Sorento62’s Comments (group member since Jul 22, 2016)

Sorento62’s comments from the Reading Classics, Chronologically Through the Ages group.

Hi, Yes! I vastly prefer to see plays performed rather than reading them. I looked on Youtube for Medea, and it looks like there are a couple of good candidates there -- but I have not actually watched a video of Medea yet.

We could also review the versions we actually watch. :-)

Hi, Kendra-
Congratulations on finishing The Iliad. I am planning to listed to it soon.
For the Odyssey, I've heard good things about the Stanley Lombardo translation being easier to read than others. He also performs it on audio, which is what I hope to listen to when I get to The Odyssey.
Fluffy's book store sounds awesome. :-)
-Julie

Welcome, Nevin Kamath. We are just finishing up Herodotus' Histories and beginning Medea. I am looking for a good video of Medea (there are several on YouTube, for example), as I usually prefer to watch plays being performed rather than reading them.

Kenia wrote: "were Enkidu and Gilgamesh actually lovers?"

Most googling I've done seems to find the text ambiguous on that point. Stephen Mitchell in his essay says that the Tablet XII which is sometimes tacked on to the main epic says they were sexual with each other -- but I haven't seen the reasoning backing that up.

Heidi wrote: "I would love to hear other people's thoughts. What translations have others read? What struck them? Anything they didn't like? "

I listened to the audio CD of Stephen Mitchell's "new English version". He smoothes out the story, writes it in loose non-rhyming verse, and fills in the blanks. There's also an essay by Mitchell on the CDs that goes through the story episode by episode with his commentary included. I really liked the story and his essay gave me lots more insight and made me love the story.

The non-Puritan attitudes about sex struck me as interesting. In the version I listened to at least, there are priestesses of Ishtar who have dedicated themselves to her, making themselves available to any man for sex, though it's not stated how this is arranged or what the attendant customs and rules are. And it is interesting that it is a woman seducing Enkidu that civilizes him.

The killing of Humbaba is also interesting, in that in most stories the hero kills the monster essentially "because it's there". But in Gilgamesh, Mitchell says that the monster wasn't supposed to be killed and it is because they killed Humbaba that Enkidu takes ill and dies. I didn't understand that from just listening to the text, however, though I may have just not paid close enough attention. And Mitchell says that Gilgamesh and Enkidu also do not make the connection between the slaying of Humbaba and Enkidu's death.
As Kenia mentions in the Genesis/Gilgamesh discussion thread, there is of course a similarity in Enkidu living as a wild man and then becoming knowledgeable and losing his innocence after being seduced in a sense by a woman. And the flood story is truly striking in its similarity to the Noah's Ark story.
Both the Egyptians and this Gilgamesh story struggle with the fear of death. The ancient Egyptian civilization was in full swing around the time of Gilgamesh. From what I've read, the Egyptians were obsessed with preparing for death and assuring themselves of an afterlife. Gilgamesh ultimately seems to accept the inevitability of death, but only after railing against it in profound grief and seeking an escape from it.
The terror of death is something humankind has to confront, and there is evidence it is one of the main things civilizations were preoccupied with after farming and cities were instituted.
I also liked the rebuke of Gilgamesh to Ishtar, when she asked him to be her lover. Based on her apparent past behavior (destroying her lovers after tiring of them), he was right to refuse her.
I can't think of much that I did not like.

Fine with me too.

Wonderful, Biblio. I'll look for the group. I was just looking at The Book of Dede Korkut last week, wondering where the right place would be to place it chronologically. Seems it was written down roughly 1300 to 1500, but I imagine the events it describes are much more ancient.
Along with Dede Korkut I was looking at The Battle of Chibi (Red Cliffs): Selected and Translated from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is a modern retelling of selections from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
I plan to read at least Gilgamesh this year.

Kenia wrote in The Histories discussion thread: "I'm amazed at how much all of you read--I just don't know how you do it!"
(reply moved to General Musings thread as the part of Kenia's post I'm replying to is not specifically about The Histories)

Hi, Kenia!
I also am amazed at how much some folks on Goodreads are able to read. Roughly half my "reading" is actually listening, while driving. I know you were doing some listening (while working around the house??) earlier this year. How has that worked out?

I used to get most of my audio books as CD's through inter-library loan. My library has some downloadable audio books too, but only 14 days at a time which doesn't work well for popular books. About 6 months ago I finally subscribed to Audible, which gives me one book a month for $15 per month. Audible is great when an audio CD is not available, or when I want the option to speed up the narration. Plus, as with The Histories which took months for me to get through, I don't have to return it to the library after 3 weeks or 6 weeks.

I'm hoping that Mortimer Adler's "How to Read a Book" will give me encouragement to skim the fluffy popular nonfiction business and self help books. I do that a bit already, but hope to get through them more quickly by being more systematic about it. Maybe Adler has more hints as well; hope so.

-Julie

Sandy wrote: "I doubt that I would make it through SPQR without company."

It does look like a GREAT book, Sandy.

Now that I've read Herodotus, there are some books I am looking forward to reading this year or next (most likely next year), precisely because they are about people Herodotus wrote of -- therefore giving me familiarity, context and background. Exciting!

I am Cyrus, historical fiction about one of the early kings of Persia whose exploits Herodotus recorded.


Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
This book has stellar ratings here on Goodreads. Herodotus gives a moving account of the battle in The Histories. It was also the subject of the movie "300", which was released in 2007. I haven't seen the movie, but I remember a lot of buzz about it at the time.


Books about Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism. Herodotus mentions a Pythagoras, and I believe he meant "the" Pythagoras, of the Pythagorean Theorem. (The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides of a right triangle. "A"squared + "B"squared = "C"squared) Apparently he was an influential teacher and philosopher with followers as well, enough to have something called "Pythagoreanism" named after him.
Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism

Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans

and probably later on:
The Music of Pythagoras: How an Ancient Brotherhood Cracked the Code of the Universe and Lit the Path from Antiquity to Outer Space

and
The Cult of Pythagoras: Math and Myths


:-)
:-)
Julie

Just found this thread with the new April posts. ;-D
I may have to join the History Book Club, just to look at their archives. But it's too soon for me to get deep into Rome.

Haaze wrote: "Europe and Scandinavia is the game, but the Greeks and Romans ar..."

You rhymed! Maybe time for some ancient Greek poetry. ;-)

I have been stocking my "chronological readings" virtual Goodreads bookshelf with an ordered list of my main project "100 Most Influential Books" list described in the first post of this thread, interspersed with additional important books and historical fiction that I'd like to read in chronological order. Basically my own "Reading Through History" project. The list is numbered from 1 to 285 as of the date of this post. If you find my chronological readings bookshelf and use Settings to include position in the listing, you can sort by position and see them in order. I'll try putting a link here but I'm not sure whether it will work:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

I'm not really reading the beginning of the list in chronological order because I jumped in with Herodotus to be in sync with this group. I'll be catching up on some of the earlier books as we proceed with Medea, Hippocrates, et al.

There are some more modern books that I intend to read prior to reaching their chronological order -- just because I don't want to wait that many years to read them. Some examples of books I expect to read out of order are:
I and Thou by Martin Buber
War and Peace by Tolstoy
The Constitution of the United States of America
Machiavelli's The Art of War (which I want to read along with Sun Tzu's Art of War)
On War by Clausewitz
The Communist Manifesto
Einstein's Special and General Theory of Relativity
Economics books by Keynes and Hayek
Philosophy Books by Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Sartre
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

So I'm excited about this virtual bookshelf and wanted to share. :-)

Til Next, My Nerdy Colleagues...
Love ya-
Julie

Hi, Kenia-
If you can get hold of a copy of The Landmark Herodotus, I highly recommend it. Even with the Landmark edition and actually listening more than reading the text, it still took me 5 months to get through Herodotus' Histories (albeit while reading about 15 other books in the meantime). But at least with the combination of The Landmark Herodotus, with its many reference maps, and listening to an audio version (and not reading it continuously) I was able to actually enjoy it.
As I had mentioned previously, I found The Histories impossible to really comprehend or have patience with at first when I had no geographical reference points for so many of the peoples and places Herodotus describes. So glad I got the Landmark; Cleo was right. It's wonderful.
-Julie

Hi, Cleo-
I've finished the main body of The Histories. I'd still like to go back and look at more of the maps in the last few books and maybe refresh myself on a few of the vignettes. But more importantly, there are quite a few Appendices with essays in The Landmark Herodotus, and I'd like to read a bunch of those.
It took me a long time to read The Histories (listening mostly, really) starting last November, and referring to the maps and text in The Landmark Herodotus a lot. It's been an illuminating experience, helping me to feel more grounded, truly more educated -- like I am now finally "in" on many of the references I've heard over the years.
And, yes, I like the voice of Herodotus himself as well. One thing I noticed a lot was the consultation of oracles, and that Herodotus did seem to believe in the power of Greek gods and oracles even though he was skeptical of many of the stories and legends that he heard.
I'm going to wait until next year for the History of the Peloponnesian War.

Biblio wrote: "Thanks, love book-welcoming places.

I made a GR shelf but I'll do up a prettier blog post about it in a couple of days."

Biblio, I encourage you to create a discussion topic for Biblio's Reading Projects under the Member TWEM/Classics Book Lists discussion folder in this group. Even if it is just a link to your Blog or a pointer to your bookshelf for the Global Ancient Epics. If you explore that folder, you'll see examples from several others in the group.
I look forward to reading about your plans.
-Julie

Biblio-
Very much so. You will find many with common interests and overlapping readings.
-Sorento62 (Julie)

Hi, Sharon-
Jump on in! I am smack in the middle of Herodotus right now myself.
-Julie (Sorento62)

You're on a roll, Kendra. Interesting insight about the horrific stuff in Night being a counterpoint calling you back to the truth from the delusions of Don Quixote.

Yes, that's the general scheme these days, though there are exceptions. Like the nonfiction book we're reading for April is from the 1700s, while we are not that far back in time in our fiction readings yet.