Ancient Classics

The multi-award winning SmartPass full-cast, unabridged performance with comprehensive commentary and analysis for any student to fully understand and appreciate the play.

Livy continues his magnificent epic, with Rome in complete ruin after the Gallic invasion and sack of the city in 310 B.C. Led by Camillus, one of Rome's great heroic patricians, the city regains her self-confidence and once more becomes the leader of the Latin people. Painstakingly rebuilding alliances, forging friendships, cementing relations among her own people, and fighting endless wars, Rome soon becomes the dominant power among the fractious Italic tribes on the Latin plain.

After a century of civil strife in Rome and Italy, the poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid to honor the emperor Augustus by praising Aeneas, Augustus's legendary ancestor. As a patriotic epic imitating Homer, The Aeneid also set out to provide Rome with a literature equal to that of Greece.

Faust is a tragic play in two parts that reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant but disillusioned scholar who makes a deal with the devil. it is widely considered to be Goethe's masterpiece and the greatest work of German literature. The novel Elective Affinities is the story of Eduard and Charlotte, an aristocratic couple enjoying an idyllic but rather dull life on their rural estate. They invite the Captain, Eduard's childhood friend, and Ottilie, the orphaned niece of Charlotte, to live with them, with tragic results.

Pindar was one of the greatest lyric poets of ancient Greece. He is best known today for his odes to the victors of athletic contests, including those at famed Olympia. These odes, the only complete surviving pieces by Pindar, are marvels of sustained imagination, packed with dense parallels between the athletic victor, his illustrious aristocratic ancestors, and the myths of Olympian gods and heroes like Jason, Heracles, and Perseus.

Virgil's Georgics ranks as one of the most precious pastoral poems ever written, and it has served as a model for its type ever since. Georgics means "of or relating to agriculture or rural life" and it comes from the Greek word, "georgicus". Virgil's main theme in this, his second great work after The Eclogues, was the importance of peace both in the spiritual and physical sense.

The ancient Romans have one of the richest collections of myths of all the early civilizations. In this book you can discover all the most important Roman gods, important Roman myths, the history of Rome, and much more.

A must-listen classic! The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the timeless story of what happens when a daring mariner ventures into Antarctic waters. When the storm approaches, adventure begins. Experience this epic tale like you've never heard it before with crisp, gripping narration!

Three tales from The Canterbury Tales, read in the original Middle English by Richard Bebb under the direction of Britain's foremost Chaucer scholar, Derek Brewer.

In Stephen Mitchell's The Iliad, the epic story resounds again across 2,700 years, as if the lifeblood of its heroes Achilles and Patroclus, Hector, and Priam flows in every word. And we are there with them, amid the horror and ecstasy of war, carried along by a poetry that lifts even the most devastating human events into the realm of the beautiful. Mitchell's The Iliad is the first translation based on the work of the preeminent Homeric scholar Martin L. West.

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.

Walt Whitman said, "...poetry is the voice of the nation, expressing its deepest concerns, ambitions and longings," which is certainly true of the great classic poetry of America. This wide-ranging anthology, from the earliest poets of the 16th century to the present day, reflects the changing preoccupations and visions of Americans, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, E.E. Cummings, and more.

Many stories have stood the test of time, but this selection have entranced audiences for thousands of years and remain as fresh today as they were when first told. A fascinating collection which gives vivid insights into lives in ancient times and the issues that occupied the people of the day.

The Lower Depths, also titled At the Bottom, is a 1902 play by the Russian author and playwright Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). This work portrays a group of wretched, impoverished outcasts living in a shelter near the Volga River. They play cards and tell stories, and are briefly uplifted by a new resident called Luca who gives them hope. When he goes off, the illusion of hope collapses, and the result is murder and suicide.

This is a full-cast, unabridged performance with comprehensive commentary and analysis, enabling any student 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.

Veinte años tardará Ulises, el rey de Ítaca, en volver a su patria. Luego de luchar en la guerra de Troya por diez años, siendo uno de los héroes, Ulises emprende el regreso a su tierra natal. Pero una ofensa al dios Poseidón lo alejará de su camino por otros diez años, siendo condenado a navegar sin rumbo y a vivir las más extrañas aventuras y vicisitudes en el camino. Así, en su retorno a Ítaca, Ulises desafiará monstruos y tempestades, se enfrentará a encantamientos y a las seductoras sirenas, sobreponiéndose al designio de los dioses, en su intento por volver a su hogar.

Listening to The Satires by Juvenal is to come face to face with the corruption, the debauchery, the waste, the sloth, and the mean-spirited greed of ancient Rome...or is it more like modern times? Indeed, these masterpieces of biting social commentary could easily have been written today about any number of metropolitan areas we are all familiar with.

Enjoy this amazing narration of Robert Frost's poetry, including his most famous poems, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Road Not Taken, among many others.

The focus of the book is on Shakespeare's London, how it influenced his drama, and how he represents it on stage. Taking listeners on an imaginative journey through the city, the book moves both chronologically, from beginning to end of Shakespeare's dramatic career, and geographically, traversing London from west to east.

After Zeus has learned that Prometheus stole his sovereign property, fire, and conveyed it to mankind, he orders Hephaistos, under the direction of Power and Force, to bind his adversary to an arduous crag of most difficult remoteness on the earth. As the Titan responds to this punishment, the reader is inspired with the fire of individual affirmation, devoted indomitably to life and liberty.