Saturday, April 18, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org
Classical
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Texts
Aesop's Fables — George Fyler TownsendThe complete Aesop's Fables in the classic English translation by George Fyler Townsend — the Life of Aesop, the Preface, and over 300 fables: The Wolf and the Lamb, The Fox and the Crow, The Tortoise and the Hare, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, and the full corpus of fables attributed to Aesop.Aristotle — On Generation and On the HeavensTwo Aristotelian cosmological treatises — On Generation and Corruption (coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be, the four elements, mixture) and On the Heavens (De Caelo — the celestial spheres, the fifth element, the nature of the cosmos). Oxford Clarendon Press translations.Bulfinch's Mythology — Thomas BulfinchThe definitive popular retelling of Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology — Thomas Bulfinch's Age of Fable, the book that taught America its myths.Cupid and Psyche — Apuleius (Adlington)The tale of Cupid and Psyche — Apuleius's immortal inset story from The Golden Ass, translated by William Adlington. The fairy tale at the heart of the ancient novel: a mortal girl, forbidden love, impossible tasks, and transformation.Eclogues — Virgil (MacKail)The Eclogues of Virgil — ten pastoral poems in J.W. MacKail's translation. The Eclogues introduced the pastoral mode to Latin literature and contain Eclogue IV, the 'Messianic Eclogue' that medieval Christianity read as a prophecy of Christ.Georgics — Virgil (MacKail)The Georgics of Virgil — four books of didactic verse on farming, bees, trees, and cattle in J.W. MacKail's translation. Composed between the Eclogues and the Aeneid, the Georgics are widely considered Virgil's most technically perfect work.Love Books of Ovid — MayThe Love Books of Ovid — the Amores, Ars Amatoria (Art of Love), Remedia Amoris, and Medicamina Faciei Femineae — in J. Lewis May's English translation. Privately printed 1930 with no copyright claimed.Meditations — Marcus Aurelius (Long)The complete Meditations of Marcus Aurelius — the private philosophical notebook of the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, written in Greek during his campaigns. Twelve books of reflections on duty, impermanence, reason, and the life examined. Translated by George Long.Metamorphoses — Ovid (Garth-Dryden)Ovid's grand poem of transformation — from the creation of the world to the deification of Caesar, in the classic verse translation by Dryden, Pope, and other eminent hands.Nicomachean Ethics — Aristotle (Ross)Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics — the foundational text of Western moral philosophy. The doctrine of the mean, the analysis of virtue, the discussion of friendship, pleasure, and eudaimonia (happiness as human flourishing). W.D. Ross's definitive Oxford translation.On the Nature of Things — Lucretius (Leonard)De Rerum Natura — On the Nature of Things — the complete Epicurean philosophical poem of Titus Lucretius Carus, in William Ellery Leonard's English verse translation. Six books on atoms, void, mind, soul, sensation, cosmogony, and the mortality of all things.Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism — CumontFranz Cumont's foundational study of how the mystery religions of the East — Cybele and Attis, Isis and Osiris, Mithras, Ba'al, Sabazius, Adonis — conquered the Roman Empire spiritually before Christianity completed the transformation.Pagan and Christian Creeds — CarpenterEdward Carpenter's comparative study of the pagan mystery religions and their relationship to Christianity — the dying and rising gods, the sacred meal, the virgin birth, the solar mythology — arguing for the deep continuity of religious experience across cultures.Pagan Regeneration — WilloughbyPagan Regeneration by Harold R. Willoughby — a scholarly study of the mystery religions of the Graeco-Roman world as initiatory systems focused on personal regeneration: Eleusinian Mysteries, Dionysiac rites, Cybele and Attis, Isis and Osiris, Mithraism, and the Hermetic and Neoplatonic initiations. Copyright not renewed.Taboo Magic Spirits — BurrissEli Edward Burriss's study of primitive elements in Roman religion — taboo, magic, spirits, demons, divination, and ritual purity in the earliest Roman religious practices, and their survival into classical and late Roman religion.The Aeneid — Virgil (Dryden)Virgil's epic of Aeneas's journey from fallen Troy to the founding of Rome, in John Dryden's celebrated verse translation.The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. I — GibbonVolume I of Edward Gibbon's monumental history of Rome's decline, from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the fall of Constantinople — in Henry Hart Milman's 1845 annotated edition of Gibbon's original 1776–1788 work.The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. II — GibbonVolume II of Edward Gibbon's monumental history of Rome's decline, from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the fall of Constantinople — in Henry Hart Milman's 1845 annotated edition of Gibbon's original 1776–1788 work.The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. III — GibbonVolume III of Edward Gibbon's monumental history of Rome's decline, from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the fall of Constantinople — in Henry Hart Milman's 1845 annotated edition of Gibbon's original 1776–1788 work.The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. IV — GibbonVolume IV of Edward Gibbon's monumental history of Rome's decline, from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the fall of Constantinople — in Henry Hart Milman's 1845 annotated edition of Gibbon's original 1776–1788 work.The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. V — GibbonVolume V of Edward Gibbon's monumental history of Rome's decline, from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the fall of Constantinople — in Henry Hart Milman's 1845 annotated edition of Gibbon's original 1776–1788 work.The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. VI — GibbonVolume VI of Edward Gibbon's monumental history of Rome's decline, from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the fall of Constantinople — in Henry Hart Milman's 1845 annotated edition of Gibbon's original 1776–1788 work.The Enneads — Plotinus (MacKenna)The Six Enneads of Plotinus — the foundational texts of Neoplatonism — in Stephen MacKenna and B.S. Page's complete 1917–1930 translation. 54 tractates organized into six groups of nine, beginning with Porphyry's life of Plotinus. The supreme statement of the Neoplatonic vision: the soul's emanation from and return to the One.The Golden Ass — Apuleius (Adlington)The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) of Lucius Apuleius — the only complete Latin novel to survive from antiquity, in William Adlington's Elizabethan translation of 1566. Eleven books: the misadventures of Lucius transformed into a donkey, the embedded story of Cupid and Psyche, and his redemption by Isis.The Priapeia — Smithers and BurtonThe Priapeia — anonymous classical Latin collection of 115 bawdy epigrams on Priapus, the garden deity, in the complete 1890 bilingual edition by Leonard C. Smithers and Sir Richard Burton. Latin text with English verse (Smithers) and prose (Burton) translations, with scholarly notes.The Religion of Numa — CarterThe Religion of Numa by Jesse Benedict Carter — a scholarly study of early Roman religion before the Greek influence: the indigenous Italian gods, the structure of Roman religious institutions, the flamens and Vestal Virgins, the calendar, and the agricultural and civic rites that formed Rome's original piety.The Satyricon — Petronius (Allinson)The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter — the ancient Roman comic novel. Encolpius and his companions adventure through the underworld of Neronian Rome: Trimalchio's extravagant feast (Cena Trimalchionis), the tale of the Widow of Ephesus, the Dinner at the House of Fortune, and the poem on the Civil War. Alfred Allinson's 1930 translation.The Secret History — Procopius (Atwater)Procopius of Caesarea's Secret History — the scandalous suppressed chronicle of the Byzantine court: Justinian's tyrannies, Theodora's rise from the circus, Belisarius's domestic disasters, and the secret vices of the imperial household. The most explosive document of Byzantine literature.The Sibylline Oracles — TerryThe Sibylline Oracles — twelve books of Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian prophecy in Greek hexameters, purporting to be utterances of the ancient Sibyls. Creation, cosmology, the judgment of nations, the coming Messiah, the destruction of Rome. Milton S. Terry's blank verse translation.The Songs of Bilitis — Louÿs (Bessie)The Songs of Bilitis by Pierre Louÿs — a famous literary hoax and one of the great prose-poetry collections of the fin-de-siècle: 146 lyric poems presented as translations from a newly discovered ancient Greek poetess, Bilitis of Pamphylia, a contemporary of Sappho. Translated by Alvah C. Bessie. Copyright not renewed.The Works of Julius Caesar — McDevitte and BohnThe complete works of Julius Caesar in the parallel 1869 McDevitte and Bohn translation — Gallic Wars (7 books + Hirtius's Book VIII), Civil Wars (3 books), Alexandrian War, and African War. The foundational first-person accounts of Rome's greatest military campaigns.The Works of Lucian — FowlerThe complete works of Lucian of Samosata in the Oxford Fowler translation — Dialogues of the Gods, Dialogues of the Dead, Dialogues of the Sea-Gods, True History, Timon the Misanthrope, The Vision, Menippus, Icaromenippus, Hermotimus, and the complete four-volume corpus of the greatest Greek satirist.The Works of Tacitus — Church and BrodribbThe complete works of Tacitus in Church and Brodribb's 1864–1877 translation — the Annals (the reigns of Tiberius through Nero), the Histories (Year of the Four Emperors through Domitian), Germania, the life of Agricola, and the Dialogue on Oratory. Rome's sharpest historical intelligence.Two Orations of Emperor Julian — TaylorTwo orations of Julian the Apostate (Emperor 361-363 CE) — the last pagan emperor's philosophical defense of the old religion — translated by the Neoplatonist Thomas Taylor.