The foundational literature and philosophy of the Greco-Roman world — epic and tragedy, the great philosophical schools, and the Hellenistic ethical traditions.
The epics that shaped Greek and Roman identity and religion.
The surviving plays of the three great Athenian tragedians, and the comedies of Aristophanes.
The dialogues of Plato and the treatises of Aristotle, foundational to the whole Western philosophical tradition.
The Hellenistic schools of practical ethics, carried into the Roman world by Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.
This page is deliberately structured, not exhaustive — historiography (Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus) and later Neoplatonism are natural next additions.
Ancient