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Ancient Sources

 ***Here are all of the ancient sources that we have discussed in the podcast; some have been described in great detail, while others only briefly mentioned, but they will all be listed here. And if you haven't, I definitely recommend you read them and not just go off of my (I hope thorough and detailed) descriptions on the podcast. Included will be a link to a free translation online, as well as links to one, or sometime various translations, for purchase on Amazon. It should be noted that they won't be the same. While free translations are great and all, they are usually more literal to the ancient Greek and/or employ a more archaic form of English. The newer, "fresh" translations for purchase are more poetic with modern lingo and thus read better. The "for purchase" links for several works may be led to the same book for purchase, so be advised. Since I am more of a historian than a linguistic/traditional Classicist, I usually haven't been very adventurous in trying out many new translations for several of these authors. So if you have any recommendations, feel free to comment below or send me an email.***


Homer: Iliad (Book, Online) and Odyssey (Book, Online)
Composed sometime during the 8th century BC by a semi-mythical man whom the Greeks called Homer. One of the foremost achievements in "western" literature, The Iliad powerfully tells the story of the darkest episode in the Trojan War. The Odyssey tells of Odysseus’ ten-year wanderings around the Mediterranean after the Trojan War as he sought to make it home and is a timeless human story of moral endurance. Although they describe events that were in the mythical past, the poems actually reflect the 8th century BC world of the Mediterranean; a period of dramatic growth and expansion, a world emerging out of the Dark Ages that followed the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization in the 12th century BC. 


To learn more about Homer, listen to Episode 008 "The Dark Age" and Homer.


Hesiod: Theogony (Book, Online), Works and Days (Book, Online), Catalogue of Women (Online), Shield of Heracles (Online), and Miscellaneous Fragments (Online)

Hesiod flourished around 700 BC. The Theogony deals with the creation of the universe, the primordial gods and goddesses, the Titans, the monsters, the Olympians, and mankind. Works and Days is a farmer's almanac instructing his brother in the agricultural arts and offers extensive moralizing advice on how he should live his life; it also contains a mythical etiology for the toil and pain that define the human condition--the story of Prometheus and Pandora. The Catalogue of Women is attributed to Hesiod, although this is not certain, because it is similar in style to the Theogony. Its subject is the genealogies of the women who bore the heroes and legends of Greek myths. The Shield of Heracles also is insecurely attributed to Hesiod. Its main subject is Heracles' victory over Cygnus, the son of Ares, but the greater part is devoted to describing Heracles' shield. 


To learn more about Hesiod, listen to Episode 012 Oligarchs and Hesiod.


Epic Cycle Fragments (Online)

Composed after Homer by various poets who styled their poems after the great bard. The Iliad detailed only a small part of the 10th year of the war, because Homer’s audience would have already knew the story. Well, these other epic poets wrote down the rest of the story. Thus, the Epic Cycle narrates the full story of the Trojan War, but the works only survive in fragments. Fortunately, the tales are recounted by other later ancient sources. 

To learn more about the Epic Cycle, listen to Episode 018 From Epic to Lyric.


The Homeric Hymns (Book, Book, Online)

A series of thirty-three hymns attached to various deities composed during the 7th and 6th centuries BC. They were erroneously attributed to Homer because they were written in the same style as the Iliad and the Odyssey. The hymns were recited at festivals to honor the Olympian gods and goddesses, and to pray for divine favor or for victory in singing contests. They stand now as works of great poetic force, full of grace and lyricism, and ranging in tone from irony to solemnity, ebullience to grandeur. 



To learn more about the Homeric Hymns, listen to XXX.


Greek Lyric Poetry (Book, Online); Sappho (Online)
Primarily associated with the early 7th to the early 5th centuries BC, the Greek lyric poets produced some of the finest poetry in antiquity. Their poems reflect all the joys and anxieties of their personal lives, as well as the societies in which they lived, as the poems are the product of the political, social, and intellectual culture of the Greek polis. They celebrate athletic victories or achievements by one's polis, praise one's beloved, ridicule a former lover, commemorate the dead, exhort soldiers to valor, offer religious devotion in the forms of hymns, paeans, and dithyrambs, and so forth. The book that is hyperlinked covers all surviving poems and intelligible fragments, apart from the works of Pindar and Bacchylides (these will be in other books in another section below). Poets discussed in the podcast (in chronological order) are Archilochus, Alcman, Tyrtaeus, Semonides, Sappho, Alcaeus, Stesichorus, Solon, Theognis, Hipponax, Anacreon, Ibycus, and Simonides.

To learn more about the Greek lyric poets, listen to Episode 018 From Epic to Lyric, Episode 019 Poets and Wise Rulers, and Episode 045 Music and Victory Odes.


Aesop's Fables (Book, Online)

A Collection of 725 fables that were attributed to a semi-mythical man named Aesop, who was probably a prisoner of war sold into slavery in the early 6th century BC on the island of Samos. He represented his masters in court and relied on animal stories to put across his key points. The body of work identified today as Aesop’s Fables was transmitted by a series of authors writing in Greek and ultimately in Latin, with the addition of material from other cultures later. Also what we have today in its final form bears little relation to those that Aesop supposedly originally told. 





To learn more about Aesop, listen to Episode 019 Poets and Wise Rulers.


The Presocratics and Sophists (Book, Book)

Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes. Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Melissus, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Leucippus, Democritus, Diogenes

Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Antiphon, Thrasymachus










Herodotus' Histories (Book, Book, Online)

XXX









To learn more about Herodotus, listen to Episode 030 Herodotus and the Rise of Persia.

Victory Odes: Pindar (Book, Online) and Bacchylides (Book, Online)

XXX










To learn more about Victory Odes, listen to Episode 045 Music and Victory Odes.


Aeschylus: The Persians (Book, Online), Prometheus Bound (Book, Online), Seven Against Thebes (Book, Online), The Suppliants (Book, Online), The Agamemnon (Book, Online), The Libation Bearers (Book, Online), The Eumenides (Book, Online), and Fragments of Lost Plays (Online) 

XXX












To learn more about Aeschylus, listen to Episode 050 Early Tragedy and Aeschylus.


Sophocles: Antigone (Book, Online), Ajax (Book, Online), Oedipus the King (Book, Online), The Trackers (fragmentary) (Online), The Women of Trachis (Book, Online), Philoctetes (Book, Online), Electra (Book, Online), Oedipus at Colonus (Book, Online)
XXX












To learn more about Sophocles, listen to Episode 051 Sophocles.


Euripides: Cyclops (Book, Online), Rhesus (Book, Online), Alcestis (Book, Online), Medea (Book, Online), Hippolytus (Book, Online), Heracleidae (Book, Online), Andromache (Book, Online), Hecuba (Book, Online), The Suppliants (Book, Online), Electra (Book, Online), Madness of Herakles (Book, Online), Trojan Women (Book, Online), Iphigenia in Tauris (Book, Online), Ion (Book, Online), Helen (Book, Online), Phoenician Women (Book, Online), Orestes (Book, Online), Iphigenia at Aulis (Book, Online), and Bacchae (Book, Online)

To learn more about Euripides, listen to Episode 052 Early Euripides and Episode 053 Euripides at War.


Aristophanes: Acharnians (Book, Online), Knights (Book, Online), Clouds (Book, Online), Wasps (Book, Online), Peace (Book, Online), Birds (Book, Online), Thesmophoriazusae (Book, Online), Lysistrata (Book, Online), Frogs (Book, Online), Ecclesiazusae (Book, Online), and Wealth (Book, Online)

To learn more about Aristophanes, listen to Episode 054 Old Comedy and Aristophanes.


Hippocratic Corpus: (Book, Online)

To learn more about the Hippocratic School, listen to Episode 078 Healing and Medicine.


Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War: (Book, Book, Online)

To learn more about Thucydides, listen to Episode 088 Thucydides and Periclean Politics.


Constitution of the Spartans by Xenophon
Apology by Plato
Constitution of the Athenians by Aristotle
Politics by Aristotle
Library of History by Diodorus Siculus
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius



Secondary Sources

***Here are the secondary sources that I either used in the making of this podcast or I have read and enjoyed myself. This isn't a complete, exhaustive list of all the books on ancient Greece that I have read, though, but the ones that I believe would be beneficial to the general listener/non-specialist, as well as ones that aren't too pricey. Because, well, a lot of academic books can be very expensive, sadly. Most listed here are usually under $30. I tried not to exceed $50 as a rule of thumb. I did violate my own rule a few times. Oh well. The titles are linked to the specific books on Amazon. You may be able to find a cheaper copy than what is listed by searching for an earlier edition; I usually linked the most recent edition just to keep it consistent, though. Of course, if you want further recommendations on a topic, or if there are any missing sources that you feel like should absolutely be listed, feel free to comment below or send me an email.***


Reference Books:






General Historical Overviews:

















































     






















Military/Chronological:




* Doumas. 2003. Santorini: A Guide to the Island and its Archaeological Treasures.
* Sakellarakis. 2003. Herakleion Museum: Illustrated Guide.
* Michailidou. 2004. Knossos - A Complete Guide to the Palace of Minos.
* Mylonas. 2006. Mycenae - A Guide to its ruins and History.

* Chadwick, John. 1967. The Decipherment of Linear B. Cambridge UP.
* Chadwick, John. 1976. The Mycenaean World. Cambridge UP.
* Drews, Robert. 1988. The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East. Princeton UP.
* McDonald, William and Thomas, Carol. 1990. Progress into the Past: The Rediscovery of Mycenaean Civilization. Indiana UP.
* Castleden, Rodney. 1993. Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete. Routledge.
* Dickinson, Oliver. 1994. The Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge UP.
* Fitton, J. Lesley. 1998. The Discovery of the Greek Bronze Age. Harvard UP.
* Preziosi, Donald. 2000. Aegean Art and Architecture. Oxford UP.
* Field, Nic. 2004. Mycenaean Citadels c. 1350–1200 BC. Osprey Publishing.
* Castleden, Rodney. 2005. The Mycenaeans. Routledge.
* Shelmerdine, Cynthia. 2008. The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age.
* Cline, Eric. 2010. The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean.
* D'Amato, Raffaele and Salimbeti, Andrea. 2011. Bronze Age Greek Warrior 1600–1100 BC. Osprey Publishing.
* D'Amato, Raffaele and Salimbeti, Andrea. 2013. Early Aegean Warrior 5000–1450 BC. Osprey Publishing.




* Drews, Robert. 1993. The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. Princeton UP.
* Fields, Nic. 2004. Troy C. 1700-1250 BC. Osprey Publishing.
* Strauss, Barry. 2007. The Trojan War: A New History. Simon & Schuster.
* Beckman, Bryce, and Cline. 2011. The Ahhiyawa Texts. 
* Cline, Eric. 2013. The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP.
* Wood, Adrian. 2013. Warships of the Ancient World: 3000–500 BC. Osprey Publishing.
* Cline, Eric. 2015. 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Princeton UP.
* D'Amato, Raffaele and Salimbeti, Andrea. 2015. Sea Peoples of the Bronze Age Mediterranean c.1400 BC–1000 BC. Osprey Publishing.











































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