Meme aside, should one really start with the greeks?
>>7793594
You have a finite time on this Earth. I only intend to read the mythology and not touch the rest.
Read what you find interesting.
>>7793603
That's because you're stupid. It amazes me that people like you cannot find, at the very least, some strong entertainment value in many works of Plato.
>>7793607
Plato having "strong entertainment value" is not an argument for reading him, because countless authors also have "strong entertainment value".
most definitely
You don't need to read Hamilton, just jump right into Homer. Most of Mythology is spent just summarizing the works you're going to be reading anyway.
>not reading Aeschylus before Sophocles
>>7793701
agreed t.b.h.
Where does one go after "starting with the Greeks"? What is it meant to start?
>>7793724
It leads to vergil which leads to dante which leads to milton and so on
>>7793607
Actually, it's because I have preferences.
Is it sound to abstain from all literature until I read the Greeks (Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Epicureans, Stoics) then Medieval, then Rationalists and so on until 20th century philosophy or is it too dense? I don't want to /readforplot/.
>>7793594
This is a surprisingly good chart. It's approachable enough to actually be doable, and covers a good deal of the really foundational works. Good job anon.
>>7793594
If you want to read writers whose life work is built upon Hellene foundations, yes. If you read for fun and like mostly random assortments of literature from around the world, then not so much.
>>7793607
>That's because you're stupid
What a stupid statement.
>>7793594
if you really want to read the greeks, use this meme chart anon (but instead of Pope translation go for Lattimore). Also, for where to go next: http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html#chaos
Why don't you just take a foundations of western civilization course in uni? Surely it'd be wiser to trust a classics professor than the opinion of loons on a malaysian claymation bbs. You'd get to read and discuss topics just like this with smart people who know what they're talking about. Is the reason these threads come up is because most of /lit/ is pretentious high schoolers trying to be more mature than their peers by aping knowledge they don't fully understand?
>>7794203
>not self-educating
>>7794203
I'd love to spend thousands of dollars to have some bias pumped into me.
>>7794223
>thousands of dollars
land of the free.
>>7794231
pls save us from ourselves. we are too young of a nation to properly govern.
>>7793594
You should start with whatever interests you.
It's just that invariably whatever interests you will refer to older works. And this goes on and on, all the way down to the oldest you can actually read -- the Greeks. So -- if you want to comprehensively understand anything, starting with the Greeks is a good idea.
But you don't need to. You *can* just dive into whatever you're into.
>>7794223
>bias
Literally everything is biased. Still not worth thousands of dollars.
>>7794235
>nation
>govern
>>7793616
Few authors have an ideas to entertainment ratio as good as Plato's.
Modern ideas come from centuries of layers of revolutions, philosophical treatises, religious movements, social upheavals and so on. When you start with Greeks you strip most of those layers away to the core central ideas. Plato is not only this, he's also a good writer, try the Symposium.
No
>skipping Gilgamesh
>>7794755I'm sorry.
>>7793594
Nah, only read Iliad and Odyssey.
>>7793594
Yes.
>>7793701
I asked this the other day but got no definitive replies — which editions of the Big Three should I get?
