The Western Canon

The Ancient Greeks

Homer (ca.800BC)
Iliad; Odyssey.

Hesiod (ca.700BC)
Works and Days; Theogony.

Archilochos

Sappho (ca.600BC)

Alkman

Pindar.
Odes.

Aeschylus (525 BC – 456 BC)
Oresteia; Seven Against Thebes; Prometheus Bound; Persians; Suppliant Women.

Sophocles (c. 496-c. 405 BC)
Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone; Electra; Ajax; Women of Trachis; Philoctetes.

Euripides (480 or 484-406 BC)
Cyclops; Heracles; Alcestis; Hecuba; Bacchae; Orestes; Andromache; Medea; Ion; Hippolytus; Helen; Iphigenia at Aulis.

Aristophanes (ca. 446 BC – 385 BC)
The Birds; The Clouds; The Frogs; Lysistrata; The Knights; The Wasps; The Assemblywomen.

Herodotus, (485–420BCE)
The Histories.

Thucydides, (ca.460 BCE)
The Peloponnesian Wars.

The Pre-Socratics (Heraclitus, Empedocles)

Plato, (c.427-c.347 BCE)
Dialogues.

Aristotle, (384–322 BCE)
Poetics; Ethics.

The Hellenistic Greeks

Menander, (ca. 342–291 BC)
The Girl from Samos.

Longinus.
On the Sublime.

Callimachus.
Hymns and Epigrams.

Theocritus.
Idylls.

Plutarch, (46–120)
Lives; Moralia.

Aesop (620 – 560 BC)
Fables.

Lucian.
Satires.

The Romans

Plautus.
Pseudolus; The Braggart Soldier; The Rope; Amphitryon.

Terence, (195/185–159 BC)
The Girl from Andros; The Eunuch; The Mother-in-Law.

Lucretius, (98?–55 BCE)
The Way Things Are.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, (106–43 BCE)
On the Gods.

Horace, (65-8 BCE)
Odes; Epistles; Satires.

Persius.
Satires.

Catullus (c.84 B.C. – c.54 B.C.)
Attis and Other Poems.

Virgil (70-19 BC)
Aeneid; Eclogues; Georgics.

Lucan.
Pharsalia.

Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD)
Metamorphoses; The Art of Love; Heroides.

Juvenal.
Satires.

Martial.
Epigrams.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, (ca.4 BCE–65 CE)
Tragedies, particularly Medea and Hercules Furens.

Petronius, (c.27-66)
Satyricon.

Apuleius, (c. 123/125-c. 180)
The Golden Ass.

St. John’s College Great Books Reading List