Ancient Literature


The Odyssey
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Iliad
The Aeneid
Oedipus Rex  (The Theban Plays, #1)
Metamorphoses
Antigone (Theban Plays, #3)
Meditations
The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
The Histories
Medea
Beowulf
Lysistrata
The Republic
The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
Seamus Heaney
...the Sibyl, Resisting possession, storms through the cavern, In the throes of her struggle with Phoebus Apollo. But the more she froths at the mouth And contorts, the more he controls her, commands her And makes her his creature. Then of their own accord Those hundred vast tunnel-mouths gape and give vent To the prophetess's responses... ...more
Seamus Heaney, Aeneid Book VI

Sam Harris
The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still being besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?
Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

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