Thoughts about reading fiction, nonfiction, & children's books, new & old
Really Old Classics
Here is a sample of some Really Old Classics that were written pre-Shakespeare (i.e., pre-1600s). This list is, of course, not exclusive. You can purchase books through my Amazon Store.
- Gilgamesh
- Egyptian Book of the Dead
- Holy Bible
- The Apocrypha
- Bhagavad-Gita
- Homer Iliad, Odyssey
- Aeschylus Oresteia, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound,
- Sophocles Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone
- Euripides Orestes
- Aristophanes
- Herodotus The Histories
- Thucydides The Peloponnesian Wars
- Plato Dialogues
- Aristotle Poetics, Ethics
- Plutarch Lives; Moralia
- “Aesop” Fables
- Cicero On the Gods
- Horace Odes
- Virgil Aeneid
- Ovid Metamorphoses
- Juvenal Satires
- Martial Epigrams
- Seneca Tragedies
- Apuleius The Golden Ass
- Saint Augustine City of God; Confessions
- The Koran (Al-Qur’an)
- The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night
- The Nibelungen Lied
- Beowulf
- The Poem of the Cid
- Dante The Divine Comedy
- Petrarch Lyric Poems; Selections
- Giovanni Boccaccio The Decameron
- Michelangelo Buonarroti Sonnets and Madrigals
- Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince
- Leonardo da Vinci Notebooks
- Benvenuto Cellini Autobiography
- Giordano Bruno The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast
- Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales; Troilus and Criseyde
- Sir Thomas Malory Le Morte D’Arthur
- Sir Thomas More Utopia
- Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene
- Christopher Marlowe Poems and Plays
- The Song of Roland
- Michel de Montaigne Essays
- François Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel
- Erasmus In Praise of Folly
- Christine de Pisan The Book of the City of Ladies
- Romances of the Three Kingdoms
- Sun Tzu’s Art of War
- Confucius’s The Analects
10 Responses to “Really Old Classics”
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This blog is a collection of my thoughts about books and reading and reviews of books I've read. I'd love to hear your thoughts, too. Please share!
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May I add Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji to this awesome list?!
Diana Raabe, Of course! Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
Count me in! I know that a few of them are at Project Gutenburg and I have the Sir Thomas More book checked out from my library for one of my Yahoo! book groups.
Is it too late too join? I’d like to read at least five of these titles before July 2009.
Judy, great! I hope you enjoy your reads; keep in mind that translation can make a difference on those old ones. I personally had a hard time getting in to the project gutenberg Iliad….
hopeinbrazil, we’re glad to have you join! Enjoy your reads!
Christine de Pisan’s The Book of the City of Ladies?
Also, how about the Romances of the Three Kingdoms, Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and Confucius’s The Analects?
Karlo, I wasn’t familiar with those. Thanks for the recommendations. I’ll add them to the list.
karlo, I should add that I’m woefully ignorant of non-Western really old classics, so thank you. It’s easy to find “western canon” really old classics lists, but harder to know where to begin for non-Western canon. Thanks again.
I’m not familiar with them too… apart from those titles I mentioned, of course. Thanks for adding my suggestions.