Metamorphoses
8 · 764 pages
Ovid runs classical myth through a single idea, transformation, from the creation of the world to Julius Caesar. Girls become trees and hunters become deer, and painters have ransacked him for centuries.
★ 8.6
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1st century
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Showing 4 books from the 1st century
Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
100 · 784 pages
Plutarch pairs each famous Greek with a Roman, Alexander with Caesar, and judges them, holding that a jest can reveal a man better than a battle. Shakespeare took three plays out of it.
★ 7.1
Letters from a Stoic
60 · 254 pages
Nero's tutor sets down how to die, how to hold wealth lightly, and how to stop waiting for life to begin. Philosophy arrives as advice from someone who likes you.
★ 7.0
The Satires
100 · 320 pages
Bread and circuses came from here, and so did the line about guarding the guards. Juvenal turns sixteen poems of fury on imperial Rome, where an honest man cannot afford to live.
★ 7.0