Greek Science

What are the secrets to a contented life? One of Rome's greatest and most influential poets, Horace (65-8 BCE) has been cherished for more than 2,000 years not only for his wit, style, and reflections on Roman society, but also for his wisdom about how to live a good life - above all else, a life of contentment in a world of materialistic excess and personal pressures. In How to Be Content, Stephen Harrison provides fresh, contemporary translations of poems from across Horace's works that continue to offer important lessons about the good life, friendship, love, and death.

Just a century after it had begun, philosophy entered its greatest age with the appearance of Socrates, who spent so much of his time talking about philosophy on the streets of Athens that he never got around to writing anything down. His method of aggressive questioning, called dialectic, was the forerunner of logic; he used it to cut through the twaddle of his adversaries and arrive at the truth. Rather than questioning the world, he believed, we would be better off questioning ourselves.

The stars and constellations are among the few remaining objects that appear to us just as they appeared to our distant ancestors. From anywhere on Earth, a person may view the celestial panorama simply by stepping outside at night and gazing upward. This nonfiction narrative presents the tales of the 48 classical constellations, compiled from literature spanning a thousand years from Homer to Claudius Ptolemy. These age-old tales have captured the human imagination from ancient times to the present.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC-AD 65), also known as Seneca the Younger, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist from the Silver Age of Latin literature. This edition of Seneca's Epistles includes all 124 of the letters in a single volume, with explanatory notes, an appendix, and an index of the names occurring in the text. The letters were written by Seneca during his retirement and sent to his friend Lucilius Junior, a procurator of Sicily.

In How to Be, Adam Nicolson takes us on a glorious, immersive journey. Grounded in the belief that places give access to minds, however distant and strange, this book reintroduces us to our earliest thinkers through the lands they inhabited. To know the mental occupations of Homer or Heraclitus, one must visit their cities, sail their seas, and find landscapes not overwhelmed by the millennia that have passed but retain the atmosphere of that ancient life. Nicolson takes us to the dawn of investigative thought and a nexus of cross-cultural connection.

The Discourses of Epictetus are a series of informal lectures by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus written down by his pupil Arrian around 108 AD. Four books out of an original eight are still extant. The philosophy of Epictetus is intensely practical.

The Discourses of Epictetus is a series of informal lectures by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, compiled by his pupil Arrian. The Stoic emphasis on endurance, self-restraint, and the power of the will to withstand calamity could often appear cold and inhuman. Epictetus, however, offers the most humane interpretation of Stoic ideals by using humor, imaginary conversations, and homely comparisons to put his message across.

This collection brings together three of Plato's most enduring classics: the "Symposium", the "Apology", and the famous "Allegory of the Cave" from the Republic.

Pleasure feels amazing! Anxiety, however, does not. The Ancient Greek Philosopher Epicurus rolled these two strikingly intuitive claims into a simple formula for happiness and well-being—pursue pleasure without causing yourself anxiety. But wait, is that even possible? Can humans achieve lasting pleasure without suffering anxiety about failure and loss? Epicurus thinks we can, at least once we learn to pursue pleasure thoughtfully.

" Une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps "... Proverbe fameux ! Mais sait-on que cette maxime populaire apparaît pour la première fois dans l’Éthique à Nicomaque ? Ce texte d’Aristote prend la question du bonheur à bras-le-corps et ses réponses, directes et vertueuses, étonnent aujourd’hui encore. Pour y parvenir: s’éloigner des jouissances immédiates et tisser des liens durables avec les autres. Cet ouvrage, en partageant et en décryptant la pensée de ce grand philosophe grec, donne des pistes de compréhension et d’action pour atteindre la plénitude.

Growing up with his mom on the island Crete, Zeus learns that families can be just plain strange, no matter if you're a god or a mortal. Listeners will thrill to accounts of Zeus battling Titans and other monsters while fulfilling his destiny to become the god of gods.

In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, Christopher Taylor explores the life of Socrates and his philosophical activity, before looking to the responses his philosophical doctrines have evoked in the centuries since his betrayal and execution at fellow Athenian hands.

A year after the events that killed her sister and turned her into a siren, Vanessa is desperately trying to put her family back together and reclaim a “normal” life. But no matter how many times she swims, or how much salt water she drinks, she can feel herself getting weaker and weaker. She has no idea how to survive as a siren and she doesn’t want to know the truth about her newly discovered identity. It’s just too horrifying.

On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation's founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders' thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero.

Socrates is an enigmatic figure, known chiefly through the accounts of others like Plato and Aristophanes. He was one of the most brilliant intellects ever, and devised what would later be called the Socratic method, which is a way of leading one's interlocutor to see his errors and contradictions through clever questioning before leading him to the truth. In ancient Athens, Socrates was widely known as a "gadfly", that is, an annoying insect buzzing at people's ears, because he kept questioning prejudices and contradictions; he was eventually tried and executed for "corrupting the minds of the youth".

Quase dois mil anos depois de ter sido escrito, Meditações continua relevante para quem busca uma vida significativa.

Né esclave, Épictète devint l'un des plus grands philosophes stoïciens, et ses préceptes sont toujours appliqués aujourd'hui. Nous lui devons le stoïcisme, doctrine pensée pour éviter toutes les souffrances inutiles. Il n'y a que sur nos propres actions et attitudes que nous pouvons agir ; comme ce n'est pas parce que l'on s'inquiète beaucoup que les choses s'améliorent, il convient donc d'accueillir tout événement avec calme et sans passion.

Eighteen-year-old Therese Mills has second thoughts about marrying Thanatos when she learns that no god has ever been faithful to his wife. But before she can move out of Than's rooms and into Hecate's, the Underworld is attacked, she and her friends are crushed, the souls are unleashed, and a malevolent goddess threatens to unhinge Mount Olympus.

The Greek philosopher Socrates famously said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Taking this as a starting point, Eric Metaxas founded a speaking series that encouraged busy and successful professionals to attend forums and think actively about the bigger questions in life; thus Socrates in the City: Conversations on “Life, God, and Other Small Topics” was born.

Stoicism is two things: a long past philosophical school of ancient Greece and Rome, and an enduring philosophical movement that still inspires people in the twenty-first century to rethink and reorganize their lives in order to achieve personal satisfaction. What is the connection between them? This Very Short Introduction provides an introductory account of Stoic philosophy, and tells the story of how ancient Stoicism survived and evolved into the movement we see today.