If you had to choose *four* major works to read for Ancients, what would they be?

[Janie]

I have to turn in a book list for next year, am swamped with the right-now end-of-the-year stuff, and currently developing two new classes for next year (Ancients, ninth grade and a upper school US history). So, I'd love to hear your suggestions for just *four* major works for rhetoric-level ancients.

 

I definitely want to do Iliad and The Odyssey for the Greeks. Thinking about The Aeneid (Romans), but at a loss for Ancient Egypt. I will be doing some form of Gilgamesh (suggestions?).

 

So, all you book people, talk to me! What would you suggest?

 

Thanks!

[Faithr]

Well, we didn't read major works for the Egyptians. We did 6 major works: Book of Job, Epic of Gilgamesh, Iliad, Odyssey, The Aeneid and we also read a retelling of Julius Caesars Gallic Wars. We also threw in Antigone.

[Ester Maria]

I would limit myself to one Homeric epic (and personally I would choose Odyssey, though you may go with either) and from the Greeks I would also pick one tragedy (probably one of the "typical" choices, Oedipus Rex or Antigone). From the Romans I would pick Aeneid and/or Ovid's Metamorphoses.

[WishboneDawn]

I have to turn in a book list for next year, am swamped with the right-now end-of-the-year stuff, and currently developing two new classes for next year (Ancients, ninth grade and a upper school US history). So, I'd love to hear your suggestions for just *four* major works for rhetoric-level ancients.

 

I definitely want to do Iliad and The Odyssey for the Greeks. Thinking about The Aeneid (Romans), but at a loss for Ancient Egypt. I will be doing some form of Gilgamesh (suggestions?).

 

So, all you book people, talk to me! What would you suggest?

 

Thanks!

 

I would definitely put Ovid's Metamorphoses in there somewhere. Yes The Aeneid gives you the pivotal Roman piece but Ovid is like the flip side to all that stuffy stuff and so much darn fun.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I have to turn in a book list for next year, am swamped with the right-now end-of-the-year stuff, and currently developing two new classes for next year (Ancients, ninth grade and a upper school US history). So, I'd love to hear your suggestions for just *four* major works for rhetoric-level ancients.

 

I definitely want to do Iliad and The Odyssey for the Greeks. Thinking about The Aeneid (Romans), but at a loss for Ancient Egypt. I will be doing some form of Gilgamesh (suggestions?).

 

So, all you book people, talk to me! What would you suggest?

 

Thanks!

 

Are you looking only for works from that culture? Because for ancient Egypt, I really enjoyed Red Land, Black Land by Barbara Mertz. She is the Egyptologist who wrote the Amelia Peabody mysteries under the name Elizabeth Peters.

 

I thought the book was very readable and highlighted why we think certain things are true as well as where controversy and uncertainty lays. It was a well written and interesting example of a popular history.

[Brigid in NC]

If you are only choosing four, I would limit yourself to one Homer, not two. So:

 

• The Odyssey
  
• The Aeneid
  
• Oedipus Rex or Medea
  
• Epic of Gilgamesh
  

 

:)

[emubird]

After having recently read The Odyssey, The Iliad, and The Aeneid (well, I'm stuck halfway on The Aeneid), I'd vote for doing just The Odyssey. The Aeneid mostly seems to be interesting for how it retells the first two. It does have some original stuff (the Dido incident in particular), and the contrast between the Greek original and the Roman retelling is somewhat intellectually interesting, but if you're trying to limit your choices, I'd pick only one of the three. (And maybe do a children's retelling of the other two to get the basic story -- Sutcliff did good ones: The Wanderings of Odysseus and Black Ships Before Troy.)

 

Or you could do The Odyssey and then read the select chapters of The Aeneid that cover things not in the Greek ones -- the chapters on the sack of Troy (which includes the Trojan horse story which is not in the Greek ones) and the chapter on Dido.

 

Whichever ones of these you do, though, it's worth listening to the Teaching Company lectures on all 3 (by Elizabeth Vandiver) even if you don't read them all. She tells enough of the story that you'll understand what she's talking about, but her insights into the culture and the literature are invaluable. (We got them at the library -- and through interlibrary loan -- so the cost wasn't a factor.)

 

Definitely do Gilgamesh. It's a good contrast to other ancient literature, and it's short. (We did the Stephen Mitchell version, but I can't speak as to what's "best". That one just seemed readable and was available.) Another book that is interesting (and somewhat related) is Noah's Flood (Ryan and Pitman) about the theory that the flood was a memory from the time when the Black Sea was formed.

 

Of the Greek plays, we did Medea, Antigone, and Oedipus Rex. We watched productions of the first two. We were most impressed with the Antigone production with Juliet Stevenson in the title role.

 

We read a bit of The Republic. It's interesting, but we didn't have time to do the whole thing. There might be other Plato that would work well as "selections from".

 

In the Bible we did Job, Genesis, and Exodus.

 

You might want to try doing some excerpts rather than whole books. You could fit more in that way. Some Greek poetry might be interesting. We've always meant to do some Herodotus or Thucydides, but they're just so huge. I would have liked someone to pick out just a few bits to read that would give us the flavor. (Once again, Vandiver's lectures on Herodotus are pretty interesting.) There are also some Roman historians that it might be interesting to read selections of.

 

For the Romans, we also watched I,Claudius. It's a bit bloody, but my kids did learn a lot. (They learned a lot from HBO Rome as well, but got a bit sick of the sex and violence. And I had a lot of trouble taking it seriously because the guy who played Octavian reminded me of Doogie Howser.)

[Heather in VA]

If I could only choose 4, I'd have to include Herodotus' Histories in there. There is a whole section on Egypt as well as it being a major historical work of the whole ancient times.

 

Just a word on Ovid... My daughter is currently reading it and she's enjoying it. However, it has incest, rape and other explicit sexual references. I know that can be a problem for some, so I thought I'd mention it.

 

Heather

[Janie]

Will you share your reasons, please?

 

Thanks!

[Brigid in NC]

Will you share your reasons, please?

 

Thanks!

 

My reasoning for recommending only The Odyssey was because the book list question was limited to four books. I just wouldn't want to dedicate 50% of Ancient reading to one writer. :) The Illiad and The Odyssey are very different tales, so it is definitely worthwhile to read both! But if the book list were limited to four, I would choose only one Homer.

[FaithManor]

Epic of Gilgamesh, Illiad/Odyssey - I never considered them two, always lumped together - Plato's Republic, and Plutarch's Lives of the Romans. However, if I had to limit it, I guess I'd go with the Odyssey and skip the Illiad or have my student read a synopsis of the Illiad. The Odyssey is more engaging, or at least that's how I feel.

 

Faith

[Ester Maria]

Will you share your reasons, please?

 

Thanks!

Because you limited the list to four works.

 

Normally, Iliad and Odyssey are studied together; so are Oedipus Rex, Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus studied as one meaningful unit; in addition to that one certainly adds in one comedy (something by Aristophanes) and at least one more tragedy (usually Prometheus Bound or Medea); of course, one goes through Hesiod at least in parts; one studies a mishmash of lyric poetry; then one ties that to History and opens up for historians and philosophers too...

 

But all of that, if we are speaking of a fairly intense course. If you limit me to 2 works for Greece (i.e. 4 for all of Ancients) and I am forced to choose between all that, I do one Homeric epic and one tragedy, as the most representative and well-known pieces.

[flyingiguana]

I felt I learned more about Greek culture from the Odyssey. That's why I'd choose that one over the Iliad. We see different classes of people (soldiers, sailors, farmers, beggars, kings, princesses, nurses, etc) and there are more women in The Odyssey that aren't just mute pawns (I'm not counting the goddesses). We do get to see a few Trojan women in the Iliad and how they respond to the war, but I still feel the Odyssey just covered a broader spectrum.

 

I'd also choose The Odyssey over the Aeneid for the same reasons - I just felt I got a better sense of the society. The Aeneid strikes me as a fantasy tale that was made up by an urbane Roman while the Iliad and Odyssey (I hope) have more grounding in the culture they are about. That may be why the Homeric epics seem a lot richer to me.

 

You could do selections instead of full books. You might fit more in that way and get a better feeling for all the literature of a culture. (And you could watch a Greek play instead of reading if you needed to save time to fit more in.)

 

If you're looking to branch out from literature, you might also be interested in reading Women's Work: the First 20,000 Years (Barber). It's all about the development of textiles and is a fairly fascinating accompaniment to the story of Penelope and her weaving (along with a lot of other info).