Could you elaborate a little bit about what you think gives it these qualities? I've dabbled in some classical literature before but I've always found them to be very difficult reads, so I rarely have the motivation to finish them. I am wondering if there is something I am missing about the genre.
Sometimes it seems like everything from the Greek and Roman era is known and has been processed by historians and, furthermore, doesn’t have really anything to provide us in the present day.
My experiences with ancient texts makes me realize that there are so many remaining mysteries (that can be illuminated!), so much material that has never been “processed” by historians or philosophers, and so much that can be useful for the present day.
I’m working on an English translation for Marsilio Ficino’s 1497 publication of “De Mysteriis” — which includes 13 tracts, including Ficino’s own “Philosophy of Pleasure.”
Marsilio Ficino was hugely influential in the 1460s-1500 Florentine Renaissance because he was hired by the Medici’s to translate the old Greek classics (Plato, Plotinus, Hermetica, etc). He helped classical ideas spark the renaissance! So the fact that his own book has never been translated is mindblowing — I get to see where I can contribute.
But then in his actual book, I learn that it was fairly common to conceive of the soul, gods, demons etc as entities in the world of Nous or mind. Yet, he specifically says that the soul does not feel and that gods do not feel. That’s weird! Often times people associate soul with “the feeling part.” But there were multiple perspectives on this!
How does this relate to the present? We typically associate intellect and mind with consciousness— yet now AI developments force us to consider mind or intelligence without conscious experience. So, it gives a genuinely interesting framework for understanding “noetic reality” — the unconscious mathematical world of forms and information that seemingly preexists the material cosmos (ie perfect triangles or spheres can be conceived as a part of math that are eternal and timeless).
So that’s just one example but there are a lot of them I could share. Particularly as they relate to history of science and ideas — but also fascinating social phenomena — like how hard the Roman’s came down on the Bacchae — or how important the Oracle of Delphi was to Greek colonization — etc etc.
We are usually not aware of the degree in which Classical and Medieval thought provided the foundations of our modern world. For example, the concept that the universe can be studied by human reason and described with mathematics started as a philosophical/religious idea.
If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend that you check out “The Light Ages” by Seb Falk.
Homer and Ovid are pretty good for starter. Metamorphoses is really nice book with lot of stories woven together.
My favorite quote:
> Yet world was not complete.
> It lacked a creature that had hints of heaven
> And hopes to rule the earth. So man was made.
> Whether He who made all things aimed at the best,
> Creating man from his own living fluid,
> Or if earth, lately fallen through heaven's aether,
> Took an immortal image from the skies,
> Held it in clay which son of Iapetus
> Mixed with the spray of brightly running waters —
> It had a godlike figure and was man.
> While other beasts, heads bent, stared at wild earth,
> The new creation gazed into blue sky;
> Then careless things took shape, change followed change
> And with it unknown species of mankind.
Part of why a lot of readers have found this literature to be inexhaustible is, I think, its surprising combination of familiarity (since it's had so much influence on subsequent Western culture) and foreignness. For example, consider the career of the term "hero," which seems to have meant something like a warrior-aristocrat in Homer, and later, in Greek tragedy, takes on the moral grandeur that we meet with in characters like Oedipus, but somehow also is used to describe the boxer Kleomedes, who massacred dozens of kids because he was upset over losing a match.
When I first started reading classical literature I was struck by an idea I found in Bruno Snell's The Discovery of the Mind, that Homer, apart from having no words corresponding to our "mind" or "soul," didn't even refer to the body as a single whole--more as a collection of limbs. The article here talks about this: https://intertheory.org/torrente.htm .
None of this makes ancient literature easier to read, though, unfortunately.
Could you elaborate a little bit about what you think gives it these qualities? I've dabbled in some classical literature before but I've always found them to be very difficult reads, so I rarely have the motivation to finish them. I am wondering if there is something I am missing about the genre.