Just finished some Early Greeks
Hi all. Long time lurker, just wanted to share my progress. It's been about 6 months since I started getting into Classics, and what a jounrney it's been.
This sub has been super helpful in finding good translations, but also finding great supplementary readings and lectures and analysis.
And going down the rabbit hole has been quite a blast, and it's always so cool to see how each effects the other. You read Homer in everyone, but it's so interesting when, say, Pindar makes a direct reference to Hesiod, or how much Choral Odes influence the Tragedians, or how Menander really seems influenced by Euripides' later work. Everything always feels so interconnected.
My favorite pieces were, of course, Homer's, but the Oresteia is also incredible, not only as a tale about Democracy and fate and the family vs the polis, but also that it's the only connected Trilogy we have, which really makes you wonder why Sophocles/Euripides never wrote a trilogy.
I do have a very hard time believing Aeschylus wrote Prometheus bound, it's so unlike the rest of his writing, and seems to go against everything he stood for.
The Oedipus stories are great, Aristophanes is still hilarious, my favorites being Birds & Wasps, Frogs is very good to. The Lyrics are still fascinating, Theognis especially. It's also fun to wonder how much the tragedians were involved with Pre-Socratic philosophy, and if any of that bleeds into their work. Personally I found Euripides to be the weakest of the Tragedians. He felt like the Quentin Tarantino of Drama, compared to say, Aeschylus' John Ford. Euripides feels like style & exploitation, like, a teenagers impression of a Greek tragedy. His later work though, particularly Helen, Orestes, Iphegenia among the Taurians/at Aulis, and especially The Bacchae, are all really great and perhaps rival the greats.
Overall I found all of it so interesting, so, thanks for reading. Would love to hear some opinions on any of these.