Ancient Classics

Here is the multi award-winning SmartPass study guide with and without commentary options. This is a full-cast, unabridged performance, with comprehensive commentary and analysis, enabling students to fully understand and appreciate the play. Judge for yourself whether Lear is "a man more sinned against than sinning" in this moral tale that pits wisdom and age against ambition and youth. Experience and examine the power of Shakespeare's most cruel and violent tragedy.

Antigone, daughter of Jocasta and Oedipus, faces great challenges when she must arrange a formal burial for her brother, Polynices. This rendition of Antigone by Sophocles is of the highest-caliber audio. It's completely unabridged. Enjoy the classic story of Antigone narrated to perfection.

Covering the whole of the ancient Greek experience from its beginnings late in the third millennium BCE to the Roman conquest in 30 BCE, Out of One, Many is an accessible and lively introduction to the Greeks and their ways of living and thinking. In this fresh and witty exploration of the thought, culture, society, and history of the Greeks, Jennifer Roberts traces not only the common values that united them across the seas and the centuries, but also the enormous diversity in their ideas and beliefs.

"L'Art d'aimer" est une œuvre en vers du poète latin Ovide parue autour de l'an 1. Elle se veut une initiation à l'art de l'amour et surtout de la séduction. L'ouvrage est divisé en trois livres. Le premier enseigne aux hommes à séduire les femmes. Le deuxième livre apprend à transformer sa conquête en amour durable. Le dernier livre s'adresse aux femmes, et prodigue les conseils pour séduire et conserver la relation : coiffure, habillement, maquillage, attitudes et jeux d'ombre qui mettent en valeur, y compris pendant l'acte amoureux.

The story of Cyrano, his famous nose, and his undying love for the beautiful Roxanne evokes the spirit and panache of 17th century France.

Do you know that the one-eyed Odin was alcoholic? Or that Loki gave birth to an eight-legged horse? Norse Mythology is complicated, unpredictable, and wonderful. All the stories tell of bravery and strength, loyalty amongst friends and family, and the pursuit of wisdom over power.

The Oresteia is a tragedy in three parts written by Aeschylus in the fifth century BCE. After a decade of warfare, Troy had fallen and Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, returned home. His wife, Queen Clytemnestra, had him killed to avenge the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia, to obtain the crown and to marry her lover Aegisthus. This murder leads to further bloodshed when their son Orestes in turn kills Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. The trilogy consists of Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides.

The ancient Greek poet Hesiod lived around the same time as Homer. He is considered to be an economist and also wrote works on mythology, ancient time-keeping, and farming techniques. The Hesiod Collection includes The Shield of Heracles, Theogony (the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods), and Works and Days (a farmer’s almanac in which Hesiod instructs his brother Perses in the art of agriculture).

"The Twelve Labours of Hercules" are a series of feats ordered by the gods carried out by Heracles, the greatest of the Greek heroes, whose name was later romanised as Hercules. The legend was first written whole, as a fixed cycle of twelve labours, in an epic Greek poem now lost, in about 600BC; as they survive in the original source, the labours are not all recounted in a single place, but must be reassembled from many sources. This short story is a retelling of Hercules' legend with an elegant style that will edify children and adults alike.

Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.

The oldest long poem in Old English, written about AD 1,000, Beowulf tells the story of a great warrior of southern Scandinavia, in both youth and maturity. The monster Grendel terrorizes the Scyldings of Hrothgar's Danish Kingdom until Beowulf defeats him. As a result, he has to face her enraged mother. Beowulf dies after a battle against a fierce dragon.

One for all and all for one! Crossed swords, intrigue, romance, and swashbuckling adventure accompany literature's most famous swordsmen as they set off on an action-packed journey to save nothing less than the throne of France.

Miss Julie is probably the most famous play by the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, one of the founding fathers of naturalistic theater. In this claustrophobic drama, the interplay between social order and individual identity is explored in great detail. At the end the aristocratic Julie, goaded by her manipulative manservant, John, is faced with the ultimate decision: independence or annihilation.

Euripides' classic tragedy in a new verse translation and a new, full cast audio production. After Troy fell to the Greeks, Andromache, the wife of the slain Trojan king Hector, was taken as prize and given to Achilles' son Neoptolemus as his concubine. He treated her kindly, and in the fullness of time she bore him a son. But Neoptolemus went on to take as his wife Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus, but she could bear him no children. Enraged with jealousy, Hermione plots the death of Andromache.

Matthew Arnold praised the Iliad for its "nobility", as has everyone ever since - but ancient critics praised it for its enargeia, its "bright unbearable reality" (the word used when gods come to earth, not in disguise but as themselves). To retrieve the poem's energy, Alice Oswald has stripped away its story, and her account focuses by turns on Homer's extended similes and on the brief 'biographies' of the minor war-dead, most of whom are little more than names, but each of whom lives and dies unforgettably - and unforgotten - in the copiousness of Homer's glance.

Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks is a collection of sentences and quaint sayings from this renowned Puritan. Gathered by Spurgeon from the six-volume set of Brooks' Works, it remains an excellent introduction to both the man and his writing.

The Peloponnesian War drags on and on with no end in sight, and the tough-minded Lysistrata has had enough. Men! - always making stupid decisions that affect everyone. Women's opinions are never listened to. Taking matters into her own hands, Lysistrata convenes a meeting of women from warring city-states across Greece and calls for a sex strike. It's a hard sell, but in the end, it is agreed: They will withhold sex until the war is brought to hasty a close.

Among the finest poets of ancient Greece was Hesiod, a contemporary of Homer, who lived in the eighth century B.C. It is still a matter of dispute whether Homer or Hesiod was the earlier poet, and sometimes whether they were one and the same person! At any rate, Hesiod's incredible poetry serves as a major source for our understanding of Greek mythology, farming practices, time keeping and astronomy. In and of itself, the "Works and Days" is unparalleled in its richness and beauty, easily rivaling Homer.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is what many believe to be the foundation of Western Philosophy. It addresses what is visible and invisible, seen and observed versus intuited and imagined, and what is public versus private and just versus unjust. It also concerns the meaning and importance of education, the state of the soul, the conflict between truth and beauty, animal urges versus higher aspirations, knowledge versus ignorance, and on and on.

As one of the supremely gifted poets of all time, one might expect great things from this collection of poetry by Horace. And these works do not disappoint. The 17 poems of the Epodes cover a variety of topics, including politics, magic, eroticism and food. A product of the turbulent final years of the Roman Republic, the collection is known for its striking depiction of Rome's sociopolitical ills in a time of great upheaval. In the Epistles, Horace reveals himself as a genuine moralist, a subtle observer of life, and a very good writer.