Great Books

Anabasis / Persian Expedition

January 14, 1971

Anabasis / Persian Expedition

January 14, 1971

Ten thousand Greek soldiers hire themselves out to a Persian prince and march into the middle of the largest empire on earth. One of them wrote it down, and no...

Phaedo

January 13, 1971

Phaedo

January 13, 1971

A group of friends spend a day with Socrates arguing about whether the soul survives the body. Nobody in the room is in a position to treat it as an...

The Republic

January 12, 1971

The Republic

January 12, 1971

The most influential book ever written about justice, and the most disturbing. Plato builds a perfect city in front of you, and by the time you see what it costs,...

Symposium

January 11, 1971

Symposium

January 11, 1971

Seven men at a drinking party in Athens agree to take turns praising love. Almost everything the West has since believed about desire comes out of that evening, and a...

Crito

January 10, 1971

Crito

January 10, 1971

An old friend arrives at the prison before dawn with something to propose, and every good reason to think Socrates should accept it. Fifteen pages later, the West has its...

Apology

January 9, 1971

Apology

January 9, 1971

A seventy-year-old man stands in front of five hundred of his fellow citizens and explains why he has lived the way he has, apologising for none of it. This is...