Freshman Year

The central work of one of the West's greatest philosophers, The Republic of Plato is a masterpiece of insight and feeling, the finest of the Socratic dialogues, and one of the great books of Western culture. This new translation captures the dramatic realism, poetic beauty, intellectual vitality, and emotional power of Plato at the height of his powers. Deftly weaving three main strands of argument into an artistic whole--the ethical and political, the aesthetic and mystical, and the metaphysical--Plato explores in The Republic the elements of the ideal community, where morality can be achieved in a balance of wisdom, courage, and restraint.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A fluent and accurate new translation of the dialogue that, of all Plato's works, has seemed to speak most directly to the interests of contemporary and analytical philosophers. White's extensive introduction explores the dialogue's central themes, its connection with related discussions in other dialogues, and its implicaiton for the interpretation of Plato's metaphysics.

Sophocles II contains the plays "Ajax," translated by John Moore; "The Women of Trachis," translated by Michael Jameson; "Electra," translated by David Grene; "Philoctetes," translated by David Grene; and "The Trackers," translated by Mark Griffith.

Many years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new translation of the Greek tragedies that would be the ultimate resource for teachers, students, and readers. They succeeded. Under the expert management of eminent classicists David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, those translations combined accuracy, poetic immediacy, and clarity of presentation to render the surviving masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in an English so lively and compelling that they remain the standard translations. The updated third editions of these classic works were designed to ensure that our Greek tragedies remain the leading English-language versions throughout the twenty-first century.

In this highly anticipated third edition, Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most have carefully updated the translations to bring them even closer to the ancient Greek while retaining the vibrancy for which our English versions are famous. This edition also includes brand-new translations of Euripides' Medea, The Children of Heracles, Andromache, and Iphigenia among the Taurians, fragments of lost plays by Aeschylus, and the surviving portion of Sophocles's satyr-drama The Trackers. New introductions for each play offer essential information about its first production, plot, and reception in antiquity and beyond. In addition, each volume includes an introduction to the life and work of its tragedian, as well as notes addressing textual uncertainties and a glossary of names and places mentioned in the plays.

In addition to the new content, the volumes have been reorganized both within and between volumes to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship on the order in which the plays were originally written. The result is a set of handsome paperbacks destined to introduce new generations of readers to these foundational works of Western drama, art, and life.

The Symposium and the Phaedrus are combined here because of their shared theme: a reflection on the nature of erotic love, the love that begins with sexual desire but can transcend that origin and reach even the heights of religious ecstasy. This reflection is carried out explicitly in the speeches and conversations in the dialogues, and implicitly in the dramatic depiction of actions and characters. Thus, the two dialogues deal with a theme of enduring interest and are interesting for both their literary and their philosophical character.

In addition to the introduction, the book contains substantial commentaries and thorough endnotes. Key Greek terms are discussed for readers who are unfamiliar with the language. A special feature is a discussion on the importance of the dramatic and literary aspects of the dialogues for interpreting their philosophical content.

The introductions deal with the nature of the dialogues themselves as philosophical texts and with Plato's philosophical assumptions and key concepts, as well as with the necessary background of Athenian society. The endnotes clarify any ambiguities and obscurities in the original text, identifying all references to people, places, gods, et cetera.

The commentaries are designed to open up the dialogues for the reader, showing the issues that have been debated by commentators and considering some of the responses to them. They are designed to stimulate further reflection.

This is an English translation of Plato account of an important dialogue on the nature of love between Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates and Alcibiades.

Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Plato's immediate audience.

This new edition of Plato's Symposium provides beginning readers and scholars alike with a solid, reliable translation that is both faithful to the original text and accessible to contemporary readers. In addition, the volume offers a number of aids to help the reader make his or her way through this remarkable work:

A concise introduction sets the scene, conveys the tenor of the dialogue, and introduces the reader to the main characters with a gloss on their backgrounds and a comment on their roles in the dialogue. It also provides a list of basic points for readers to keep in mind as they read the work.

A thought-provoking interpretive essay offers reflections on the themes of the dialogue, focusing especially on the dialogue as drama.

A select bibliography points to works, both classic and contemporary, that are especially relevant to readers of the Symposium.

Two appendices consist of a line drawing that depicts the spacial layout and positioning of characters in the Symposium, and a chart that shows the relation of the first six speeches to number, age, parentage and the function of Eros.

A handy where-to-find-it pocket reference companion to Euclid's Elements. Provides all the propositions and diagrams without the detailed proofs. Readers can use it to see the scope and structure of Elements, identify exactly what Euclid covers and what he doesn't, and to find the location of remembered propositions.

M. J. Levett's elegant translation of Plato's Theaetetus, first published in 1928, is here revised by Myles Burnyeat to reflect contemporary standards of accuracy while retaining the style, imagery, and idiomatic speech for which the Levett translation is unparalleled. Bernard William's concise introduction, aimed at undergraduate students, illuminates the powerful argument of this complex dialogue, and illustrates its connections to contemporary metaphysical and epistemological concerns.

This is an English translation of Plato's dialogue concerning the nature of knowledge. In this dialogue, Socrates and Theaetetus discuss three definitions of knowledge: knowledge as nothing but perception, as true judgment and as true judgment with an account.

Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Plato's immediate audience.

The timeless Theban tragedies of Sophocles--Oedipus the Tyrant, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone--have fascinated and moved audiences and readers across the ages with their haunting plots and their unforgettable heroes and heroines. Now, following the best texts faithfully, and translating the key moral, religious, and political terminology of the plays accurately and consistently, Peter J. Ahrensdorf and Thomas L. Pangle allow contemporary readers to study the most literally exact reproductions of precisely what Sophocles wrote, rendered in readily comprehensible English.These translations enable readers to engage the Theban plays of Sophocles in their full, authentic complexity, and to study with precision the plays' profound and enduring human questions. In the preface, notes to the plays, and introductions, Ahrensdorf and Pangle supply critical historical, mythic, and linguistic background information, and highlight the moral, religious, political, philosophic, and psychological questions at the heart of each of the plays. Even readers unfamiliar with Greek drama will find what they need to experience, reflect on, and enjoy these towering works of classical literature.

'The god wanted everything to be good, marred by as little imperfection as possible.'

Timaeus, one of Plato's acknowledged masterpieces, is an attempt to construct the universe and explain its contents by means of as few axioms as possible. The result is a brilliant, bizarre, and surreal cosmos - the product of the rational thinking of a creator god and his astral assistants, and of purely mechanistic causes based on the behaviour of the four elements. At times dazzlingly clear, at times intriguingly opaque, this was state-of-the-art science in the middle of the fourth century BC. The world is presented as a battlefield of forces that are unified only by the will of God, who had to do the best he could with recalcitrant building materials.
The unfinished companion piece, Critias, is the foundational text for the story of Atlantis. It tells how a model society became corrupt, and how a lost race of Athenians defeated the aggression of the invading Atlanteans. This new edition combines the clearest translation yet of these crucial ancient texts with an illuminating introduction and diagrams.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

First published in Plato: Complete Works, Donald J. Zeyl's masterful translation of Timaeus is presented along with his 75 page introductory essay, which discusses points of contemporary interest in the Timaeus, deals at length with long-standing and current issues of interpretation, and provides a consecutive commentary on the work as a whole. Includes an analytic table of contents and a select bibliography.