Ancient Greek Literature

Agamemnon by Aeschylus

Details the homecoming of Agamemnon, King of Argos, from the Trojan War. Waiting at home for him is his wife, Clytemnestra, who has been planning his murder, partly as revenge for the sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia, and partly because in the ten years of Agamemnon's absence Clytemnestra has entered into an adulterous relationship with Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin and the...

The Frogs by Aristophanes

The story of the god Dionysus, despairing of the state of Athens' tragedians, and allegedly recovering from the disastrous Battle of Arginusae. He travels to Hades to bring Euripides back from the dead. He brings along his slave Xanthias, who is smarter, stronger, more rational, more prudent, and braver than Dionysus. The play opens as Xanthias and Dionysus argue over what kind of...

On the Soul by Aristotle

Aristotle's discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different operations. Thus plants have the capacity for nourishment and reproduction, the minimum that must be possessed by any kind of living organism. Lower animals have, in addition, the powers of sense-perception and self-motion (action). Humans have all...

Medea by Euripides

The old songs will have to change. No more hymns to our faithlessness and deceit. Apollo, god of song, lord of the lyre, never passed on the flame of poetry to us. But if we had that voice, what songs we'd sing of men's failings, and their blame. History is made by women, just as much as men. Medea has been betrayed. Her husband, Jason, has left her for a younger woman. He has...

Theogony by Hesiod

A large-scale synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. It is the first Greek mythical cosmogony. The initial state of the universe is chaos, a dark indefinite void considered as a divine primordial condition from which everything else...

The Iliad by Homer

The epic song of Ilion (Troy), The Iliad recreates a few dramatic weeks near the end of the fabled Trojan War, ending with the funeral of Hector, defender of the doomed city. Through its majestic verses stride the fabled heroes Priam, Hector, Paris, and Aeneas for Troy; Achilles, Ajax, Menelaus, Agamemnon, Patroclus, and Odysseus for the Greeks; and the beautiful Helen, over whom the...

The Grouch by Menander

The play is set in motion by the mischievous Pan, who speaks the prologue and whose personality dominates the play. Pan makes young Sostratos fall in love with a peasant girl he has glimpsed. Sostratos sends his servant to see the girl's father. This ends in violence, as the father is Knemon, a misanthropic farmer who becomes enraged at anyone who ventures onto his land or tries to...

Symposium by Plato

Plato imagines a high-society dinner-party in Athens in 416 BC. The guests - including the comic poet Aristophanes and Plato's mentor Socrates - each deliver a short speech in praise of love. The sequence of dazzling speeches culminates in Socrates' famous account of the views of Diotima, a prophetess who taught him that love is our means of trying to attain goodness, and a brilliant...

Oedipus the King by Sophocles

As is the case in most climactic drama, much of what constitutes the myth of Oedipus takes place before the opening scene of the play. In his youth, Laius was a guest of King Pelops of Elis, and became the tutor of Chrysippus, youngest of the king's sons, in chariot racing. He then violated the sacred laws of hospitality by abducting and raping Chrysippus, who according to some...

Cyropaedia by Xenophon

So you think, Cyrus, that the beauty of any human creature can compel a man to do wrong against his will? Surely if that were the nature of beauty, all men would feel its force alike. See how fire burns all men equally; it is the nature of it so to do; but these flowers of beauty, one man loves them, and another loves them not, nor does every man love the same. For love is voluntary...