Showing titles in Ancient, Classical & Medieval Literature

The exemplary life of a noble soldier/statesman, a description of ancient Germany, and a discussion of oratory are the subjects of three short masterpieces by the brilliant Roman historian, Tacitus.

The Secrets of the Psalms: The Life-Changing Power of Heartfelt Prayer Tucked in the powerfully woven layers of the Bible are divine secrets for victorious living. Interestingly, the book of Psalm has been one vital go-to section for many. It is widely read and often quoted by Jesus more than any other book of the Bible. For thousands of years, men and women have made it a wonderful companion that possesses wisdom applicable to every human situation. These Secrets Of The Psalms, would help those who seek God to solve everyday problems, achieve higher states of consciousness, gain material ...

These four plays, translated into blank verse by C. A. Wheelwright, present to us the wide range of this ancient playwright's fertile imagination. From war and peace to politics and society to the relationships between mena nd women, no topic is off-limits.

The Trojan War is over, and Odysseus, the cunning King of Ithaca, sets out for home, his wife Penelope, and his son, Telemachus. It proves a long, 10-year journey, fraught with dangers.

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle delves into the question of what is best for mankind and humans as individuals. His conclusion is that happiness is the best possible human condition, though he is not referencing the emotion of happiness. Instead, Aristotle concludes that true happiness comes as a way of life in which the individual contributes to the good of his community, as well as his mind.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is what many believe to be the foundation of Western Philosophy. It addresses what is visible and invisible, seen and observed versus intuited and imagined, and what is public versus private and just versus unjust. It also concerns the meaning and importance of education, the state of the soul, the conflict between truth and beauty, animal urges versus higher aspirations, knowledge versus ignorance, and on and on.

This collection contains poems Elizabeth Browning wrote in her early days as well as the last poems she wrote before her death at 55: ballads, religious, social-reforming, and political verse. Included are: "The Dream," "The Image of God," and "The Tempest."

A selection of the very best of Chinese poetry over the course of a thousand years, from 100 years before Christ was born up of the middle ages. Arthur Waley's translations of Chinese poetry are still the benchmark by which such translations are held, nearly two hundred years after he introduced the west to the wonder of classical Chinese poetry.

Versión en prosa de uno de los clásicos absolutos de la literatura universal: "La Ilíada" de Homero, que narra el rapto de Helena de Troya a manos de Paris y la posterior guerra entre aqueos y troyanos por recuperarla, con la intervención de las diferentes fuerzas de la naturaleza encarnadas por dioses y semidioses. Una lectura capital para todos aquellos aficionados a la Grecia clásica y a la buena literatura.

Clifford Odets’ masterpiece, starring Mark Ruffalo, Jane Kaczmarek, Richard Kind, and Ben Gazzara, brings to life the struggles of a working-class family aspiring to the promise of the American Dream. Even as they endure the country’s worst economic nightmare, three generations of an immigrant family are crowded into a Bronx tenement, fiercely determined to stay afloat, no matter what the cost.

Eugene O’Neill’s tale of Ephraim Cabot, greedy and hard like the stone walls that surround his farm, the family patriarch brings home his new young bride, Abbie. His grown sons dissaprove; one leaves but the other stays to fight for the family fortune. What follows is a tragedy of epic proportions.

Lysistrata is an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, which was originally performed in Athens in 411 BC. It is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary quest to terminate the Peloponnesian War between Greek city states, by advocating that the women deny all the men of the land any sex. At a meeting, Lysistrata persuades the women of the warring cities to withhold sexual privileges from their men. She has also persuaded the older women of Athens to seize the Acropolis.

Vis and Ramin is one of the world's great love stories. It was the first major Persian romance, written between 1050 and 1055 in rhyming couplets. This remarkable work has now been superbly translated into heroic couplets (the closest metrical equivalent of the Persian) by the poet and scholar Dick Davis.

Vis and Ramin had immense influence on later Persian poetry and is very probably also the source for the tale of Tristan and Isolde, which first appeared in Europe about a century later.

An easy-going drama critic discovers that his kind and gentle aunts have a bizarre habit of poisoning gentlemen callers and burying them in the cellar.

Enjoy this amazing narration of Robert Frost's poetry, including his most famous poems, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Road Not Taken, among many others.

The book is one of the most influential ethical treatises of all time. Written in 350 BC, it identifies happiness as life's goal. How do we achieve this goal? Not through the satisfactions that come from pleasure, wealth, or fame. According to Aristotle, the true path to happiness lies in contemplation of philosophic truth. This is the only action through which humans can exercise their distinctively unique trait: the ability to reason.

Paradiso gives our imagination a hint of the beauty to come, by uncovering the deepest reality of the life we are living now. God is the same, eternity past to eternity future; He is the same God today. The great crescendo that is His beauty, dance, song, joy, holiness, and glory we hear but dimly, as from a distance land; but it undergirds and gives meaning to everything we know and experience.

Based on historical characters of the seventh-century Iranian court and written 850 years ago, the narrative poem about Khosrow and Shirin shares a shelf with the most intensely romantic classic stories readers love, from Tristan and Isolde to Layla and Majnun to Romeo and Juliet to Gatsby and Daisy.

Lucretius' poem On the Nature of Things combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour he demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is mortal, and the world and everything in it is governed by the mechanical laws of nature and not by gods; and that by believing this men can live in peace of mind and happiness. He bases this on the atomic theory expounded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, and continues with an examination of sensation, sex, cosmology, meteorology, and geology.

Thyestes is a tragic rendition of the fraternal civil war within House Atreides. This 1st century A.D. play was written by the Stoic philosopher Seneca and has been translated into readable prose for a 21st century audience.