Saturday, April 18, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org

Greek

Sacred and philosophical texts from the ancient Greek tradition.

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Texts

Ancient Art and Ritual — Jane HarrisonAncient Art and Ritual by Jane Ellen Harrison — the foundational work connecting Greek art, myth, and religious ritual. Harrison argues that art and ritual share a common origin in the emotions of the prehistoric community, and that Greek drama grew directly from the ritual dances of Dionysus.ArgonauticaThe only complete Hellenistic epic — Apollonius of Rhodes' tale of Jason, the Golden Fleece, and Medea's love rendered with unprecedented psychological depth.Dialogues of Plato — JowettTwenty-three dialogues of Plato in Benjamin Jowett's Oxford translation — the Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Symposium, Gorgias, Meno, Ion, Republic extracts, Timaeus, Theaetetus, Parmenides, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, and others.Eleusinian and Bacchic MysteriesThomas Taylor's foundational exposition of the ancient Greek Mystery rites — the soul's descent into matter, suffering, purification, and return to divine unity.Golden Verses of Pythagoras — FirthThe Golden Verses of Pythagoras and other Pythagorean fragments — the foundational ethical text of the Pythagorean school, with Hierocles' commentary and other fragments. Translated by Florence M. Firth (1904).Greek Popular Religion — NilssonMartin Nilsson's authoritative survey of Greek popular religion — the rural cults, chthonic powers, mystery rites, hero worship, and oracles that lay beneath the Olympian surface. The religion as ordinary Greeks practiced it, not as Homer imagined it.HesiodThe farmer-poet's twin pillars of Greek religion — Works and Days on justice and honest labour, and the Theogony on the genealogy of the gods.Homeric Hymn to AphroditeThe Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite — the goddess of love, subjected to her own power, falls for the mortal Anchises on Mount Ida. Good Works Translation from the Ancient Greek.Homeric Hymn to ApolloThe longest and most celebrated of the Homeric Hymns — the birth of Apollo on Delos and the founding of his oracle at Delphi. Translated from Ancient Greek by the New Tianmu Anglican Church.Homeric Hymn to DemeterThe Homeric Hymn to Demeter — the oldest account of Persephone's abduction and the founding of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Good Works Translation from the Ancient Greek.Homerica — Epic Cycle and Minor Works (Evelyn-White)Homerica — Epic Cycle Fragments and Minor Works in Evelyn-White's translation: the Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Sack of Ilium, The Returns, The Telegony; the Battle of Frogs and Mice; Homeric Fragments; and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. The lost epics of the Greek Epic Cycle.IliadThe foundation stone of Western literature — Homer's epic of the wrath of Achilles and the siege of Troy in twenty-four books.Introduction to Greek ReligionAn introduction to the religious landscape of ancient Greece — its gods, its poets, its mysteries, its philosophers, and the texts that shaped a civilisation's understanding of the divine.Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology — NilssonMartin Nilsson's Sather Lectures arguing that Greek mythology originated in the Mycenaean Bronze Age — that Mycenae, Tiryns, Thebes, and Orchomenos were the real places behind the myths of heroes, and that the collapse of the Mycenaean world in the 12th century BCE crystallized the mythological tradition.Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe — MackenzieDonald Mackenzie's exploration of Minoan and Mycenaean mythology — the pre-Greek religious world of Crete, the Great Mother goddess, the bull cult, and the Bronze Age foundations beneath classical Greek myth.Myths of Greece and Rome — HarrisonJane Harrison's survey of Greek and Roman mythology — the creation myths, the Olympians, the hero cycles, and the mystery cults — by the pioneer of ritual approaches to ancient religion.OdysseyHomer's archetype of every journey narrative — Odysseus's ten-year voyage home through monsters, gods, and the longing the Greeks called nostos.Orphic HymnsEighty-seven ritual hymns to the gods from the Orphic mysteries — the most complete liturgical document from Greco-Roman antiquity.The Dramas of Aeschylus — MorsheadThe complete dramas of Aeschylus in E.D.A. Morshead's Victorian translation — the Oresteia trilogy (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides), Prometheus Bound, The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, and The Suppliants.The Dramas of Euripides — ColeridgeThe complete surviving dramas of Euripides — Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae, The Trojan Women, Hecuba, Electra, Orestes, Iphigenia in Tauris, Iphigenia at Aulis, Helen, Alcestis, The Cyclops, Andromache, Ion, Heracles, The Children of Heracles, The Suppliant Women, Phoenician Women, and Rhesus — in the translation by E.P. Coleridge and others.The Dramas of Sophocles — StorrThe complete surviving dramas of Sophocles in F. Storr's translation — Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Ajax, Electra, Philoctetes, and The Trachiniae. The seven extant plays of the greatest Greek tragedian.The Heroes — Charles KingsleyCharles Kingsley's classic retelling of the Greek hero myths for children — Perseus and the Gorgon, the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece, Theseus and the Minotaur. The Victorian mythological primer that shaped generations of readers.The Homeric Hymns — Evelyn-WhiteThe complete Homeric Hymns — all 33 hymns to the Olympian gods — in Hugh G. Evelyn-White's 1914 translation. To Demeter, Hermes, Aphrodite, Apollo (Delian and Pythian), Dionysus, Ares, Helios, Selene, and all the lesser hymns.The Hymns of Orpheus — Thomas TaylorThe complete Orphic Hymns in Thomas Taylor's 1792 translation, with his extensive philosophical commentary — 87 hymns to Hecate, Zeus, Dionysus, the Sun, and the full Olympian and chthonic pantheon, framed by Taylor's Neoplatonist introduction and notes.
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