Ancient, Classical & Medieval Literature

One of the most significant books ever written by a head of state, the Meditations are a collection of philosophical thoughts by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius....

A lean, fleet-footed translation that recaptures Homer’s “nimble gallop” and brings an ancient epic to new life....

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are unquestionably two of the greatest epic masterpieces in Western literature....

The great adventure story tells of Odysseus, a veteran of the Trojan War, who - through a landscape peopled with monsters, sea nymphs, evil enchantresses, and vengeful gods....

Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer’s other great epic―the most revered war poem of all time....

Milton tells the story of man's creation, fall and redemption, "to justify the ways of God to men"....

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide, his ascent of Mount Purgatory and his encounter with his dead love Beatrice, and finally, his arrival in Heaven....

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce....

The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!). These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological, and literary importance....

In this book, for the first time, Philip Freeman brings together the best stories of Celtic mythology....

Seeking to depose his brother Artaxerxes and take his place upon the Persian throne, Cyrus the Younger leads the 10,000 mercenaries on a dangerous campaign deep into the heart of Persia....

Shakespeare's most sophisticated comedy is a riotous tale of hopelessly unrequited passions and mistaken identity....

"150 Most Famous Poems: Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman and Many More" is a timeless anthology that brings together some of the most celebrated and influential poems in the English language.

The Apology of Socrates, written by Plato, is a Socratic dialogue of the speech of legal self-defense which Socrates spoke at his trial for impiety and corruption in 399 BC....

In the hands of Sophocles, the master dramatist, the anguished tale of a man fated to kill his father and marry his mother retains its power to shock and move beyond any Freudian reference....

The tale of the fifth king of the first dynasty of Uruk (in what is modern-day Iraq), who reigned for 126 years, according to the ancient Sumerian list of kings....

When you join Professor Vandiver for this lecture series on the Iliad, you'll come to understand what has enthralled and gripped so many people....

This splendid new translation of essential selections from the Roman Stoic thinker Seneca's On Anger, presented with an enlightening introduction, offers listeners a timeless guide to avoiding and managing anger....

You'll become engrossed in "the romance of the intellect," as Professor Sugrue opens a path for you into the inner structure of these timeless dialogues....

With this stunning modern verse translation, Robert Fagles reintroduces Virgil's Aeneid to a whole new generation....

Wilde's first collection of verse, published in 1881, contains many poems which had already been published individually. Among the 61 poems can be found four major works, "The Garden of Eros", "The Burden of Itys", "Charmides", and "Humanitad"....

Plutarchs's (46-120 A.D.) epic chronicle of the lives of great Grecians and Romans....

Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings....

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics....

The great legacy of The Iliad is itsshattering revelation of what it means to be human in the face of life's uncertainty and fleeting mortality....