• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 4921 0

have to be learned in all Eastern traditions in order to do the job well. There are very few scholars who have this kind of acquaintance with all the works of the East. Third, there is something to be said for knowing your own tradition before trying to understand that of other parts of the world. Many persons who today attempt to read such books as the I Ching or the Bhagavad-Gita are baffled, not only because of the inherent difficulty of such works, but also because they have not learned to read well by practicing on the more accessible works-more accessible to them-of their own culture. And finally, the list is long enough as it is.

One other omission requires comment. The list, being one of books, includes the names of few persons known primarily as lyric poets. Some of the writers on the list wrote lyric poems, of course, but they are best known for other, longer works.

This fact is not to be taken as reflecting a prejudice on our part against lyric poetry. But we would recommend starting with a good anthology of poetry rather than with the collected works of a single author. Palgrave's The Golden Treasury and 350 HOW TO READ A BOOK

The Oxford Book of English Verse are excellent places to start. These older anthologies should be supplemented by more modem ones-for example, Selden Rodman's One Hundred Modem Poems, a collection widely available in paperback that extends the notion of a lyric poem in interesting ways. Since reading lyric poetry requires special skill, we would also recommend any of several available handbooks on the subject-for example, Mark Van Doren's Introduction to Poetry, an anthology that also contains short discussions of how to read many famous lyrics.

We have listed the books by author and title, but we have not attempted to indicate a publisher or a particular edition. Almost every work on the list is available in some form, and many are available in several editions, both paperback and hard cover. However, we have indicated which authors and titles are included in two sets that we ourselves have edited. Titles included in Great Books of the W estem World are identified by a single asterisk; authors represented in Gateway to the Great Books are identified by a double asterisk.

1. Homer (9th century B.c.?)

0Iliad

•odyssey

2. The Old Testament

3. Aeschylus ( c. 525-456 B.C. )

•Tragedies

4. Sophocles ( c. 495-406 B.C. )

•Tragedies

5. Herodotus ( c. 484-425 B.C. )

• History ( of the Persian Wars )

6. Euripides ( c. 485-406 B.c. )

•Tragedies

( esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae )

7. Thucydides ( c. 460-400 B.C. )

• History of the Peloponnesian War

Appendix A 351

8. Hippocrates ( c. 460-377? B.c. )

•Medical writings

9. Aristophanes ( c. 448-380 B.C. )

•comedies

( esp. The Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs)

10. Plato ( c. 427-347 B.C. )

• Dialogues

( esp. The Republic, Symposium, Phaedo, Meno, Apology, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Sophist, Theaetetus )

11. Aristotle ( 384-322 B.c. )

•works

( esp. Organon, Physics, Metaphysics,

On the Soul, The Nichomachean Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics)

12. • •Epicurus ( c. 341-270 B.c. )

Letter to Herodotus

Letter to Menoeceus

13. Euclid (fl. c. 30 B.C. )

• Elements (of Geometry)

14. Archimedes ( c. 287-212 B.c. )

•works

( esp. On the Equilibrium of Planes,

On Floating Bodies, The Sand-Reckoner )

15. Apollonius of Perga (fl.c. 240 B.C. )

•on Conic Sections

16. • •Cicero ( 106-43 B.c. )

Works

( esp. Orations, On Friendship, On Old Age ) 17. Lucretius ( c. 95-5 B.c. )

•on the Nature of Things

18. Virgil ( 70-19 B.c. )

•works

19. Horace ( 65-8 B.C. )

Works

( esp. Odes and Epodes, The Art of Poetry ) 20. Livy ( 59 B.C.-A.D. 17 )

History of Rome

352 HOW TO READ A BOOK

21. Ovid ( 43 B.C.-A.D. 17 )

Works

( esp. Metamorphoses )

22. • •Plutarch ( c. 45-120)

• Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

Moralia

23. • •Tacitus ( c. 55-117 )

•Histories

0Annals

Agricola

Germania

24. Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl.c. 100 A.D. )

• Introduction to Arithmetic

25. • •Epictetus ( c. 60-120)

• Discourses

Encheiridion (Handbook)