The March Book Club selection continues the theme of Roman texts. This month features a tragedy by Seneca: Phaedra, which is also sometimes referred to as Hippolytus. It is a treatment of the same myth with which many members will already be familiar, Euripides Hippolytus, so it might be interesting to make comparisons. You can read any translation you like. There is a free online translation by Frank Miller Justus:… Read more
After the gods had seen fit to destroy Asia’s power and Priam’s innocent people, and proud Ilium had fallen, and all of Neptune’s Troy breathed smoke from the soil, we were driven by the gods’ prophecies to search out distant exile, and deserted lands, and we built a fleet below Antandros and the peaks of Phrygian Ida, unsure where fate would carry us, or where we’d be allowed to settle,… Read more
But the god of the trident, who rules the ocean waters, grieved, with a father’s feelings, for the son changed into a swan, the bird of Phaethon, and, hating fierce Achilles, he nursed an excessive anger in his memory. (Ovid Metamorphoses 12.580–584) The Book Club selection for January is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will provide a Roman perspective of some stories and characters we have previously encountered in the ancient… Read more
Welcome to the November session of the Book Club! This month we will be reading selections from Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War: Books 1 and 2. You can find the text on Perseus in a translation by Benjamin Jowett (who also provides a helpful Note on the geography of Thucydides), here: Book 1 Book 2 There is also a translation by Thomas Hobbes: Book 1 Book 2 A translation… Read more
Dear fellow readers Our next Book Club selection takes us to the world of ancient Greek drama, and that most famous and beautiful of women, Helen. There is a new “heroized” version of the play in the Text Library, here, in html or PDF format. This tracks the Core Vocab words that we are familiar with from the HeroesX project and the Sourcebook, and is based on the translation by… Read more