Ancient Classics

The Apology of Socrates, written by Plato, is a Socratic dialogue of the speech of legal self-defense which Socrates spoke at his trial for impiety and corruption in 399 BC. Specifically, the Apology of Socrates is a defense against the charges of "corrupting the youth" and "not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other daimonia that are novel" to Athens.

When this groundbreaking serialized dramatization premiered on 320 U.S. radio stations, critics were unanimous in their praise. It won numerous honors including the George Foster Peabody Award and the Pulitzer Prize for broadcasting. Never before or since has such an ambitious undertaking been attempted in public radio, and it was accomplished, not by a major network, but by a small nonprofit independent producer in Chicago. That was in 1981. It has been sitting on the shelf ever since.

Mirabai was a Rajput princess born to the Rathore clan in 1498 in Kudaki, Rajasthan, in northern India. Despite being one of the most significant saints in the Bhakti tradition and an immensely popular Hindu mystic and religious poet, very few facts are actually known about her life including her date of birth. It is clear that her mother died when she was very young and she was greatly influenced by her father, also a worshipper of Krishna. From a young age, Mirabai’s devotion to Krishna was absolute surrender and complete devotion.

Faust is a tragic play in two parts that reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant but disillusioned scholar who makes a deal with the devil. it is widely considered to be Goethe's masterpiece and the greatest work of German literature. The novel Elective Affinities is the story of Eduard and Charlotte, an aristocratic couple enjoying an idyllic but rather dull life on their rural estate. They invite the Captain, Eduard's childhood friend, and Ottilie, the orphaned niece of Charlotte, to live with them, with tragic results.

The Iliad, together with The Odyssey, is one of two ancient Greek epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer. The work is commonly dated to the 8th or 7th century BC, and many scholars believe it is the oldest extant work of literature in the Greek language, making it the first work of European literature. The story concerns events during the 10th and final year in the siege of the city of Troy by the Greeks.

The oldest long poem in Old English, written about AD 1,000, Beowulf tells the story of a great warrior of southern Scandinavia, in both youth and maturity. The monster Grendel terrorizes the Scyldings of Hrothgar's Danish Kingdom until Beowulf defeats him. As a result, he has to face her enraged mother. Beowulf dies after a battle against a fierce dragon.

La Ilíada (en griego homérico Ἰλιάς: Iliás; en griego moderno Ιλιάδα: Iliáda; en latín: Ilias) es una epopeya griega, atribuida tradicionalmente a Homero. Compuesta en hexámetros dactílicos, consta de 15,693 versos divididos en 24 cantos o rapsodias. La trama se centra en la cólera de Aquiles y narra los acontecimientos ocurridos durante 51 días en el décimo y último año de la guerra de Troya. El título de la obra deriva del nombre griego de Troya, Ιlión.

After a century of civil strife in Rome and Italy, the poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid to honor the emperor Augustus by praising Aeneas, Augustus's legendary ancestor. As a patriotic epic imitating Homer, The Aeneid also set out to provide Rome with a literature equal to that of Greece.

This audiobook contains the most exciting and essential parts of the Iliad, capturing the final 50 days of the Trojan war and bringing to life ancient men and heroic battles. It provides an integral beginning to the infamous journey of Odysseus. Translated by Stanley Lombardo.

Everyone knows something of Shakespeare's sonnets, even if only in memorable fragments like "the darling buds of May", or "remembrance of things past", or "the marriage of true minds". For centuries these wonderfully crafted, intense lyrics have stood for something valued about youth, love, and the emotional complexities belonging to that time of life. This new recording presents all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets, using the New Cambridge Shakespeare texts.

One of the most significant and popular books in the history of human thought, and China’s earliest philosophical classic, The Dao De Jing has served for millennia as a brilliant guide to living healthily and happily, to treating the Earth with respect, and to understanding our place in the cosmos. Renowned translator J. H. Huang has spent over two decades researching the Dao, resulting in the most accurate translation to date based on the oldest known transcripts of the text.

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is one of the most beautiful and celebrated of all English poems. It is also the precursor of what would become the artistic movement known as Romanticism. In addition to this masterpiece, this recording includes some of Coleridge's finest poems, including the haunting "Kubla Kahn" and "Christabel."

Scritta da Virgilio tra il 29 e il 19 A. C., nei primi anni del regno di Augusto, l'Eneide chiude il ciclo epico degli eroi iniziato da Omero con l'Iliade e l'Odissea. Fu proprio l'imperatore Augusto, il committente dell'opera, a salvarla dalle fiamme, come Virgilio aveva disposto nel suo testamento. Il più importante poema di tutta la latinità narra l'avventuroso arrivo nel Lazio di Enea e dei pochi superstiti dalla distruzione di Troia, ai quali gli dèi hanno affidato il compito di fondare una nuova patria.

The Kalevala is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology. The Kalevala was instrumental in the development of the Finnish national identity and the sense of nationality that led to Finland's independence from Russia in 1917. Beginning with the traditional Finnish creation myth, the Kalevala branches out into stories of the creation of the earth, plants, creatures, and the sky. There are many stories of, romance, kidnapping, seduction, and magical spell casting and singing.

Aristotle's Poetics is best known for its definitions and analyses of tragedy and comedy, but it also applies to truth and beauty as they are manifested in the other arts. In our age, when the natural and social sciences have dominated the quest for truth, it is helpful to consider why Aristotle claimed poetry is more philosophical and more significant than history. Like so many other works by Aristotle, the Poetics has dominated the way we have thought about all forms of dramatic performance in Europe and America ever since.

Civil War Alone Remains is a modern day translation of Cicero's speeches on the Catilinarian Conspiracy. It is designed for the study of rhetoric and Roman history. Along with Cicero's four speeches, this text contains a map, introductions to the conspiracy itself and each speech, and the orations on the conspiracy which were delivered by Julius Caesar and Marcus Cato.

Walt Whitman said, "...poetry is the voice of the nation, expressing its deepest concerns, ambitions and longings," which is certainly true of the great classic poetry of America. This wide-ranging anthology, from the earliest poets of the 16th century to the present day, reflects the changing preoccupations and visions of Americans, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, E.E. Cummings, and more.

The exemplary life of a noble soldier/statesman, a description of ancient Germany, and a discussion of oratory are the subjects of three short masterpieces by the brilliant Roman historian, Tacitus.

In the first century, under Domitian's reign, strange and brutal goings on are nothing new in Rome. Flavia Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, has taken over her father's business as a private informer but she tries to shy away from the brutal, the complicated, and the political—because nothing good comes of any of them. Unfortunately, she's not very good at turning them down. This time a commission shows up on her doorstep—someone is staging brutal murders in some of the most beautiful buildings in Rome, each staging different.

The power and the beauty of The Iliad resound again across 2,700 years in Stephen Mitchell's exciting new translation, as if the lifeblood of its heroes Achilles and Patroclus, Hector and Priam flowed in every word. And we are there with them amid the horror and ecstasy of war, carried along by a poetry that lifts even the most devastating human events into the realm of the beautiful.