Hesiod's Theogony is a large-scale synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. It is the first Greek mythical cosmogony. The initial state of the universe is chaos - a dark, indefinite void considered a divine primordial condition from which everything else appeared.

The Theogony (composed c. 700 BC) is a poem by Hesiod (8th-7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods. A theogony is a part of Greek mythology which attempts to articulate reality as a whole. Hesiod's work is a synthesis of various local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells of their origin and how they established control over the Cosmos.

The Greek poet, Hesiod, stands out as the first personality in European literature. The Theogony contains a genealogy of the gods from the beginning of time and an account of their violent struggles before the present order was established. The Works and Days, a compendium of advice for a life of honest husbandry, shines a unique and fascinating light on archaic Greek society, ethics, and superstition. Hesiod's poetry is the oldest source of the myths of Prometheus, Pandora, and the Golden Age.

Renowned poet and critic Clive James presents the crowning achievement of his career: a monumental translation into English verse of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. The Divine Comedy is the precursor of modern literature, and this translation - decades in the making - gives us the entire epic as a single, coherent and compulsively listenable lyric poem. Written in the early 14th century and completed in 1321, the year of Dante’s death, The Divine Comedy is perhaps the greatest work of epic poetry ever composed.

This brilliant new treatment of the world's oldest epic is a literary event on par with Seamus Heaney's wildly popular Beowulf translation. Esteemed translator and best-selling author Stephen Mitchell energizes a heroic tale so old it predates Homer's Iliad by more than a millennium.

Little is known about the Ancient Greek oral poet Homer, the supposed 8th century BC author of the world-read Iliad and his later masterpiece, The Odyssey. These classic epics provided the basis for Greek education and culture throughout the classical age and formed the backbone of humane education through the birth of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity.

Unfinished Tales is a collection of narratives ranging in time from the Elder Days of Middle-earth to the end of the War of the Ring and provides those who have read The Lord of the Rings with a whole collection of background and new stories from the 20th century’s most acclaimed popular author.

In this, the first prose history in European civilization, Herodotus describes the growth of the Persian Empire with force, authority, and style. Perhaps most famously, the book tells the heroic tale of the Greeks' resistance to the vast invading force assembled by Xerxes, king of Persia. Here are not only the great battles - Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis - but also penetrating human insight and a powerful sense of epic destiny at work.

Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the actions of Medea, a former princess of the "barbarian" kingdom of Colchis, and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by murdering Jason's new wife as well as her own children, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.

In the milky mountains, upon the lofty summit known as Altar Peak, stand the spacious and somber ruins of a monastery once famous as the ARK. Traditions would link it with an antiquity so hoary as the Flood. Numerous legends have been woven about the Ark, but the one most current on the tongues of local mountaineers among whom I chanced to spend a certain summer in the shade of Altar Peak is the following: Many years after the great Deluge, Noah and his family, and his family’s increase, drifted into the Milky Mountains.

The Metamorphoses by Publius Ovidius Naso (43 B.C. - A.D. 17) has, over the centuries, been the most popular and influential work from our classical tradition. This extraordinary collection of some 250 Greek and Roman myths and folk tales has always been a popular favorite, and has decisively shaped western art and literature from the moment it was completed in A.D. 8. The stories are particularly vivid when read by David Horovitch, in this new lively verse translation by Ian Johnston.

This collection, narrated by distinguished Broadway actor Brian Murray, includes nine poems from Leaves of Grass - among them "I Hear America Singing", "O Captain! My Captain", and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d", plus four other selections.

The classic trilogy about murder, revenge and justice, as heard on BBC Radio 3 – plus a bonus documentary exploring Aeschylus's seminal Greek tragedy. A chilling tale of homecoming, violent death and bloody vengeance, The Oresteia dates back to the fifth century BC, but its themes still resonate today. At once a family saga, morality tale and courtroom drama, it recounts how two generations of the cursed House of Atreus become locked into a deadly cycle of atrocities....

On the face of it, a simple book of 26 poem fables sharing one man’s wisdom. But The Prophet is so much more than that. It has inspired people from John F Kennedy to The Beatles and became the '60s Bible of counterculture – all because of the timeless truths it shared. Each poem takes a different theme – pleasure, beauty, freedom, joy and sorrow – as the fictional Al Mustapha shares his thoughts and experiences as he prepares to travel back to his island home.

Lucretius was born in 99 BC, and On the Nature of Things is his only surviving work. His aim was to free the Roman world from its two great terrors - the gods and death. Lucretius argues that the gods are not actively involved in life, so need not be appeased; and that death is the end of everything human - body and soul - and therefore should not be feared. But On the Nature of Things is also a poem of striking imagery, intimate natural observation and touching pathos.

The world of ancient Egypt springs magnificently to life in this astonishing historical novel of love, war, political intrigue, and religious revolution. Told from the first-person point of view, it is the story of Sinuhe, physician to the royal court of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his successors in the middle of the tumultuous 14th century B.C. From his exalted position, Sinuhe was able to observe and participate in some of the most intimate and important decisions that affected the powerful Egyptian kingdom of the 18th Dynasty during a very troubled period of its history.

This collection, narrated by distinguished Broadway actor Brian Murray, includes nine poems from Leaves of Grass - among them "I Hear America Singing", "O Captain! My Captain", and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d", plus four other selections.

When Walt Whitman self-published "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, he rocked the literary world and forever changed the course of poetry. In subsequent editions, Whitman continued to revise and expand his poems - but none matched the raw power and immediacy of the first edition. This volume presents the 1855 "Leaves of Grass" in its entirety, unchanged, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous letter to Whitman.

Rolf, son of Hiarandi the Unlucky, is a character who exemplifies the effect of Christ's teachings upon the Icelandic people during their heroic age. The book is set in Iceland in the days when Christianity has come to the island though the old customs still linger. Hiarandi, at the urging of his wife, does an unprecedented thing: he lights a signal fire on a dangerous point of his land, thereby challenging the accepted custom which places lucrative salvage at higher value than the saving of life.

Do you know that the Sumerians believed that: The moon was actually a god child conceived unintentionally by the God Enlil and a maid? Or that humans were first created to do the chores on earth for the Gods and Goddesses? The ancient Sumerians lived a difficult life, and this is reflected in their myths. However, also reflected in their stories is their love for justice and the values which they most supported, among them beauty, honor, and truthfulness.

This second instalment in the story of the legendary hero begins with Theseus' triumphant return from Crete after slaying the Minotaur. Having freed the city of Athens from the onerous tribute demanded by the ruler of Knossos - the sacrifice of noble youths and maidens to the appetite of the Labyrinth's monster - Theseus has returned home to find his father dead and himself the new king. But his adventures have only just begun: He still must confront the Amazons; capture their queen, Hippolyta; and face the tragic results of Phaedra's jealous rage.

Daphnis and Chloe is a gem from the pen of the otherwise unknown second-century CE Greek writer Longus. It is the only work of his to survive, and little is known of him. Though perhaps overshadowed by the Roman magnificence of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (dating from a century earlier), Longus’ story entranced the choreographer Michel Fokine, who persuaded the French composer Maurice Ravel to write music for a ballet on the love story as part of the Ballets Russes’ season in Paris in 1912. Ravel, inspired, produced one of the most ravishing scores of the Impressionist period.

It was a time of legend, as the last shadows of the mighty Roman conqueror faded from the captured Isle of Britain. Meanwhile, across a vast sea, bloody war shattered a peace that had flourished for 2,000 years in the doomed kingdom of Atlantis. This is the remarkable adventure of Charis, the courageous princess from Atlantis who escapes the terrible devastation of her land, and of the fabled seer and druid prince Taliesin, singer at the dawn of the age. It is a story of an incomparable love that joins two astonishing worlds....

A sacred text to Ethiopian Christians and Jamaican Rastafarians, The Kebra Nagast tells of the relationship between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and their son, Menyelik, who hid the Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia. This edition of the Ethiopian text is edited by Gerald Hausman, with an introduction by Ziggy Marley.

Set in sixth-century Greece at the time of the Tyrants, the Persian Wars, and a great flowering of the arts, this novel takes the form of Simonides' memoirs, written in retirement in Sicily. The author was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and she also wrote "The King Must Die".

The Kalevala provides a compelling insight into the myths and folklore of Finland. Compiled by Elias Lönnrot in the 19th century, this impressive volume follows a tradition of oral storytelling that goes back some 2000 years, and it is often compared to such epic poems as Homer's Odyssey. However, The Kalevala has little in common with the culture of its Nordic neighbors: It is primarily poetic, it is mythical rather than historic, and its heroes solve their problems with magic more often than violence.

In Norse Mythology and Runes, this book depicts the main Norse pantheon as follows: Odin, the highest of the mighty, wise, daring, and cunning; Thor, Odin's son, extremely powerful but not the wisest of gods; and Loki, Odin's blood brother and a trickster and unrivalled manipulator.

This magnificent novel - which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature - is now available to contemporary American audiences. Although it is set in the early 20th century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning classic tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.

There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before The Lord of the Rings. The story told in this book is set in the great country that lay beyond the Grey Havens in the West: lands where Treebeard once walked, but which were drowned in the great cataclysm that ended the First Age of the World.