The Moralia

Plutarch's best-known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices. The surviving Lives contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek Life and one Roman Life, as well as four unpaired single Lives. This is Vol I of the work.

Plutarch subsequently named, on becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus ( circa 46 – 120 AD), was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist, known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia. He was born to a prominent family in Chaeronea, Boeotia, a town about twenty miles east of Delphi.

The Histories (also known as The History) of Herodotus is considered the founding work of history in Western literature. Written from the 450s to the 420s BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that were known around the Mediterranean and Western Asia at that time.

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria (modern day Bodrum, Turkey) and lived in the fifth century BC (circa 484 – 425 BC). He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a well-constructed and vivid narrative. The Histories; his masterpiece and the only work he is known to have produced, is a record of his investigation of the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars and includes a wealth of geographical and ethnographical information. Although some of his stories were fanciful, he claimed he was reporting only what had been told to him.

This edition is Volume I.

This edition contains the collected works of Hesiod including Works and Days, The Shield of Heracles, The Theogeny as well as Homer's Hymns, Epigrams and fragments of the Epic Cycle.

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought (he is sometimes identified as the first economist),archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping.

In the Western classical tradition, Homer is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest of ancient Greek epic poets. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.

The writings of Plato are numerous, and most are in the form of dialogues. This edition contains translations of three of his works: "The Apologia," "The Crito" and "The Phædo," all of which have reference to the trial, imprisonment and death of Socrates.

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The Nicomachean Ethics (commonly known as "Ethics") by Aristotle consists of ten books, originally separate scrolls, and is understood to be based on notes from his lectures at the Lyceum, which were either edited by or dedicated to Aristotle's son, Nicomachus. The Nicomachean Ethics is widely considered one of the most important historical philosophical works, and had an important impact upon the European Middle Ages, becoming one of the core works of medieval philosophy. It therefore indirectly became critical in the development of all modern philosophy as well as European law and theology.

Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality, aesthetics, logic, science, politics, and metaphysics.

This Bybliotech version of Thucydides "History of the Peloponnesian War" with unique illustrations has been compiled and optimised for e-readers. It includes an active table of contents for ease of navigation, and ten unique illustrations relevant to the story within.

Thucydides was an Ancient Greek historian and author and his book " History of the Peloponnesian War" recounts the 5th Century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411BC. Based on the style of his text, Thucydides has been called the Father of the school of political realism, which view the relations between nations as based on 'might' rather than 'right'.

This book is part of the Bybliotech series "Texts from Ancient Greece"

PROMETHEUS BOUND and THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES features two dramas attributed to Aeschylus.  Of the two, SEVEN AGAINST THEBES is the older, having first been performed in 467 BC.  It tells of two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, who agree to share the throne of Thebes.  After a year this arrangement breaks down, leading to fratricide and civil war.

In PROMETHEUS BOUND (doubtfully attributed to Aeschylus), the story of the Titan, Prometheus, and his punishments from Zeus are told.

Aeschylus (c. 524 BC – c. 455 BC) was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often recognized as the father of tragedy.  He was born at Eleusis, near Athens, the son of Euphorion. Before he was twenty-five he began to compete for the tragic prize, but did not win a victory for twelve years. He spent two periods of years in Sicily, where he died in 456, killed, it is said, by a tortoise which an eagle dropped on his head. Though a professional writer, he did his share of fighting for his country, and is reported to have taken part in the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea.  Of the seventy or eighty plays which he is said to have written, only seven survive, and the authorship of PROMOTHEUS BOUND is disputed.

The play is set in Troezen, a coastal town in the northeastern Peloponnese. Theseus, the king of Athens, is serving a year's voluntary exile after having murdered a local king and his sons. His illegitimate son Hippolytus, whose mother is the Amazon Hippolyta, has been trained here since childhood by the king of Troezen, Pittheus.
At the opening of the play Aphrodite, Goddess of love, explains that Hippolytus has sworn chastity and refuses to revere her. Instead, he honors the Goddess of the hunt, Artemis. This has led her to initiate a plan of vengeance on Hippolytus. When Hippolytus went to Athens two years previously Aphrodite inspired Phaedra, Hippolytus' stepmother, to fall in love with him.
Hippolytus appears with his followers and shows reverence to a statue of Artemis, a chaste goddess. A servant warns him about his overt disdain for Aphrodite, but Hippolytus refuses to listen to him.
The chorus, consisting of young married women of Troezen, enters and describes how Theseus's wife, Phaedra is not eating or sleeping. Phaedra, sickly, appears with her nurse. After an agonizing discussion, Phaedra finally gives in to her nurse's demands and confesses why she is ill: she loves Hippolytus. The nurse and the chorus are shocked. Phaedra explains that she must starve herself and die with her honor intact. However, the nurse quickly retracts her initial response and tells Phaedra that she has a magical charm to cure her. However, in an aside she reveals different plans.
The nurse tells Hippolytus of Phaedra's desire, after making him swear an oath that he will not tell anyone else. He reacts with a furious, misogynistic tirade on the 'poisonous' nature of women. Because the secret is out, Phaedra believes she is ruined. After making the chorus swear secrecy, she goes inside and hangs herself.
Theseus returns and discovers his wife's dead body. Because the chorus is sworn to secrecy, they cannot tell Theseus why she killed herself. Theseus discovers a letter on Phaedra's body, which asserts that she was raped by Hippolytus. Enraged, Theseus curses his son to death or at least exile. To execute the curse, Theseus calls upon his father, the god Poseidon, who has promised to grant his son three wishes. Hippolytus enters and protests his innocence but cannot tell the truth because of the binding oath that he swore. Taking his wife's letter as proof, Theseus exiles his son.
The chorus sings a lament for Hippolytus.
A messenger enters and describes a gruesome scene to Theseus; as Hippolytus got in his chariot to leave the kingdom, a bull roared out of the sea, frightening his horses, which dashed his chariot among the rocks, dragging Hippolytus behind. Hippolytus seems to be dying. The messenger protests Hippolytus' innocence, but Theseus refuses to believe him.
Theseus is pleased with Hippolytus' suffering until Artemis appears and tells him the truth. She explains that his son was innocent and that it was Phaedra who lied. Although the goddess admonishes Theseus' decision, she ultimately recognizes that the blame falls on Aphrodite. Hippolytus is carried in half alive, and Artemis promises to take revenge on Aphrodite by punishing the next person that Aphrodite loves. Finally, Hippolytus forgives his father, and then he dies.

Protagoras (circa 490 BC – 420 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and is numbered as one of the Sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato credits him with having invented the role of the professional Sophist or teacher of virtue. He is also believed to have created a major controversy during ancient times through his statement that "man is the measure of all things". This idea was revolutionary for the time and contrasted with other philosophical doctrines that claimed the Universe was based on something objective, outside the human influence.

Plato (circa 424 BC – 348 BC) was a philosopher in Classical Greece. He was also a mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.

Aristophanes son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his 40 plays survive virtually complete. These, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and they are used to define the genre. Also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy, Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; Plato singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander contributing to the trial and execution of Socrates although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher. His second play, The Babylonians (now lost), was denounced by the demagogue Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. It is possible that the case was argued in court but details of the trial are not recorded and Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights, the first of many plays that he directed himself. "In my opinion," he says through the Chorus in that play, "the author-director of comedies has the hardest job of all." -wikipedia