The Epic of Gilgamesh, the cycle of poems preserved on clay tablets surviving from ancient Mesopotamia of the third millennium B.C. One of the best and most important pieces of epic poetry from human history, predating even Homer's Iliad by...

The Bible, sometimes called the Holy Bible, can refer to one of two closely related religious texts central to Judaism and Christianity—the Hebrew or Christian sacred Scriptures respectively. Modern day Judaism recognizes a single set of...

The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events d...

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other Homeric epic. The Odyssey is fundamental to the modern Western canon; it is the second-oldest extant work of West...

The Tao Te Ching, roughly translatable as The Book of the Way and its Virtue, is a Chinese classic text. According to tradition, it was written around 600 BCE by the Taoist sage Laozi (or Lao Tzu, "Old Master"), a record-keeper at the Zhou...

No other book in the entire history of the world has exerted a greater influence on a larger number of people over a longer period of time than this slim volume. The spiritual cornerstone of the most populous and oldest living civilization...

Along with Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone forms part of the Oedipus cycle in which Sophocles dramatizes the tragic downfall of the house of Oedipus. The final chapter in the saga, this play follows Oedipus' daughter Antig...

The Histories is commonly thought of as the classic chronicle of the great 5th century BCE wars between the underdog confederacy of Greek city-states and the mighty Persian Empire. To the modern reader of military history, this implies an o...

"Oedipus the King" (or, "Oedipus Rex") is probably Sophocles' most famous work, first performed about 429 B. C. It should be required reading for every college Freshman. As had been prophesied, Oedipus unknowingly kills his father, Laius, a...

History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides, is an account of a war that happened centuries ago between Athenas and Sparta. Of course, you might think that the subject is trivial to you. After all, how important can a book like that be?...

Essestially an inquiry into morality, Republic is the central work of the Western world's most famous philosopher. Containing crucial arguments and insights into many other areas of philosophy, it is also a literary masterpiece: the philoso...

It has been said that, after the Bible, Plato's dialogues are the most influential books in Western culture. And of the dialogues, the Symposium is the most delightful and accessible, requiring no special knowledge of ancient Greek philosop...

The Oxford Translation of Aristotle was originally published in 12 volumes between 1912 and 1954. It is universally recognized as the standard English version of Aristotle. The first volume of Aristotle's complete works will give any An...

There has never been a writer of mathematics as successful as Euclid. For well over 2000 years the work that Euclid did in compiling The Elements has been the crowning achievement of geometry and it has only been in the twentieth century th...

Duty, friendship, the training of a statesman and the importance of moral integrity in the search for happiness are reflected upon. This volume brings together his tentative and undogmatic reflections on the good life, in which he discus...