Ancient Texts audiobooks page 5

Charmides (Χαρμίδης) discusses the virtue of temperance.

Laches (Λάχης) discusses examples of courage including weapons masters, soldiers who stand firm in battle, ferocious animals and the wise person who endures evils.

The fable is a small narrative, in prose or verse, which has as its main characteristic the aim of conveying a moral lesson (the “moral”), implicitly or, more normally, explicitly expressed. Even though the modern concept of fable is that it should have animals or inanimated objects as characters – an idea supported by the works of famous fabulists such as Aesop and La Fontaine – Phaedrus, the most important Latin fabulist, is innovative in his writing. Although many of his fables do depict animals or objects assuming speech, he also has many short stories about men, writing narratives that seem to the modern eye more like short tales than fables.

Despite many other fables being ...

How to maintain a tranquil mind amongst social upheaval and turmoil, addressed to Serenus. (Introduction by Jonathan Hockey)

Euthydemus (Εὐθύδημος) and Dionysodorus the sophists discuss the meaning of words with Socrates.

Cratylus (ΚΡΑΤΥΛΟΣ) discusses whether things have names by mere convention or have true names which can only be correctly applied to the object named and may have originated from God.

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was of Spanish origin, being born about 35 A.D. at Calagurris. At Rome he met with great success as a teacher and was the first rhetorician to set up a genuine public school and to receive a salary from the State. He left behind him a treatise "On the causes of the decadence of Roman oratory" (De causis corruptae eloquentiae), some speeches and his magnum opus, the only one to survive to our days. His Institutio Oratoria, despite the fact that much of it is highly technical, has still much that is of interest today, even for those who care little for the history of rhetoric.

Von der Kürze des Lebens von Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4BC – AD64). Übersetzt durch J. Moser; veröffentlicht 1829.

“Es ist nicht wenig Zeit, was wir haben, sondern es ist viel, was wir nicht nützen.”

Über die Kostbarkeit der Zeit, die vielfältigen Arten, wie Menschen dieselbe verschwenden, und wie der Mensch die Frist seines Lebens richtig nutzt.

Heute so relevant wie 49 AD.

(Zusammenfassung von redaer)

This dialogue brings Socrates face to face with the famous sophist Gorgias and his followers. It is a work likely completed around the time of "Republic" and illuminates many of the spiritual ideas of Plato. The spirituality, as Jowett points out in his wonderful introduction, has many ideas akin to Christianity, but is more generous as it reserves damnation only for the tyrants of the world. Some of the truths of Socrates, as presented by Plato, shine forth in this wonderful work on sophistry and other forms of persuasion or cookery.

This work may not be by Plato, or his entirely, but Jowett has offered his sublime translation, and seems to lean towards including it in the canon. Socrates tempted by irony to deflate the pretentious know-it-all Hippias, an arrogant polymath, appears to follow humour more than honour in this short dialogue.