the sources of specific things. Like, if you look up the page for Perseus, for example, it'll give you, like, pictures of, like, where he shows up in the art, and it'll show you. It'll give you, like, a summary of the main story, you know, the canonical version. And then at the bottom, it will give you all the different sources of where. Where this is found across ancient literature. So you can get really specific if you want to do that. So I've used that website for years when I need to cross check something. So if you want to go to that kind of granular detail, you totally can. But if that, if that's scary right now, the. The best place to start. I mean, even as an adult, I still will just read Bel Air's Book of Greek Myths because it was my favorite book as a kid.

[A]

It's a beautiful book.

[C]

It is. And so, yeah, that's. That's my. You know, just like, even those kid books that are, you know.

[A]

Absolutely. No, we're on an agreement. It's just what I said earlier, too. Like, the power of a myth is in its nutshell archetypal images, so you don't have to worry about getting the perfect translation. And one other thing I would say too, before Mr. Banks talks about myths is because it comes from so many different sources, because it comes from the oral tradition, you are going to see a great deal of variation, and no Greek would have had a problem with that. We have a problem with that. Do not approach mythology as if, like, I'm gonna get, like, the definitive Hercules. Right. I know, because you're not. It doesn't exist like that. Everybody's riffing on it.

[B]

One thing you have to understand when you are studying the myths of the Greeks and the Romans or just reading them for pleasure is they didn't have a Bible.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And like, so, yeah, like, the idea of a canonical body of scriptures was not something that was not a concept they were familiar with. Their religious experience was, you know, handed down to them differently. So, yeah, the. The idea of, you know, an exact genealogy of this hero would have been a matter of controversy because, you know, each hero might have half a dozen, you know, variations of his genealogy.

[A]

They would have been connected to specific locales.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So, you know, the Athens version of something might Be very different from something you'd find somewhere else. And they don't have a problem with that. This is a very, very modern mindset. We want the definitive hardcore written in stone kind of thing. And, and that's not their relationship with the gods. So my only reason to say that is when you start reading different mythologies, don't freak out if there's, if there's variations, because that is as it, you know, when I mention something I've read to Mr. Banks, he'll. He'll say, oh, that was, was the Ovid version, or that was, you know, the Virgilian version or something. And there'll be lots of that. The other thing is, don't try to make a consistent timeline. That, that doesn't work either because you'll be like, wait, how did Hercules pop up in Jason's story? Isn't he already dead? Like, well, yes, but they wouldn't have had a problem with that. Like, don't, don't try to map it out like that. There is a mythological map and universe. It just doesn't work that way with, with geography and time.

[C]

So that guy you mentioned earlier, Apollodorus, he wrote a book called the Bibliotheca, which means the library. Right. I think that was partly an attempt to make, make the timeline fit, and it just really doesn't work.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, Mr. Banks, you mentioned Ovid. You think Ovid's a great place for people to start?

[B]

Ovid has a lot. Yeah, I mean, Ovid's metamorphoses, I mean, and, and for many generations, that was kind of the go to source for most western Latin reading educated people to get their basic grammar of mythology. That's not to say that Ovid covers everything, but he does arrange his epic in a quasi chronological fashion, from creation down to his own day. He ends with the death and deification of Julius Caesar in book 15 or 16. 15 or 16. Whatever it is, it's 15. Yeah. And yeah. For that reason, though, of course, Ovid makes no pretense that he's writing some kind of strictly historical chronology. But he does move from the beginning to the end in a poetic fashion.

[A]

And do you have a favorite translator for Ovid?

[B]

Yes. I enjoy Andrew Melville's AD Melville's Ovid, which is a blank verse translation, which he did for Oxford World's Classics.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

That's the one I use.

[A]

And what about Hesiod? Is that a good place for somebody to start? You would say, don't start there.

[B]

I wouldn't necessarily say start there, but the theogony. And the theogony means the birth or the genesis of the, the gods is. Yeah, that's, that's something that I would think worthwhile familiarizing myself with if I want again to get deep into this.

[A]

And I feel like I should say this too. When you're approaching mythology, there's really two sets of myths. There's the story of the gods, which is, that's actually what mythology is. And then there's the stories of the heroes. So that's your Perseus and your Theseus. The early days. Most, most mythology anthologies are going to have them all lumped in together. But just be aware if you run into something that's got them separated, that is actually the more ancient idea. And then something like Edith Hamilton. Her sections are labeled like this is the gods and this is the stories of the heroes. Okay, so then let's work down to more accessible things. So we would say this is for kids, but also for adults who want to start with something easy. You mentioned Delairs. I think all three of us are huge fans of Delairs. Another just oversized, gorgeous book with illustrations. Bullfinches. The Age of Fable is fantastic. Available in the public domain. That's going to have a little bit of a more old fashioned feel with the language. And, and I would say this too, like just sample a lot. If you're not, if you're not digging Bullfinch, switch to something else. Is not the end of the world because it doesn't, it doesn't really matter. Edith Hamilton. Hers is less literary than Bullfinch's. It's a little more encyclopedic, I'd say.

[B]

Yeah, I, I like Edith Hamilton. It's, it's. Sure, it's prosy Hamilton. People like to take knocks at Edith Hamilton for a lot of reasons, some justifiable, some I think less so. I was. Some biography of hers came out a few years ago and I remember like every critic who reviewed the book was just lining up to take potshots of this woman who's been dead now for probably 60 some years or something like that. But no Edith Hamilton's Mythology. It's available in cheap paperback. It's a very able piece of work for what it is and it's clearly written and very approachable.

[A]

No, I like it. She also, if I, if memory serves, I think at the end of each one she actually says what her source is. Is that right?

[B]

She does. She does a pretty good job of that. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, of course. You got, if you're Looking for something a little more literary. Nathaniel Hawthorne, he's got his Wonder Book.

[B]

Wonder Book, Yeah.

[A]

And the Tanglewood Tales. He's not trying to do all of them, but that's a little more of a.

[B]

Someone keeps those in print too, I think, don't they?

[A]

Yeah. Oh, no, you can still find those. Yeah.

[B]

And you can certainly find them on Gutenberg and places.

[A]

Yeah. Public domain. And then you. You're very fond of the Golden Book.

[B]

What's the Golden Book of Myths and Legends, which sometimes you can find available on a. Books for pennies and sometimes for like $60.

[A]

Yes. It's because you've been recommending.

[B]

It's. Yeah, well, I recommend it periodically and then people buy up all the available copies. My mother has collected quite a few herself over the years to give to. She gives them essentially of kind of a lovely habit. She gives them to new moms who just had a baby.

[A]

Yeah. She raised too much.

[B]

She probably has like supply. Yeah. A, A, A stack in the basement or something like that, though.

[A]

And I do want to recommend to a newer version that I think all three of us really enjoy. And we're gonna recommend this with a caution. Okay. Which is speaking of people trying to bring back these myths for a new audience. Stephen Fry, the actor. Stephen Fry, Jeeves himself, has a, I think, fabulous series. He's got a book of myths, then the, the heroes. The Heroes books. He's got the Odyssey, he's got one on Troy. There's, I think there are five in this series and I just named four. Anyway, it's a whole, it's a whole series and they're just fabulous. He also reads the audiobooks. It's just. Mr. Makes me. When I would play that.

[B]

I remember. Yeah.

[A]

So good. Like, they're so good. So let me just give you my little sales pitch and then we'll give you the caution. The, the books themselves are gorgeous. Just beautifully printed books, which, you know, is very valuable in, in my mind. And one of the cool things is he's not just retelling them. He sort of synthesizes a lot of things. So, for example, if he mentions Apollo, he'll mention why. What, what elements Apollo is associated with which, you know, planetary bodies he's associated with and why. So he kind of does this like cross reference thing, which I thought was really fascinating. There's some really good appendices in the book. They're also just really, really fun retellings. Really fun retellings. The caution is they're British cheeky books. They have that British cheeky sense of humor, which some people like and some people don't like. Like. And we mentioned that the kids versions of myths make the myths very age appropriate and family friendly. One of the things that sort of tickled me was I think a lot of moms thought what they were reading in delayers was like, quote unquote, the real myth. And so then when they encountered. Right. But when they encountered the real myth in Stephen Fry's version, I was getting men message is saying, is he adding naughty parts to the myths? Which made me really laugh because I was like, that's so cute that you think, you think that. No, he did not add them. Like they're naughty. Okay. Like, you know, Zeus is, is the all life God because everywhere he goes, life springs up, shall we say. Right? And so that is, that is portrayed. The Greek myths themselves can, can be body. So about that, I would say use your discretion. I would say in terms of our audience, a lot of people have said, actually my kids had no problem with that and we all enjoyed it. Other people are like, whoa, no. I would tell my kid it's a little older high school, so again, it just use your own family standards there. But in terms of a work of scholarship, very well done, Very well done. He also cites his sources. If he's going to tell you, he's like, this is, this is a source I'm pulling in it from. I personally learned a lot, but also just enjoyed it. He, he, especially with the audiobook, his obvious delight and joy in these tales just comes through and he clearly sees the value of mythology and, and is introducing it and repopularizing it for a whole new audience. So whatever you think about the cheekiness or the bodiness, I'm just really glad somebody's doing this and I'm glad it's being published. Honestly, it's very exciting. Like when we had Malcolm Guide on just a couple weeks ago, to see that somebody's publishing epic poems and King Arthur and to see, you know, Stephen Fry out there trying to bring back the Odyssey and the Iliad mythology for, for a new generation. Like, you know, hats off, hats off. That's. That's valuable work. And you know, you guys have heard me talk on the podcast before about my great, great love of mythology as a child. I think all three of us probably did. Yeah. Just. No, certainly mythology. Mythology was my first, my first love. Just. And, and everybody's different. I will I'm going to say this, but just tiptoeing, but everybody's different. But I. I've told this story before. When I was in the seventh grade, my school library had a three volume oversized set. I've never been able to find what it was. Jen Rogers, bless her heart, even called my high school and asked the librarian what it was. Okay. And of course, this was a million years ago and they didn't know what she was talking about. About. We've tried to figure out what it was, but it was a three volume set. The first was Greek and Roman myths, the second was Norse myths, and the third volume was Chinese myths. And I read all three and I'm sorry, Lewis and Tolkien. I realized the Norse did it for them. For me, it was the Greek and Roman myths. Not even close. Like, just. I was enchanted and I've never stopped being enchanted. But for some people it's the Norse myths. For other people it's the Chinese myths. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Like wherever you, wherever you find that spark, you know, cultivate it. But I would not worry about giving a child a book of myths. I know that there are parents who, who worry. Like, if I give them a book of myths, is this going to confuse them about who the true God is? Like I said, we had an entire episode devoted to that. An entire episode. Why read pagan myths? I think it's going to blow you away. That far from confusing a child, you can actually find echoes of the gospel in, in pagan mythology. The church fathers found it. That's why they thought the myths were a good thing for Christians to read. And, and Cindy makes the great point that your children are not going to be confused between mythology and, and your actual religious beliefs because you're not going to church on Sunday to worship Zeus. You know, myths have so much more in common with fairy tales than they do with. I mean, Northrop Fry makes this point over and over. Mythology has much more in common with tales than it does with your actual religious practices. So I. They're much more likely to get Zeus confused with Little Red Riding Hood than, than they are to get Zeus and, you know, Jesus Christ confused. So anyway, we have a whole episode devoted to that. All right, now, changing gears, History and philosophy. Okay, I. Look at the. Your eyes get excited here. Mr. Banks, you want to start us off with Plutarch since you're our Plutarch teacher?

[B]

Yeah, I would say that Plutarch is. Even if you don't want to plumb the depths of the Greco Roman world, Plutarch is a writer that you ought to find time for. You don't I'll qualify that by saying that his Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans is not a book that most people read cover to cover or that most, most people necessarily should read cover to cover. But I think some of the major lives in there, I really think those of Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Themistocles, Pericles and a handful of others, Cicero, I think those are ones which reward repeated study. And even if you're just kind of interested in being a student of human nature or whatever you want to call it, Plutarch is. Plutarch is a writer who has many rewards in store for you. So, yes, read plutarch.

[A]

Excellent. And Dr. Phillips, I know the histories. That's. That's your area. That's your baby. You did your dissertation on Herodotus, So talk to us about where somebody should start if they're interested in dipping into ancient history.

[C]

So I have a similar kind of answer to that. It can be very hard and intimidating to just jump straight into the ancients. I will say, if you're going to start with Herodotus, he's, he's, he's fairly easy to read because he is very mythic in the way he deals with a lot of things, which bothers a lot of people because, you know, how do we separate the facts from the fabulous and all those kinds of things? But it's not bad by any means to dip into some general historical surveys first and then dive in to Herodotus because then you'll have a little bit more context for what you're reading. So one pretty good place to start, if you're just looking for a short, not very intimidating introduction, would be Oxford did a very short introduction series to various things. So they did one on classical Greece. They did one on, you know, republican Rome, imperial Rome. They have a whole series that are very short and they're written by scholars and they're just basic introduction. So if you wanted to dip into something like that first, that is not a bad thing at all. But Herodotus, he's our first historian. So he's what Cicero calls the father of history. And he. He was the first person to be writing in this way, in prose, at length, this sort of universal history coming out of the epic tradition. And a lot of what he includes in all that is his. A lot of it is the oral tradition is what people said about themselves was very important to him, and it was an important part of telling the story of different people groups. So Herodotus is quite accessible, very fun to read. And, yeah, he's He's. He's very charming.

[A]

Any specific edition of Herodotus?

[C]

So my favorite edition is the landmark Herodotus, edited by Robert Strassler. Part of the reason for that is because it has lots of maps and notes in it, which are very helpful. So lot. And really good appendices, too. So if you get the landmark edition, I would actually read the appendices first because those give you a lot of background before you start trying to read. So background on Athens because he. Herodotus tells us the whole history of Athens as far as he knows it, the whole history of Sparta as far as he knows it. So he's actually one of the most important foundational sources for what we do know about Athens and Sparta. And so, yeah, the. The landmark Herodotus just has tons and tons of information in it. So, yeah, that's. That's what I have to say about him.

[A]

But what about Thucydides? If I want to know about Thucydides, covers the Persian Wars.

[B]

No, Thucydides, his book is focused on the Peloponnesian War.

[A]

Between those two names mixed together, they

[B]

should not be Athens.

[A]

I take a fan.

[B]

Yeah. So between Athens and Sparta, that's a long war that lasted about almost 30 years. 431 to 404. And Thucydides writes history in a very, very different fashion from Herodotus.

[C]

If Herodotus is very dry.

[B]

Yeah. If Herodotus is colorful and digressive and kind of whimsical. Thucydides is grave, serious, very focused on a single subject, and intensely devoted to. Also, he doesn't bring in mythical or religious explanations of events famously. And he's more. He feels more modern. It's kind of a cliche to say about. Well, he's an acquired taste. He was a great genius and a great historical writer. His way of writing history, honestly, is more influential in the long run, I think, than Herodotus was, at least in the modern world. But, yeah, I've actually taught Thucydides to high school students and very rarely find that any of them take to it easily.

[C]

He's hard to read. And that's. If you want to read Thucydides and you're like, you know what? I really. Especially. Because right now, politically speaking, just with various things going on, there's a. There's a political buzzword called the Thucydides Trap.

[B]

Oh, yes. I was hoping you would bring this up.

[A]

Say it again.

[C]

The Thucydides Trap.

[A]

The Thucydides trap. Oh, I don't know. About this. Tell me what's on the interwebs that I don't want to know about.

[C]

So it has to do with whether two large hegemonic powers see themselves as Athens and Sparta, basically. And Mr. Banks, you can correct me if I'm wrong. So. And I'm not going to talk about contemporary politics, but when you have large empires that come to blows with each other or just in tension with each other, I mean, if you don't, I'll spoil the ending. The Peloponnesian War. Sparta wins in the end. And part of the upshot of it is Sparta really, I mean, Athens just did foolish things and more and more foolish things that weakened her to a point where Sparta was eventually able to. To defeat her. And that was the end of the Athenian empire, which had been quite impressive and you know, the flowering of Athenian culture and it was over. And so it's, it's a way of talking about empire and power and when two powers are in tension with each other. So, Yeah, I mean, Mr. Banks, you probably know more about this than I do, though.

[B]

Yeah. And the idea that they were almost bound to fight each other, not. Not so much because of conscious desire of the leaders so much as simply the effect of being drawn into each other's orbit and the contests and rivalrousness that. That provoked and.

[C]

Yeah, trying to.

[B]

But yeah, if you just Google Thucydides trap, there's been a thousand think pieces in various newspapers and periodicals written in the last months, I guess.

[A]

Well, if you're annoyed with it, it does point out that these classical framework, it just continues to play. It's something educated people need to know about.

[B]

Now actually, can I interject Herodotus, Thucydides, another Greek historian that I think he doesn't appear on nearly as many curricula, but I think Xenophon. I think Xenophon and his. Written from his own experience, the expedition of the 10,000, the anabasis. That is. That's really a great adventure story. What he's writing about is a comparatively smaller subject, but it is, it is, I think, one of the great historical accounts left to us from the ancient world.

[A]

Excellent. And then there's Roman historians.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Which. Oh gosh, I'm joined. Which one wrote the one Germania?

[B]

Tacitus.

[A]

Tacitus, yes. Because it's from Tacitus that we know about the Anglo Saxons, for example. And, and it's, it's why when you read Beowulf, you have to know about Comitatus. And why is Comitatus a Latin word to describe an Anglo Saxon society. It's because Tacitus is the one who observed.

[B]

I was writing about the German tribes. Yeah. Of the first century A.D.

[C]

sorry, go ahead.

[B]

Oh, no, yeah. So, yeah, Tacitus, the. The Germania, that monograph, it's a fairly short, short work. It's not his major contribution to the historiography of the ancient world. He wrote two major books which survive in part, the Annals of Ancient Rome and the Histories. I teach the Annals in my ancients course. Selectively, we work our way through the reigns of Tiberius and Nero and. And take with brief glances at Augustus and Claudius and others. But, yeah, for the Julio Claudian dynasty in particular, Tacitus is one of our main resources. He's a very angry historian. He pretends not to be. He famously, in his prologue, claims to be writing, what is it, sine ira et studio, without anger or bias. He's actually writing with. With a great deal of anger and bias, which are very, very visible.

[A]

So glad you brought that up. If you open a history book that says, I declare I am writing without bias, you can immediately discredit that.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, God bless him, but. So, yeah, Tacitus is one, Livy is another. Livy is the Roman historian, or the Latin language historian whose work survives for us in the greatest quantity. Dr. Phillips, how do you evaluate Livy? Are you. Are you on Team Livy?

[C]

So, okay, I got really excited about this just because the Roman historians started putting themselves in the. Are you a Herodotus or Thucydides?

[A]

Interesting.

[C]

So. And they did this consciously. There's actually. So there was a historian prior to Livy and Tacitus, a guy named Sallust. And Sallust was trying to be the Roman and Thucydides, and he's the. He is the first historian in the Latin language that we have who survives, who kind of set the tone for a lot of things. But Livy, writing in the early, early Empire, he's much more in a Herodotus vein. His style is much more. More. I don't know, how would we. How would we characterize him? He. I mean, so he. The thing that people read from him the most is book one of his history is all about the Roman myths. And it's a very nice style. It's a very charming style. Very. You know, it's fun to read. So Livy is kind of putting himself a little bit more in that. And I don't think he would. I don't think he would be happy to adopt everything about being Herodotian, because even in antiquity people were frustrated Herodotus for being so mythical. But Tacitus is more in a Thucydides paradigm in the way that he operates. And Tacitus is writing after Livy and he's writing in what he considers to be the precipitous decline of everything. And actually one of my favorite things that I learned from my undergraduate professors about Tacitus is part of what he's doing is he's trying to give you, the reader, a political education where you're, you're tasked with who can I trust? Who can I not trust? How do I navigate these political situations where nothing is as it seems? And so I enjoy them both for very different, different reasons.

[B]

I, I skipped over him, another historian. Not many people, not many amateurs read, but I, I actually kind of enjoy. There's a kind of dryness to him, but I like his sanity. Polybius, also writing in the Thucydidean tradition, broadly defined. He was a Greek historian who was taken as a prisoner of war, taken as a hostage to Rome, where he spent, spent much of his year later years in the skipionic circle of Roman aristocrats. And he wrote in Greek a history of how Rome came to be the mistress of the Mediterranean world, essentially. So he's. He. Much of our information about the Punic wars against Carthage comes from Polybius. Yeah, but, but yeah, I enjoy Livy and Livy, of course, his. As he gets down towards his own time, his work takes on a more. It becomes more what we would call history. And the earlier books are more what we would probably describe as myth. And he allows for this distinction himself. In his prologue he describes that he is going to tell us the traditional story of Rome's founding with Romulus and Remus and the wolf and all that. Even though much of what he is going to say in this first book is not strictly factual.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Now as far as kids versions of history or kids introduction to histories, I think this is another area that you have to think through, like what are the goals? So just with like, we don't need to give kids the kids versions of Anti. Antigone, you just need to read mythology. I think you can take the same approach to history now. You can find things like the children's Herodotus and you can, can find things even like the children's Josephus, which horrified my husband when I told him that this existed.

[B]

Do they include the cannibalism?

[A]

Yeah, I don't, I don't know. But I think that Just how like in terms of the literature, the. The child's imagination needs to be filled up with all the myths and the mythological characters. I honestly think the approach to classical history that makes the most sense is almost a biographical approach. So I really, really. Okay, you're nodding your head. Good. I really liked things when my kids were little, like Famous Men of Greece and Rome, which is really accessible, really fun. It'll give you a who's who. It's kind of a Plutarch for kids, which. There also is a Plutarch for kids. But I also would say that you can just read Plutarch to your kid. The Embleside online curriculum has. Has that of kind chart it out for you. It has many study guides to help you make sense of it. How to break it down. Mr. Banks teaches a Plutarch class for kids, which is a huge hit. I also like things like H.A. gerber's and these. These come under a number of different titles because they. They're reprints. But usually it's some. Some story like the Story of Greece and the Story of Rome, which is very much like the famous men of Greece and Rome, just kind of like longer stories.

[B]

There's a lot of books like that.

[A]

Yeah. Dorothy Mills, I also like her. And I think hers are called the Story of Rome and the Story of Greece too. Those are all good. Now, a lot of these will have the biases of their day. So HA Gerber, for example, being writing when she is at the late 19th century, early 20th century, is a hundred percent absorbing the biases of her day and needs to keep telling you, this is not true. This is a myth. This is true. This is. This is history. And I would. Yeah, that's a. That's a conversation for a different day. I'll simply say that was the biases of her day. There are, there are older books that would. Herodotus for himself, for example, will not make that distinction. Tolkien himself would also not make that distinction. He says there is no difference between myth and history. It's all the story you tell of yourselves. But there's just lots and lots of good resources to familiarize yourself with the names and the landscape and the who's who that are very, very approachable and really fun.

[B]

Certainly. Yes.

[A]

All right, let's bring this to the question of philosophy then. Okay. And I realize ancient philosophy is a huge topic. We're not gonna. We're not gonna do the landscape, but people obviously are gonna think. They're gonna think Plato, they're gonna think Aristotle. They're gonna think Socrates. Okay, so we did. We did a Platonic dialogue. We did the Ion.

[B]

The Ion, yes.

[A]

On the podcast. We did Aristotle's Poetics. Okay, but what if I wanted to jump in with the Republic? Dr. Phillips, what do you think? Is that a. You did a webinar for us on the Republic, which I highly recommend you guys go check out. Is that a place I should start or is that a place I build up to?

[C]

I would build up to. That I. I like. So I went on a bit of a project rereading as much Plato as I could, and I found that it was actually a really good way to go. If you read what I call the Deathbed trilogy first, which is the Apology. So that's Socrates defense at his trial. The Crito, which is. He's in jail with some of his students, and then the Phaedo. So he's still in jail with some of his students, and he dies at the end of that. And I cried when I got to the end of that trilogy because it lays out all the stakes for you. It's. It is a very succinct and beautiful summary of what all this means and what. What Socrates was doing. And Plato, of course, Socrates himself didn't write anything but Plato. We get. There's debates about, you know, whether this is the quote, unquote, historical Socrates or not that. Which doesn't matter. It's beautiful. And I start with those. And they're. They're not long, which is nice. So they're a good way to enter in without it feeling super intimidating. Other dialogues that are good and not super long would be. The Euthyphro is one early dialogue that's usually chronologically, it's dated. The first one. The Meno is another good one, because that's the question of can virtue be taught? That's. And it's. It's not super long. And then the Symposium. Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, the Symposium would be good, which is a little weird if you're not prepared. But it's beautiful. It's. It's glorious. And also very funny, which is not necessarily something we're always prepared for when we approach the Symposium. But a lot of it is meant to be funny. But when Socrates speaks at the end and talks about the ladder of Love, it's just. It's. It's stunning. And then I think, yeah, the Republic is very long, and it's got a lot of really, really important and very famous ideas in it. Obviously, the allegory of the cave or the myth of ur at the very end. I do think that you'll have an easier time reading and appreciating the Republican with some of this other background in place. It helps you to keep the overall point in mind of the Republic more easily. Very good.

[A]

Mr. Banks, any philosophy recommendations from you?

[B]

I would say. Okay, if you're going to begin with Aristotle, on the other hand, I would say before getting into his, some of his say, denser treatises like the Prior analytics or things like that. The Poetics is not an easy book, but it's at least it has the virtue of being short. And I would say also his politics and Nicomachean ethics. At least, at least selections of those. I would say that might be beginning points for Aristotle. And unlike Plato, Aristotle is not a lively writer. We have essentially treatises compiled from his lectures that remain to us. And he's. I would describe him as being a dawnish sort of lecturer. Dawnishness raised to the level of genius is Aristotle.

[A]

And we did cover Aristotle's Poetics on the podcast as well. If you want some hand holding with that. And I feel like I'm just going to give a little tease here. Dr. Phillips has been working on a project for us over at Cassiodorus Press. You have translated Aristotle's Poetics for us. And so you guys can look forward to a new edition with lots of notes and, and hand holding and context and. Yeah, I don't want to. We'll have you on just for a special episode on, on that. But that's a little tease of something that's coming out.

[C]

Yeah, the Poetics is, is so important, but it is that. That is a very difficult text because it's. The text itself has a lot of problems, but it's been, it's been very rewarding and it's probably one of the most written about ancient texts. The more I, the more I dig into all the things that have been written about it. But I will say this with Aristotle because the first few times I attempted to read Aristotle, as somebody that has been committed to classics for pretty much my entire life at this point, it was horrible. I did not enjoy Aristotle. I was very kind of anti Aristotle for a long time because, like, why don't we read this? This is so boring and dry. I don't understand. I came back to the Nicomachean Ethics last year, actually. Jen Rogers and I were reading through it together and talking about it and that time around I was like, oh, I see it now. I see why this is great. I see why this is worth reading so you can build up to that point. So if you feel like I just don't get it, I don't like this, that's okay. You might find later on it, it will dawn on you like, oh, I, I see it now and again.

[A]

You did a webinar for us on Herodotus. You find that on the House of Humane Letters website. You did a webinar for us on Plato's Republic and then you and Jen were reading those things together because you co taught a year ago, it was a year ago May, a class on Plato and Aristotle. So you guys can find all of that on our website HouseOfHumaneLetters.com all right, so lastly, let's see if we have any recommendations for teachers or just readers. I have a couple of like, I'm going to give like the super accessible, not to be intimidated hand holding books and then you guys can give other recommendations. So I would recommend Louis Marcos's From Achilles to Christ. This is a book that's going to take you through some major themes, themes in the three epics, the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid. It's going to take you through some plays as well. And if you're at all struggling, of course you won't be after you listen to our episode why Repeat Myths? But if you're at all struggling with the idea of why is this valuable to the life of a Christian? This book does a good job of helping you to see some of the Christian archetypes and gospel echoes in, in the, in the Ancients. And I would also, along those same lines, recommend Peter Leithard's Heroes from the City of Man. He will also take you through the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid and then some slightly different plays than Louis Marcos does. Both of those are inexpensive, easily available and yeah, they'll give you some real gentle hand holding. How about you, Mr. Banks?

[C]

Any resources?

[B]

Yes, if you want to get a bit more into the woods than those two, I might recommend Moses Hadus two histories, one of Latin, the other of Greek literature. There's a shorter and it's an old and in some ways dated but a shorter history of Latin literature by J.W. mcHale. You can find all of those things online, I think. And yeah, Dr. Phillips, how about you?

[C]

Yeah, I also had one, Moses Hadass. He has a book called An Ancilla to Classical Reading, which I love and it's meant for a lay audience. He's introducing his audience to the basic outlines of ancient reading and it's very good. He also has an introduction to Greek drama and that's also quite helpful. And it kind of helps you to understand the Greek mind as well. So those are a couple things that came to mind.

[A]

Well, I hope we have it taxed the limits of our listeners. Amazon shopping carts at the moment. And again, a lot of this stuff can be found in the public domain Project Gutenberg Internet Archive. You know, you don't have to spend a fortune here. We've mentioned a lot of free resources. Podcast is a free resource, paid resources. You can check out our webinars and the books that we've listed below. Dr. Phillips, thank you so much for joining us.

[B]

Yes, thank you so much today and

[C]

thank you for having me.

[A]

I, I hope this episode is a help for people if they're just wanting to get their bearings in the classical Greek and Roman antiquity. That's a, that's a. I realize I just repeated myself. Classical Greek and Roman landscape. If you want to get your bearings there. Hopefully this is a good place to start again. You can go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find any of the webinars we mentioned here, but also to check out our summer lineup. And don't forget, we also have a publishing wing, Cassiodorus Press. And you can grab Dr. Jason Baxter's newest book, Falling Inward, which is fantastic. And while you're at it, pick up his other book, why Literature Still Matters, and sign up for the mailing list there because we've got a lot of exciting new projects coming out, including Dr. Phillips Eric Aristotle's Poetics, which has been translated, but you know, it's being peer reviewed and all the, all the rigorous scholarly things. So it'll, it's not coming out next week or anything, but that, that's something to put on your radar. So join us next week when we launch our Best of series for the summer. We are rebroadcasting the series we did on short stories. And I highly recommend this because while it can be difficult to follow all the little threads in a 400 page novel, in a short story you get it all at one time, the beginning, the middle and the end. And it's really easy to keep it in your mind. And I think that you'll be, I think these episodes are going to be a lot of fun but also very helpful in just almost like a boot camp of how to read. And so the first one is going to be James Joyce's Araby, which is one of my favorite short stories. So that'll be taking us through the summer. And don't forget, also we have an Ask Us Almost Anything Else episode coming up at the end of July, so please get your questions in for that. You can leave your questions in the comments on the Literary Life website, you can leave them in our Facebook group, you can email them to atle coordinator humane letters.com you can post them on our Patreon Discord. And we look forward to your questions for that. Well, once Again, thank you Dr. Phillips for your contributions. Thank you Mr. Banks. Thank you at home listening. And until next time, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find and Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon Forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[B]

Antony and Cleopatra by Jose Maria de Heredia Translated by Edward Robeson Taylor On Egypt sleeping under sky of brass, the twain gazed wistfully from terrace high, and watched the flood through delta rolling high toward Seis or Bubastis slowly pass the Roman felt beneath his thick cuirass like captive soldiers stilling infants cry on his triumphant bosom swooning lie her form voluptuous in his close embrace, Turning her pallid head between his arms toward him made mad by perfumes conquering charms. She raised her mouth and crystalline fond eye, and o' er her bent the chieftain did behold in her great orbs starry with dots of gold only a boundless sea where galleys fly.