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Can you share your 9th graders reading list for Ancients?


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My plan is to do our history a little differently in 9th and 10th, specifically to break up the amount of intense reading in ancients.

 

9th:

1st semester - Ancient Egyptian and Greek

2nd semester - American (civil war - WWI)

 

10th:

1st semester - Ancient Roman

2nd semester - American/World (1920s - modern)

 

For 9th ancients we'll use:

Something short for Egypt (maybe DVDs)

Herodotus Histories (unsure if all or sections) - Landmark edition

Plutarch (selected lives)

Iliad (Lattimore) with TeachComp DVDs

Odyssey (Lattimore if book, other if audio) with TeachComp DVDs

Greek Tragedies vol I (Lattimore) includes Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound, Oedipus the King, and Antigone

Medea - Euripides

 

These two will be completed in philosophy class:

Plato - still deciding which

Aristotle - still deciding

 

For Roman history I'm still debating but will likely include:

 

Something by Livy

Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus

The Aeneid

Meditations by Marucs Aurelius (me likes this very much :D)

Plutarch's Roman Lives (selections)

Something from Cicero

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We're off the map this year. My son is doing English focused around Greek mythology, and history is a student-driven overview of world history. However, I'm happy to share his literature reading list:

 

Mythology, Hamilton

The Odyssey of Homer, Christ

The Odyssey (excerpts), Lombardo translation

The Golden Fleece, Colum

The Iliad (excerpts), Lattimore translation

Antigone, Sophocles

Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare

Metamorphoses (one chapter), Ovid

Pygmalion, Shaw

Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus

Oedipus the King, Sophocles

Lives of the Noble Greeks (excepts), Plutarch

The King Must Die, Renault

The Goddess of Yesterday, Cooney

Troy, Geras

The Trial and Death of Socrates: Four Dialogues, Plato

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Here is our ancient's reading list:

Book of Genesis from the Bible

Epic of Gilgamesh

Book of Job from the Bible

Codes of Hammarubi

Odyssey

Histories: Landmark Herodotus

Aeschylus I

Plutarch's Lives Volume I

Sophocles I ( The Theban Trilogy)

Early History of Rome by Livy

Aenid

12 Caesars

Last Days of Socrates

Julius Caesar by Shakespeare

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We are doing the ancients this year and the reading list pretty much mimics Jenny's above. However, it is coming from the Norton Anthologies in many instances and thus also includes some ancient selections from India, China and the Old Testament.

 

We are watching the Teaching Company's Great World Religions series and doing World History alongside these readings.

 

Assuming we reach our goals, we are trying to put in place a solid foundation for 9th grade and the continuation chronologically, where allusions and references to what we are reading this year will be so great.

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DD read for Ancients last year:

 

The Iliad Homer (translated by Fitzgerald)

The Odyssey Homer (translated by Fitzgerald)

Histories Herodotus

Antigone Sophocles

Oedipus Rex Sophocles

Oedipus on Colonos Sophocles

Electra Euripides

Poetry Sappho

The Aeneid Vergil

Metamorphoses Ovid

The Trial and Death of Socrates Plato

 

Supplementary reading:

 

A Day in Old Athens William S. Davis

A day in Old Rome William S. Davis

Aristotle leads the way Joy Hakim

The Greek Treasure Irving Stone

Everyday things in Ancient Greece C. H. Quennell

The King must die Mary Renault

Famous Men of Rome John Haaren

The buildings of Ancient Rome Helen and Richard Leacroft

 

We also listened to the Teaching Company lectures by Elizabeth Vandiver about the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Greek tragedy and Classical Mythology. I can highly recommend them!

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Let me reach back into the mists of time and see what I can recall. DD was in ancients for 9th grade, but our current 9th grader is in Early Modern History and in order to get the required credit of U.S. History he's specializing in that right now.

 

Hmmmm

 

I know she read Job and then the book of Genesis.

This was followed by the Epic of Gilgamesh

 

She then read through the rest of the Old Testament.

Since I had copies of Herodotus, Josephus, and Theucidyes (sp????), instead of assigning one, I assigned portions of each but tried not to overwhelm her.

 

Illiad and the Odyssey

 

Codes of Hammurabi

 

A neat book I found about cracking the Rosetta Stone - obviously not Ancient Literature and yet, so interesting and informative about Ancient Egyptian history...I wish I could remember the name.

 

Selections from Plutarch, Lives of the Romans

 

Aenid.

 

I think that is all we had time for, but she did read the Gospels and Acts and some more Josephus at the end of the year.

 

She's not around today or I would ask. But, I think I'm pretty close to what I assigned and it will be what ds gets in 11th grade. We got into the WTM cycle a little later for him and so he's not on the typical path. Since I kept the three boys together for history up until this year, that means the 8th grader will be on modern history for 9th grade so I'll probably make that U.S. History intensive enough to get that high school credit in and then he'll be back to ancients for 10th.

 

We've got a mixed up cycle going. :D Oh well, at least they are learning it thoroughly!

 

Faith

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As D is a bit younger, we are in that squishy stage between logic and rhetoric. One day she may appear as an exquisite analyst the next I am left to wonder if aliens replaced my child in the night.

 

So, we are going with the flow. Some items we read, some we read with a greater focus and some we read and more deeply analyze. As the bank of information grows, the process of having her make comparisons, spot issues and elaborate grows. She is also working through the Art of Argument and I can see application of what she is learning.

 

If we wind up with one good attempt at a 3 to 5 page paper this year, I will be happy. In the meantime we are working on developing a strong thesis and taking stabs at supporting it with examples.

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I do not have a high school student, but I have a master's in theatre and spent years studying Greek theatre. Don't forget to read a comedy or two! I really enjoyed Lysistrata. Another good one is The Frogs. Sondheim wrote a musical based on The Frogs. It could make an interesting paper topic to compare the two. Make sure you discuss the satyr play as well. There really aren't any to read, but there is some good information on them. In the competitions, the playwrights generally submitted one of each genre; more of the tragedies have survived, but the comedies are equally as good.

 

I love this time period :)

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These are the works that dds read. They also read other books - nonfiction, historical fiction - but I don't have a list of those typed up.

 

Epic of Gilgamesh

Odyssey (Homer)

Theban Trilogy (Sophocles)

The Oresteia (Aeschylus)

The Histories (Herodotus)

Medea, Bacchae (Euripides)

Birds, Clouds (Aristophanes)

Republic (Plato)

Poetics (Aristotle)

Archimedes

Aeneid (Virgil)

Lives (Plutarch)

Metamorphoses (Ovid)

Annals (Tacitus)

 

We followed TWTM methods: context paper, read WEM/HTRAB, read work taking notes, discuss, write essay. We also used Omni I/IV, Heroes of the City of Man, and a few other books like that to round out our understanding of the works.

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I'm using Biblioplan and got the literature supplement from MFW's ancient study for high school. She is also using two textbooks as spines (BJU and Glencoe).

 

The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Cat of Bubastes

The Gifts of the Jews

The Odyssey

one of the Three Thebian plays (haven't decided yet)

Bullfinch's Greek and Roman Mythology

The Aenid

The Last Days of Socrates

On Obligations

The Confessions

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