Ancient Classics

Among the oldest stories of human civilization, Aesop's fables are a collection of extended proverbs with moral messages attributed to the Greek slave Aesop, who lived in the fifth century BC. Children will delight in these basic human truths represented by talking animals and plants, and adults will marvel at the plainspoken language of these ancient tales.

Iamblichus' famous biography of Pythagoras, which has been republished by the MSAC Philosophy Group. Details the interesting life narrative of the one of the great thinkers in the early Greek world.

When first published, Walker’s versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey attracted attention for the quality of the writing. Multi-award-winning author Gillian Cross makes two of the greatest stories in the world come alive for children in her strong, clear, deceptively simple retellings, which are faithful to the spirit and structure of Homer’s epic poems, and this new bind-up in a friendly format comes complete with an introduction.

By the time Shakespeare came to write Macbeth - almost certainly in 1605/1606 - he had already completed three of the great tragedies with which modern audiences are so familiar: Hamlet (1601), Othello (1603), and King Lear (1605). Each of those plays gives us an eponymous hero who is in some significant way flawed, but for whom we also inevitably feel deep sympathy, whatever his errors or crimes. But in MacBeth, Shakespeare has chosen for his tragic hero a man guilty of the most terrible crime imaginable to a Jacobean audience, that of regicide - the murder of a king.

The Kalevala is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology. The Kalevala was instrumental in the development of the Finnish national identity and the sense of nationality that led to Finland's independence from Russia in 1917. Beginning with the traditional Finnish creation myth, the Kalevala branches out into stories of the creation of the earth, plants, creatures, and the sky. There are many stories of, romance, kidnapping, seduction, and magical spell casting and singing.

Versión en prosa de uno de los clásicos absolutos de la literatura universal: "La Ilíada" de Homero, que narra el rapto de Helena de Troya a manos de Paris y la posterior guerra entre aqueos y troyanos por recuperarla, con la intervención de las diferentes fuerzas de la naturaleza encarnadas por dioses y semidioses. Una lectura capital para todos aquellos aficionados a la Grecia clásica y a la buena literatura.

Here are the most exciting and essential parts of two historic, epic poems: the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey". The ancient words of Homer find a new home in today's world - spoken aloud, just as Homer intended. Translated by Stanley Lombardo.

Compiled by Thucydides, an Athenian historian and general during the Peloponnesian War, The History of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) is considered to be one of the first scholarly historical works ever written.

When sleep was at its deepest, night at its blackest, up from the mist-filled marsh came Grendel stalking. Thus begins the battle between good and evil, for lying in wait and anxious to challenge the ogre Grendel is a young man, strong-willed and fire-hearted. This man is Beowulf, whose heroic dragon-slaying deeds were sung in the courts of Anglo-Saxon England more than a thousand years ago.

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.

为何读史？君从故乡来，应知故乡事。不读史，不知天地之大，不晓人生之难。 读史何用？读史知兴替，以史悟道……為何讀史？君從故鄉來，應知故鄉事。不讀史，不知天地之大，不曉人生之難。 讀史何用？讀史知興替，以史悟道……

Originally meant to be heard rather than read, this great epic returns to the oral form for today's listeners.

An easy-going drama critic discovers that his kind and gentle aunts have a bizarre habit of poisoning gentlemen callers and burying them in the cellar.

One of the supreme masterpieces of world literature, the Homeric saga of the shipwrecks, wanderings, and homecoming of the master tactician Odysseus encompasses a virtual inventory of the themes and attitudes that have shaped Western culture. The tale of Odysseus' encounters with such obstacles as Calypso, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens, and the lotus-eaters, and his dramatic return to Ithaca and his patient wife, Penelope, forms a prototype for all subsequent Western epics.

Cette adaptation permet d'apprécier la légende mythologique du retour d'Ulysse dans son île d'Ithaque et de découvrir toutes les épreuves que Zeus lui imposa après neuf ans de guerre. Elle vous guidera parmi les principaux personnages, dieux ou humains, et les événements et émotions qui les gouvernent.

Homer's masterpiece tells the story of Odysseus, the ideal Greek hero, as he travels home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, a journey of 10 years and countless thrilling adventures. Rich in Greek folklore and myth, featuring gods and goddesses, monsters and sorceresses, The Odyssey has enchanted listeners around the world for thousands of years.

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey, which Jasper Griffin in The New York Times Review of Books hails as "a distinguished achievement." If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey though life.

Lucretius was born in 99 BC, and On the Nature of Things is his only surviving work. His aim was to free the Roman world from its two great terrors - the gods and death. Lucretius argues that the gods are not actively involved in life, so need not be appeased; and that death is the end of everything human - body and soul - and therefore should not be feared. But On the Nature of Things is also a poem of striking imagery, intimate natural observation and touching pathos.

A splash of the sea and the salt in the ocean air signals the beginning of the greatest whaling adventure of all time. This is literature's great voyage. The challenge of a man against the wonders of nature's ocean, of a man against his own weakness and strengths, and of a man against a demon, or perhaps his God, as he searches for his nemesis, the great white whale.

In a magisterial work, Jaan Puhvel unravels the prehistoric Indo-European origins of the traditions of India and Iran, Greece and Rome, of the Celts, Germans, Balts, and Slavs. Utilizing the methodologies of historical linguistics and archaeology, he reconstructs a shared religious, mythological, and cultural heritage. Separate chapters on individual traditions as well as on recurrent themes—god and warrior, king and virgin, fire and water—give life to Comparative Mythology as both a general introduction and a detailed reference.