Antigone, by Sophocles

Antigone is well known as the play that indicates that the Greeks understood the primacy of natural law over temporal laws enacted by governments.  Antigone is Oedipus’s elder daughter, who after burying her father, wishes to perform the burial rites for her brothers, both killed in the war.  The problem is that her uncle Creon has passed a law that prohibits anyone, from burying Polynices, her elder brother, seen as a traitor who made war against his own city. Antigone disobeys this law, on the grounds that the laws of the gods are more important than the laws of man, and suffers the consequences.  Like the other two plays, the narrative is simple and direct, the characters lifelike.

Oedipus at Colonus, by Sophocles

Of Sophocles’s three Theban plays, this is the one we didn’t read in high school.  It covers the end of Oedipus’s life, years after he has left Thebes, blind, and in shame because of the misfortune he brought to the city.  His two sons are at war over who will be the next king of Thebes, and his two daughters are really the only ones left he can rely on.  Having learned his lesson on how unwise it is to try to cheat fate, he is obedient to the prophecies when choosing his last resting place—at Colonus, near Athens—and resists entreaties from his two sons to settle near one of them, since there is a new prophecy that says that whomever Oedipus goes to live with will win the war.  I didn’t find this one as interesting as the other two plays in the series.

Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles

This is a re-read for me, as we read this for English class when I was in high school years ago.  Probably everyone knows the story of Oedipus and how he and everyone around him tried to cheat the prophecy of the oracle, and failed.  It packs a punch.  I don’t remember it being quite so dramatic and vivid when I read it the first time years ago.  Or maybe I just appreciate it better now since I’m reading it because I want to, not because a teacher is requiring it.

Plato's Republic

Any freedom loving person will hate this book if he reads it as a straightforward exposition of how to achieve the ideal state, because the ideal state Socrates describes in the book (the "Republic" of the title) is a terribly tyrannical place.  But it doesn't seem to me that Plato intended it to be read that way.  It is more like a thought exercise, where Socrates poses questions, and depending on the answers of the person he is speaking with, takes ideas further, step by step.  Some of his dialogue partners have real input; others seem more like yes-men--sometimes reluctant yes-men--and Socrates's exchanges with them read like cautionary tales showing the crazy places where lazy thinking or gullibility can take you.  And of course, nowhere is lazy thinking more dangerous than in politics, where a lot of harm can result.  There is a part where Socrates describes the three different kinds of acceptable government, the three evil kinds (which are the three acceptable ones taken to extremes), and the three different personalities that tend to be produced by each type of government, and also this is the book where Plato describes his famous "Cave" analogy.

All in all, a very rich book--one that deserves to be read multiple times, because you won't get everything it has to offer in one reading.  It's definitely a book that is best read at leisure, because there are a lot times when you will have to stop and think about whether you agree with what you just read or how you would have answered Socrates differently from his dialogue partner.

Peter Kreeft did a great series of lectures that serve as an introduction to Plato and his work--very useful if you haven't read any Plato before.  I think I'd have gotten more out of this book if I'd heard the lectures before reading it.

La cité antique / The Ancient City

This is a brilliant exposition of the religious beliefs of the ancient Greeks and Romans and how that shaped the way they lived, their ideas, their government, and the culture they developed.  When we think of Greek and Roman religion, we immediately think of gods like Zeus, Athena, Apollo, and Venus and such, but de Coulanges goes even further back than that, to the domestic gods that were the dead ancestors of each family, and that protected only that family and their property so long as the living members of the family faithfully carried out the proper rites and sacrifices and owned the property on which their tombs were located.  Apparently, this ancestor worship was a religion the ancient Greeks and Romans shared with the Hindus and dates back to their common roots before the different groups diverged and migrated out to India and to Europe.  As their beliefs and worldview changed, so did Greco-Roman culture change, giving rise to the Greek and Italian city states that later consolidated into the Roman Empire.  In the last chapter, de Coulanges provides a brief outline of how radically Christianity changed the culture and outlook of the Roman Empire and why it brought an end to the ancient conception of the city.

This book is invaluable for those with an interest in the history of ancient Greece and Rome, those who are planning to read the classics and want to understand the mindset of the authors better, and those who want to see how a religion can shape the culture and civilization of a people. De Coulanges's purpose in writing it was to show how different the worldview of the ancient Greeks and Romans was from our own, to prevent the common mistake of believing the ancients to be too much like ourselves.

The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern, by Victor Davis Hanson

This is a collection of articles by columnist, historian, and classicist Victor Davis Hanson that shows why the neglected study of military history is important for everyone, not just those who want to serve in the military.  Studying past wars in past ages helps put current wars in perspective and helps one learn why and how wars are fought and justified.  Studying the Greek and Roman classics used to be one way that people learned about past wars but few schools below university level now teach about them.

Speaking of the classics, I have [author:Thucydides|957]'s big behemoth [book:The History of the Peloponnesian War|554178] on my to-read shelf and this book makes me feel guilty about not having had the courage to crack it just yet.  Maybe next year.