Freshman Year

A new modern translation of "The Iliad" that is fast-moving, direct, emphasizes the action of the story, and is especially helpful for those first encountering this classic work.

"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus / and its devastation." For sixty years, that's how Homer has begun the Iliad in English, in Richmond Lattimore's faithful translation--the gold standard for generations of students and general readers.

This long-awaited new edition of Lattimore's Iliad is designed to bring the book into the twenty-first century--while leaving the poem as firmly rooted in ancient Greece as ever. Lattimore's elegant, fluent verses--with their memorably phrased heroic epithets and remarkable fidelity to the Greek--remain unchanged, but classicist Richard Martin has added a wealth of supplementary materials designed to aid new generations of readers. A new introduction sets the poem in the wider context of Greek life, warfare, society, and poetry, while line-by-line notes at the back of the volume offer explanations of unfamiliar terms, information about the Greek gods and heroes, and literary appreciation. A glossary and maps round out the book.

The result is a volume that actively invites readers into Homer's poem, helping them to understand fully the worlds in which he and his heroes lived--and thus enabling them to marvel, as so many have for centuries, at Hektor and Ajax, Paris and Helen, and the devastating rage of Achilleus.

Homer's epic about the horrors and heroism of the final year of the Trojan War is one of Western literature's most enduring and moving tales. Joe Sachs, whose translations are known for being faithful to the original Greek, brings new layers of depth, understanding, and interest to the poem.

Why translate the Iliad? Joe Sachs explains his motivation:

My own reading of the poem has been influenced less by the books and essays that discuss it than by its translators. I have read quite a few, and the variety among them is striking...Once, long ago, I expected that eventually I would find one translation the most satisfying. What I found instead was that it was the very multiplicity of them that was getting me closer to Homer. Felicitous phrases from them all have remained with me, and the way their words move and sound has helped me come to hear, in my inward ear, Homer's voice.

Renowned philosophy professor Joe Sachs taught for thirty years in the Great Books program at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. He has translated Homer's Odyssey (Paul Dry Books, 2014); Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul and On Memory and Recollection, Nicomachean Ethics, and Poetics; and Plato's Theaetetus, Republic, and Socrates and The Sophists.

Tous les mouvements naturels de l'âme sont régis par des lois analogues à celles de la pesanteur matérielle. La grâce seule fait exception. Il faut toujours s'attendre à ce que les choses se passent conformément à la pesanteur, sauf intervention du surnaturel. Deux forces règnent sur l'univers: lumière et pesanteur. Pesanteur. - D'une manière générale, ce qu'on attend des autres est déterminé par les ef-fets de la pesanteur en nous; ce qu'on en reçoit est déterminé par les effets de la pesanteur en eux. Parfois cela coïncide (par hasard), souvent non. Pourquoi est-ce que dès qu'un être humain témoigne qu'il a peu ou beaucoup besoin d'un autre, celui-ci s'éloigne ? Pesanteur...

Thucydides called his account of two decades of war between Athens and Sparta "possession for all time, " and indeed it is the first and still most famous work in the Western historical tradition. Considered essential reading for generals, statesmen, and liberally educated citizens for more than 2,000 years, "The Peloponnesian War" is a mine of military, moral, political, and philosophical wisdom.

This is the abridged version of 1909 edition, often called the "Little Liddell". Simon Wallenberg has enlarged the typeface for easier reading and except for this improvement the publishers have left the original work intact. A Greek-English Lexicon. is the standard lexicographical work of the Ancient Greek language. Based on the earlier Handwörterbuch der griechischen Sprache by the German lexicographer Franz Passow it has served as the basis for all later lexicographical work on the ancient Greek language. No student of Classical Greek or indeed New Testament Greek could possibly be without this Lexicon. Although it is an abridgement of a larger work, it is by no means incomplete and in some respects is a better option than the larger editions. If you study the New Testament Koine Greek, or study Classical Greek, this book will be invaluable to you. The entries are succinct yet informative, and each entry will tell you how a word has been used in different periods of Greek literature. Therefore, if one word has been employed in different uses in Homeric literature, compared to the New Testament, this Lexicon will let you know. This edition of the Liddell and Scott is a comprehensive lexicon of the classical Greek and remains the best lexicon for the New Testament, as the definitions offered in the Little Liddell are so precise you will rarely find them to be wrong. It was edited by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, It is now conventionally referred to as Liddell & Scott. The first editor of the LSJ, Henry George Liddell, was Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and the father of Alice Liddell, the eponymous Alice of the writings of Lewis Carroll.

Meno

by Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

COMPLETE ANCIENT CLASSICS

Meno is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato.

This Dialogue begins abruptly with a question of Meno, who asks, 'whether virtue can be taught.' Socrates replies that he does not as yet know what virtue is, and has never known anyone who did. 'Then he cannot have met Gorgias when he was at Athens.' Yes, Socrates had met him, but he has a bad memory, and has forgotten what Gorgias said. Will Meno tell him his own notion, which is probably not very different from that of Gorgias? 'O yes--nothing easier: there is the virtue of a man, of a woman, of an old man, and of a child; there is a virtue of every age and state of life, all of which may be easily described.'

Socrates reminds Meno that this is only an enumeration of the virtues and not a definition of the notion which is common to them all. In a second attempt Meno defines virtue to be 'the power of command.' But to this, again, exceptions are taken. For there must be a virtue of those who obey, as well as of those who command; and the power of command must be justly or not unjustly exercised. Meno is very ready to admit that justice is virtue: 'Would you say virtue or a virtue, for there are other virtues, such as courage, temperance, and the like; just as round is a figure, and black and white are colours, and yet there are other figures and other colours.

"As one would expect from the team of Brann, Kalkavage and Salem, their edition of Plato's Meno is a fine one. The translation meets their stated goal of remaining 'as faithful as possible to the Greek, while using lively, colloquial English.' Their notes are consistently helpful and will be particularly useful to those readers willing to explore the nuances of Plato's extraordinary prose. Their introduction is clear and compact, and it highlights the most philosophically important themes of the dialogue. One particularly useful feature of this edition is the manner in which it displays the diagrams Socrates draws in order to illustrate his famous 'square within a square.' Instead of relegating them to the notes, it integrates them into the text of the dialogue itself. Readers are able to follow along, and 'watch' Socrates actually construct them." --David Roochnik, Boston University

Translation is an exercise in compromise and this compromise is the one I find easiest to work with; a close study of the text requires consistency and literalness.... The Apostle translations are excellent and deserve to be more widely promoted and used"

--Joshua Hochschild, Wheaton College

Joe Sachs has followed up his brilliant translation of Aristotle's Physics with a new translation of Metaphysics. Sachs's translations bring distinguished new light onto Aristotle's works, which are foundational to history of science. Sachs translates Aristotle with an authenticity that was lost when Aristotle was translated into Latin and abstract Latin words came to stand for concepts Aristotle expressed with phrases in everyday Greek language. When the works began being translated into English, those abstract Latin words or their cognates were used, thus suggesting a level of jargon and abstraction, and in some cases misleading interpretation, which was not Aristotle's language or style. These important new translations open up Aristotle's original thought to readers.

The most precise and authoritative translation of one of the founding works of Western culture, in an edition supported by helpful, effective notes

The Nicomachean Ethics is one of Aristotle's most widely read and influential works. Ideas central to ethics--that happiness is the end of human endeavor, that moral virtue is formed through action and habituation, and that good action requires prudence--found their most powerful proponent in the person medieval scholars simply called "the Philosopher." Drawing on their intimate knowledge of Aristotle's thought, Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins have produced here an English-language translation of the Ethics that is as remarkably faithful to the original as it is graceful in its rendering.

Aristotle is well known for the precision with which he chooses his words, and in this elegant translation his work has found its ideal match. Bartlett and Collins provide copious notes and a glossary providing context and further explanation for students, as well as an introduction and a substantial interpretive essay that sketch central arguments of the work and the seminal place of Aristotle's Ethics in his political philosophy as a whole.

The Nicomachean Ethics has engaged the serious interest of readers across centuries and civilizations--of peoples ancient, medieval, and modern; pagan, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish--and this new edition will take its place as the standard English-language translation.

The second edition of C. D. C. Reeve's translation of Nicomachean Ethics features Bekker numbers in the margins as well as a significantly revised translation that combines accuracy, consistency, and readability and fits seamlessly with the other volumes in the series. Anglophone readers can now read Aristotle's works in a way previously not possible. Sequentially numbered, cross-referenced endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index guides the reader to places where focused discussion of key notions occurs.

Focus Philosophical Library's edition of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is a lucid and useful translation of one of Aristotle's major works for the student of undergraduate philosophy, as well as for the general reader interested in the major works of western civilization. This edition includes notes and a glossary, intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Aristotle's immediate audience.
Focus Philosophical Library books are distinguished by their commitment to faithful, clear, and consistent translations of texts and the rich world part and parcel of those texts.

By its evocation of a real or imaged heroic age, its contrasts of character and its variety of adventure, above all by its sheer narrative power, the Odyssey has won and preserved its place among the greatest tales in the world. It tells of Odysseus' adventurous wanderings as he returns from the long war at Troy to his home in the Greek island of Ithaca, where his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus have been waiting for him for twenty years. He meets a one-eyed giant, Polyphemus the Cyclops; he visits the underworld; he faces the terrible monsters Scylla and Charybdis; he extricates himself from the charms of Circe and Calypso. After these and numerous other legendary encounters he finally reaches home, where, disguised as a beggar, he begins to plan revenge on the suitors who have for years been besieging Penelope and feasting on his own meat and wine with insolent impunity.