Books Should Be Free Loyal Books Free Public Domain Audiobooks & eBook Downloads |
|
Classics and Books from Antiquity |
---|
Book type:
Sort by:
View by:
|
By: Plato (Πλάτων) (c. 428 BC - c. 347 BC) | |
---|---|
![]() Jowett, in his always informative introduction, sees this dialogue as transitional between the early and middle dialogues. Socrates meets with Protagoras and other sophists and pursues his inquiry into virtue. The dialectic brings the thinkers to a surprising ending. Socrates narrates this dialogue. |
By: Aristophanes (446-389 BCE) | |
---|---|
![]() Athens is in a sorry state of affairs. The great tragedian, Euripides, is dead, and Dionysus, the god of the theater, has to listen to third-rate poetry. So, he determines to pack his belongings onto his trusty slave, Xanthias, and journey to the underworld to bring back Euripides! Hi-jinks ensue. |
By: Virgil (70 BC - 19 BC) | |
---|---|
![]() The Aeneid is the most famous Latin epic poem, written by Virgil in the 1st century BC. The story revolves around the legendary hero Aeneas, a Trojan prince who left behind the ruins of his city and led his fellow citizens to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. The first six of the poem’s twelve books tell the story of Aeneas’ wanderings from Troy to Italy, while the poem’s second half treats the Trojans’ victorious war upon the Latins. This is the recording of J.W.MacKail's prose translation. | |
By: Unknown (427? BC - 347? BC) | |
---|---|
![]() Statesman (Ancient Greek: Πολιτικός) discusses God's role in maintaining the universe and describes the statesman as a good shepherd who promotes intermarriage between the orderly and courageous. | |
![]() Sophist (Ancient Greek: Σοφιστής) discusses being and not-being while drawing a distinction between the philosopher and the sophist. |
By: Plato (Πλάτων) (c. 428 BC - c. 347 BC) | |
---|---|
![]() This is an incomplete dialogue from the late period of Plato's life. Plato most likely created it after Republic and it contains the famous story of Atlantis, that Plato tells with such skill that many have believed the story to be true. Critias, a friend of Socrates, and uncle of Plato was infamous as one of the bloody thirty tyrants. |
By: Unknown (427? BC - 347? BC) | |
---|---|
![]() Cratylus (ΚΡΑΤΥΛΟΣ) discusses whether things have names by mere convention or have true names which can only be correctly applied to the object named and may have originated from God. | |
![]() Charmides (Χαρμίδης) discusses the virtue of temperance. |
By: Aristophanes (446-389 BCE) | |
---|---|
![]() Strepsiades is an Athenian burdened with debt from a bad marriage and a spendthrift son. He resolves to go to the Thinking Shop, where he can purchase lessons from the famous Socrates in ways to manipulate language in order to outwit his creditors in court. Socrates, represented as a cunning, manipulative, irreverent sophist, has little success with the dull-witted Strepsiades, but is able to teach the old man's son Phidippides a few tricks. In the end, the play is a cynical, clever commentary on Old Ways vs. New Ways, to the disparagement of the former. |
By: Unknown (427? BC - 347? BC) | |
---|---|
![]() Laches (Λάχης) discusses examples of courage including weapons masters, soldiers who stand firm in battle, ferocious animals and the wise person who endures evils. |
By: Plato (Πλάτων) (c. 428 BC - c. 347 BC) | |
---|---|
![]() As Jowett relates in his brilliant introduction, 95% of Plato's writing is certain and his reputation rests soundly on this foundation. The Alcibiades 1 appears to be a short work by Plato with only two characters: Socrates and Alcibiades. This dialogue has little dramatic verisimilitude but centres on the question of what knowledge one needs for political life. Like the early dialogues, the question is on whether the virtues needed by a statesman can be taught, on the importance of self-knowledge as a starting point for any leader... |
By: Unknown (427? BC - 347? BC) | |
---|---|
![]() Philebus (ΦΙΛΗΒΟΣ) discusses pleasure, wisdom, soul and God. | |
![]() Lysis (Λύσις) discusses friendship and love between the good and bad. | |
![]() Menexenus (ΜΕΝΕΞΕΝΟΣ) is thought to have been written by Plato (ΠΛΑΤΩΝ). The dialogue consists of Socrates (ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ) recounting a funeral oration he claims to have learned from the female philosopher Aspasia (ΑΣΠΑΣΙΑ) who may have been wealthy, a courtesan or both. | |
![]() Euthydemus (Εὐθύδημος) and Dionysodorus the sophists discuss the meaning of words with Socrates. |
By: Euripides (484 BC - 406 BC) | |
---|---|
![]() Alcestis is the earliest surviving play by Euripides. Alcestis, the devoted wife of King Admetus, has agreed to die in his place, and at the beginning of the play she is close to death. In the first scene, Apollo argues with Thanatos (Death), asking to prolong Alcestis' life, but Thanatos refuses. Apollo leaves, but suggests that a man will come to Pherae who will save Alcestis. Euripides' play is perhaps the most unusual Greek drama ever written: a tragedy that is not a tragedy. |
By: Plato (Πλάτων) (c. 428 BC - c. 347 BC) | |
---|---|
![]() This work may not be by Plato, or his entirely, but Jowett has offered his sublime translation, and seems to lean towards including it in the canon. Socrates tempted by irony to deflate the pretentious know-it-all Hippias, an arrogant polymath, appears to follow humour more than honour in this short dialogue. |
By: Unknown (427? BC - 347? BC) | |
---|---|
![]() Eryxias (ΕΡΥΞΙΑΣ) may not have been written by Plato (ΠΛΑΤΩΝ). The dialogue discusses whether wealth has value and what the aim of philosophy should be. |
By: John B. Bury (1861-1927) | |
---|---|
![]() The writings of J. B. Bury, on subjects ranging from ancient Greece to the 19th-century papacy, are at once scholarly and accessible to the layman. This work covers the period from the beginning of the Roman Empire until Gibbon begins; from Augustus through Marcus Aurelius and the Antoinine Emporers. |
By: Publius (Ovid) Ovidius Naso (c. 43 BC - 18 AD) | |
---|---|
![]() The Fasti is a Latin poem in six books, written by Ovid and believed to have been published in 8 AD. The Fasti is organized according to the Roman calendar and explains the origins of Roman holidays and associated customs, often through the mouths of deities and with multiple aetiologies. The poem was left unfinished when the poet was exiled to Tomis, so only the first six months of the year appear in the poem. |
By: Alfred John Church (1829-1912) | |
---|---|
![]() Alfred J. Church created 26 stories from the original Greek version of Virgil's Aeneid. He included well-known ones, such as "The Horse of Wood" and "The Love and Death of Dido," as well as many others perhaps less well-known, such as "King Evander" and "The Funeral Games of Anchises." |
By: Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (c. 46 - c. 120) | |
---|---|
![]() The Moralia (loosely translatable as "Matters relating to customs") of the 1st-century Greek scholar Plutarch of Chaeronea is an eclectic collection of 78 essays and transcribed speeches. They give an insight into Roman and Greek life, but often are also fascinating timeless observations in their own right. Many generations of Europeans have read or imitated them, including Montaigne and the Renaissance Humanists and Enlightenment philosophers. The Moralia include "On the Fortune or the Virtue of... |
By: Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC) | |
---|---|
![]() Physics (Greek: Φυσικὴ ἀκρόασις; Latin: Physica, or Physicae Auscultationes) discusses concepts including: substance, accident, the infinite, causation, motion, time and the Prime Mover. |
By: Sappho (c. 630 BC - c. 570 BC) | |
---|---|
![]() Sappho lived in the Greek-speaking Aeolian islands off the coast of Turkey. She is one of the very few female poets from antiquity. Although her work was very popular in ancient Greece and Rome, only small fragments survive today. This book includes translations of these fragments, as well as a poem from Ovid's Heroides, "Sappho to Phaon," a fictional letter from Sappho to her assumed lover. |
By: Pliny the Elder (23-79) | |
---|---|
![]() Naturalis Historia (Latin for "Natural History") is an encyclopedia published circa AD 77-79 by Pliny the Elder. It is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman empire to the modern day and purports to cover the entire field of ancient knowledge, based on the best authorities available to Pliny. The work became a model for all later encyclopedias in terms of the breadth of subject matter examined, the need to reference original authors, and a comprehensive index list of the contents... |
By: Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC) | |
---|---|
![]() Magna Moralia (Ancient Greek: ΗΟΙΚΩΝ ΜΕΓΑΛΩΝ, English: Great Ethics) discusses topics including friendship, virtue, happiness and God. It is disputed whether Aristotle wrote Magna Moralia. This author concludes that it is absurd to suggest that God contemplates only God but does not propose an alternative activity for God. |
By: Elizabeth Cary (1585-1639) | |
---|---|
![]() The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) is the first original drama written in English by a woman. Elizabeth Cary drew on Jewish histories by Josephus to create a closet drama (written to be read, rather than performed live) about Mariam, the second wife of Herod the Great. At the beginning of the play, Mariam believes that Herod has been killed by Octavius, and struggles with how to respond. On the one hand, she is relieved, as she is angry with Herod for killing her brother and grandfather. On the other, she knows that he loved her, and she feels caught by her sense of duty as his wife. When Herod unexpectedly returns, Mariam must decide what to do. |
By: Bernhard Pick (1842-1917) | |
---|---|
![]() The full title of this book, published in 1909, is The Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew and Thomas. As early as the second century, numerous legends concerning the fates of the Christian apostles were in circulation. These Acts, widely regarded as originating circa 150 CE, are among the earliest accounts still in existence of the lives, preaching and martyrdoms of the apostles Paul, Peter, John, Andrew and Thomas. They are written in a fantastic and romantic style, and although they were influential in later Christian conceptions of these apostles, they are historically worthless as biographies... |
By: Emilie Kip Baker (1873-1951) | |
---|---|
![]() The Stories of Old Greece and Rome is an easy to read summary of all of the famous and not so famous Greek and Roman mythological stories. All of the famous Heroes are here: Theseus, Jason, Hercules, and all of the well known Deities. These stories tell the real detail of the myths, not the ones that have become sanitized (and dare I say it, 'Disneyfied') over the centuries. These are not stories for children, as the old gods and heroes were vengeful and some might say sadistic in their treatment of minor slights and misdemeanors... |
By: Homer (c. 8th cen - c. 8th cen) | |
---|---|
![]() The Odysseys are a collection of stories about Ulysses' journey home from the war at Troy purportedly written in the 8th century BCE by Homer, a blind poet thought to have lived in the Greek colonies in Asia Minor, possibly at Smyrna. The events described are thought to have occurred centuries before being recorded by Homer, handed down orally since the twelfth century BCE, the golden era of the Greek Bronze Age when the world was populated by heroic mortals and often visited by the Gods. This verse... |
By: Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis (-2nd Cent.) | |
---|---|
![]() Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, known in English as Juvenal, was a Roman poet active in the late 1st and early 2nd century AD. The details of the author's life are unclear, although references within his text to known persons of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD fix his terminus post quem (earliest date of composition). The Satires are a collection of satirical poems by Juvenal written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD. Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five books; all are in the Roman genre of satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a wide-ranging discussion of society and social mores in dactylic hexameter... |
By: Omar Khayyám (1048-1131) | |
---|---|
![]() In 1906, Eben Francis Thompson,scholar and poet, published a limited edition of his translation of the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam. This edition contains 878 quatrains, and represents the most extensive translation of Omar's rubai in any language.In the Introduction, Nathan Haskell Dole writes: Mr Thompson has put into English verse this whole body of Persian poetry. It is a marvel of close translation, accurate and satisfactory. He has succeeded in doing exactly what he set out to do - to add nothing and to take nothing away, but to put into the typical quatrain, as determined by Fitzgerald and others, exactly what Omar and his unknown imitators said. |