Classics (antiquity) audiobooks page 5

Recapitulación de todo lo dicho sobre la invención y disposición. La elocución es la más hermosa parte de la retórica y la más difícil. Debe cuidarse más de los pensamientos que de las palabras. La elocución se considera en las palabras, ya separadas, ya juntas. Debe cuidarse de que las palabras sean castizas, claras, adornadas y acomodadas al asunto. Las palabras unidas entre sí deben ser correctas, bien colocadas y acompañadas de figuras. Algunos preceptos para hablar con pureza y elegancia. La claridad nace de la propiedad de las palabras. De dónde nace la obscuridad y modo de evitarla. El adorno debe ser varonil, no afeminado, debe variarse según la materia. El ornato. Elección de ...

In this book the famous Gaius Julius Caesar himself describes the seven years of his war in Gaul.

When Caesar got proconsul of Gallia and Illyria in 58 B.C, the conquest of land in Gaul was an urgent need, both to improve his political standing and to calm his creditors in Rome. So Caesar claims his interest for a very large area already in the first sentence.

His steps and measures always appear clear and logic, but this simplicity is the result of a strict discipline in style. Caesar really choses his words, and the list of standard words that he never or rarely uses, is astonishing. E.g. for "river" he only uses flumen and never fluvius or amnis. He avoids porro (furthe...

Ab urbe condita, is a monumental history of ancient Rome written in the Latin language by Titus Livius(Livy), an ancient Roman historian. The work covers the time from the stories of Aeneas, the earliest legendary period from before the city's founding in c. 753 BC, to Livy's own times in the reign of the emperor, Augustus. The last year covered by Livy is 745 AUC, or 9 BC, the death of Drusus. About 25% of the work survives.

Livy's History of Rome was in demand from the publication of the first packet. Livy became so famous that a man from Cadiz travelled to Rome just to see him, and once he had seen, returned home. The popularity of the work continued through the entire classical...

A philippic is a fiery, damning speech delivered to condemn a particular political actor. The term originates with Demosthenes, who delivered an attack on Philip II of Macedon in the 4th century BCE.

Cicero consciously modeled his own attacks on Mark Antony, in 44 BC and 43 BC, on Demosthenes’s speeches, and if the correspondence between M. Brutus and Cicero are genuine [ad Brut. ii 3.4, ii 4.2], at least the fifth and seventh speeches were referred to as the Philippics in Cicero’s time. They were also called the Antonian Orations by Aulus Gellius. It is ironic that they were named after a series of speeches that failed to effectively warn the Greeks of the danger of Philip of...

Written in the first century b.C., On the Nature of Things (in Latin, "De Rerum Natura") is a poem in six books that aims at explaining the Epicurean philosophy to the Roman audience. Among digressions about the importance of philosophy in men's life and praises of Epicurus, Lucretius created a solid treatise on the atomic theory, the falseness of religion and many kinds of natural phenomena. With no harm to his philosophical scope, the author composed a didactic poem of epic flavor, of which the imagery and style are highly praised.

The Metamorphosis, also known as The Golden Ass, is one of the very few novels of the Ancient World that survived to our days; one of the two novels of Roman Literature that we can still read; and the only one preserved in its entirety (the other one being the extremely fragmentary Satyricon).

The story of the Metamorphosis, the tale of a man turned into a donkey that goes through many adventures to become a man again, inspired many other similar ones later on. However, more than just the plot, the style of the Golden Ass also made it famous.

Considered one of the precursors of the picaresque novel, The Metamorphosis was written in a language that can be humorous and energe...

This tragedy is based on the mythological story of King Pentheus of Thebes and his mother Agave, and their punishment by the god Dionysus (who is Pentheus' cousin) for refusing to worship him.

Alfred J. Church created 26 stories from the original Greek version of Virgil's Aeneid. He included well-known ones, such as "The Horse of Wood" and "The Love and Death of Dido," as well as many others perhaps less well-known, such as "King Evander" and "The Funeral Games of Anchises."

The Catiline Conspiracy and The Jugurthine War are the two separate surviving works of the historian commonly known as “Sallust”. Nearly contemporary to the events he describes, he is supposed to have been a retired officer of Caesar’s army. “Catiline” contains the history of the memorable year 63. Sallust describes Catiline as the deliberate foe of law, order and morality (although party politics may have influenced his view). Still, Sallust does recount Catiline’s noble traits, including his courage in the final battle. There is doubt among historians about whether Caesar was involved in the conspiracy; several of Catiline’s adherents who survived later joined Caesar’s ...