The MouseionΜουσεῖον

Where to read next: six paths, each in a sensible order

• First steps in Greek prose

  Plain, clear prose first, then longer and richer narrative: the usual order of reading after a textbook.

  1. Lysias, On the Murder of EratosthenesA short speech for a murder trial: a vivid story in everyday Attic.
  2. Plato, ApologySocrates' defence speech: simple sentences, much repetition of key words.
  3. Plato, CritoA short conversation in prison, on why Socrates will not escape.
  4. Xenophon, AnabasisAn army's march home from Persia, told in straightforward narrative.
  5. Herodotus, HistoriesThe first history, in the Ionic dialect: longer sentences and many stories.

• Epic from the beginning

  The hexameter tradition: Homer, then Hesiod, then a hymn to a goddess in the same verse.

  1. Homer, IliadThe wrath of Achilles in the tenth year of the Trojan War.
  2. Homer, OdysseyOdysseus' return home, in the same language and metre.
  3. Hesiod, TheogonyThe birth of the gods and the rise of Zeus.
  4. Hesiod, Works and DaysFarming, justice and hard work, in a poet's own voice.
  5. Homeric Hymns, Hymn 2 to DemeterThe Homeric Hymn to Demeter: the goddess searches for her daughter Persephone.

• The Athenian stage

  One play from each of the great dramatists of fifth-century Athens, tragedy first, then comedy.

  1. Aeschylus, AgamemnonThe king's homecoming and murder.
  2. Sophocles, AntigoneA sister buries her brother against the king's order.
  3. Sophocles, Oedipus the KingA king searches for the killer of his predecessor.
  4. Euripides, MedeaMedea's revenge on Jason.
  5. Aristophanes, CloudsA comedy about Socrates and the new learning.

• Philosophy in sequence

  From Socrates to the Stoics: the questions Socrates raised, and how later thinkers took them up.

  1. Plato, ApologySocrates on trial, in Plato's telling.
  2. Plato, RepublicPlato on justice, the soul and the ideal city.
  3. Aristotle, Nicomachean EthicsAristotle on happiness, virtue and friendship.
  4. Epictetus, The HandbookEpictetus' short handbook of Stoic practice.
  5. Epictetus, DiscoursesThe longer classroom talks that the Handbook was drawn from.

• Koine Greek

  The shared Greek of the Hellenistic and Roman world, from the Septuagint to the New Testament.

  1. New Testament, JohnThe Gospel of John: short sentences and a small vocabulary.
  2. Old Testament, GenesisGenesis in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.
  3. New Testament, ActsNarrative, speeches and voyages: the early church spreads through the Roman world.
  4. New Testament, RomansPaul's letter to the Romans: argument rather than story.
  5. Philo Judaeus, On the Creation of the WorldPhilo of Alexandria reads the creation story as philosophy.

• History in Greek

  Five historians over five centuries, each writing in the shadow of the one before.

  1. Herodotus, HistoriesThe Persian Wars and the peoples around them.
  2. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian WarThe war between Athens and Sparta.
  3. Xenophon, HellenicaXenophon continues the story where Thucydides stops.
  4. Polybius, HistoriesHow Rome came to rule the Mediterranean.
  5. Plutarch, PericlesPlutarch's life of Pericles, written in the Roman empire.