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What Hacker News says
- I agree that Russell's book is good, although Will Durant's Story of Philosophy is even better. :-) Of course there's no reason you can't read both.
If you want to read some ancient philosophy directly, Plato's Symposium is a fun start. It is a bunch of guys staying up all night getting drunk and sharing their theories about love. And yet it is philosophy. Of course Socrates gets the last word---sort of. Also don't miss the point that one of the speeches is by Aristophanes, a comedian.
If it's the ancient Greek world that is inspiring you, maybe read Homer or Herodotus. Some quick notes there:
The Iliad - This takes place in the ninth year of the ten-year-long Trojan War. The Greeks are a loose alliance of kings, led by Agamemnon, who have sailed to Troy and are still trying to overcome its defenses. Their best warrior, Achilles, gets mad at Agamemnon and decides to quit fighting, and everything starts to fall apart. The poem is his story, although in many ways it is broader, covering lots of other heroes. So you have simultaneously the "big picture" of the war and the "little picture" of Achilles (plus some other major figures).
Most readers find this book more challenging than the Odyssey, because there is less fun adventure. It can be monotonous. It is chapter after chapter of "And X threw his bronze spear and it struck Y between the teeth and came out the back of his neck, and he fell into the dust and his armor clashed around him." But it may not be a bad monotony. Have you listened to Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Górecki? It is like that. But if you get to the end, and think about Achilles's story, it is so good.
The Odyssey - Now the Trojan War is over, and the heroes are going home. This is about how the Greek hero Odysseus gets lost, and spends another 10 years wandering. It spends some chapters on his wife and just-now-grown-up son, who are fending off the crowd of suitors who want to marry his wife and steal his estate. It follows Odysseus through his wild adventures---the most fun and memorable part of the book. And it tells of how he finally returns and defeats the suitors. (Contrary to what people usually remember, that is actually half the book.)
These books are striking in how opposite they are, and in many ways their style reflects their protagonist. Achilles is simple and straightforward, and the book is too. It has that monotony, and it basically starts at the beginning and plows forward to the end. Odysseus on the other hand is "wily" or "tricky", full of lies and schemes. (He was the inventor of the Trojan Horse.) And the book jumps all over, with flashbacks and stories-within-the-story. Multiple chapters are told by Odysseus himself. Coincidentally they are the most mythical, making you wonder if they are lies too. :-)
Some people even suggest that the first sentence---maybe even the first word---of each poem contains the rest of the story. For the Iliad it is Achilles's μῆνιν: wrath (or maybe sullenness---he is practically a teenager (or was when he came to Troy)). For the Odyssey it's ἄνδρα: the man: Odysseus.
For Homer there are lots of translations. Lattimore is great and close to the Greek, but I find Fitzgerald's to be the most enjoyable. He gives up some precision to get more poetry, and it's like reading to a soundtrack.
The Histories of Herodotus are fun too, but more history than literature. If you get The Landmark Herodotus, the maps and notes help a lot. I would just be aware of what you're reading: ostensibly this is a history of the Persian War, and that is the thread that connects everything together (like Achilles in the Iliad), but Herodotus's main movement is the digression. Chapter 2 is all about Egypt (its history, culture, etc.). Chapter 3 is all about the East. Chapter 4 is all about Scythia. You get the idea. It's like he is trying to catalog everything known or said about the world around him.
Herodotus was part of a "rationalist" movement in ancient Greece, along with the early philosophers. He is one of the first to write in prose instead of poetry. He is called the First Historian in part because he gives his sources. Sometimes he'll give several versions of something, and leave it up to you to decide. But that doesn't mean he is rational by our standards. There are plenty of myths and legends and wild stories. You will need some patience to finish this book, and a guide would help to draw out the gems, but it is pretty wonderful if you're paying attention.
Good luck, and enjoy your reading! :-)
- Infinite Jest
Ulysses
The Selfish Gene
The Histories of Herodotus
Moby-Dick
Gödel, Escher, Bach
- I'm a historian and I recently cited Herodotus in one of my forthcoming papers. Is he reliable? We certainly can't assume so. But the same goes for Thucydides and every other source from the ancient world. It's all about triangulating between different sources rather than relying on any one account.
In my case, Herodotus was describing a Scythian practice (the use of cannabis) that we've been able to corroborate, in its broad outlines, using archaeological finds, which to my mind makes it reliable enough to use.
If anyone's interested, this is a quote from the paper, which is a work in progress and not published yet: When Herodotus described the purification practices of Scythians following elite burials, he wrote of a ritual involving the construction of a tent-like enclosure of “wool mats.” At the center of this enclosure, the Scythians threw cannabis onto “red-hot stones, where it smoulders and sends forth such fumes that no Greek vapor-bath could surpass it.” According to Herodotus, “the Scythians howl in their joy at the vapor-bath.” The term Herodotus used here – κάνναβις, or kánnabis – was a loan-word from Old Persian (kanab). From Greek, it made its way largely unchanged into Latin (cannabis) and from thence into the Romance languages and English." [Citing A. D. Godley, trans. The Histories of Herodotus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920), 4.74-6.]
