Reading list
The Greek classics: epics, tragedies and philosophy
Almost every form we still use began in Greece in about four hundred years: the epic, tragedy, comedy, history and philosophy. The surprise for most first-time readers is how direct these books are. Odysseus is homesick and Antigone is furious, and Socrates is often very funny.
20 books, all free to read
The plays are short, an hour or so each. The epics are long but episodic, and they were made to be heard, so they also work well read aloud.
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1. The Odyssey
by Homer
Ten years of trying to get home: monsters, goddesses, a disguised king and the suitors in his hall. Start here.
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2. The Iliad
by Homer
A few weeks of the Trojan War and the rage of Achilles. Brutal, and moving at the end.
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3. Oedipus Rex
by Sophocles
A king investigates a murder and finds himself. The most perfectly built tragedy ever written.
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4. Antigone
by Sophocles
A sister buries her brother against the king's order. Conscience against the state, in an hour.
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5. Agamemnon
by Aeschylus
The king comes home from Troy and his wife is waiting. Aeschylus's great tragedy of revenge.
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6. The Libation Bearers
by Aeschylus
The second play of the trilogy: the son returns to avenge his father.
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8. Dialogues with the Apology and the Symposium
by Plato
Socrates on trial, at a drinking party about love, and facing death.
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11. Histories
by Herodotus
The Persian wars and the wonders of the world as Herodotus heard them. History's first book, and full of stories.
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12. History of the Peloponnesian War
by Thucydides
Athens against Sparta, with Pericles' funeral speech and the Melian dialogue.
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13. Oedipus at Colonus
by Sophocles
Old, blind Oedipus finds a place to die. Sophocles wrote it near the end of his own life.
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15. The Birds
by Aristophanes
Aristophanes's comedy of two Athenians who found a city of birds. Still funny.
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16. Anabasis
by Xenophon
Ten thousand Greek soldiers stranded in Persia fight their way home. Xenophon was there.
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19. Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
by Plutarch
Plutarch's lives of the great Greeks and Romans, side by side.
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20. Ajax
by Sophocles
The great warrior Ajax, shamed, and Sophocles's study of what that does to a man.
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Read them free
Every book on this list is free in Doomreader: open one and it reads as short posts you scroll, with your place kept and its best pages a tap away. You can listen to any of them free too, read aloud by your device.