Archaic Books
Showing 1-50 of 121
The Epic of Gilgamesh (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as archaic)
avg rating 3.75 — 118,891 ratings — published -2000
The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as archaic)
avg rating 4.00 — 70,743 ratings — published -450
Candide (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as archaic)
avg rating 3.76 — 301,268 ratings — published 1759
The Aeneid (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 2 times as archaic)
avg rating 3.87 — 143,299 ratings — published -19
The Iliad (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as archaic)
avg rating 3.93 — 509,020 ratings — published -800
The Odyssey (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as archaic)
avg rating 3.83 — 1,191,052 ratings — published -800
Pride and Prejudice (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.29 — 4,795,201 ratings — published 1813
Carmilla (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.87 — 196,712 ratings — published 1872
Sri Guru Granth Sahib (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.45 — 294 ratings — published 1708
Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.40 — 782 ratings — published 2022
On the Genealogy of Morals (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.12 — 35,666 ratings — published 1887
Death of a Salesman (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.59 — 258,725 ratings — published 1949
The Complete Writings of St. Francis of Assisi (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.23 — 69 ratings — published 1220
The Frogs (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.78 — 9,329 ratings — published -405
God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.84 — 410 ratings — published 1970
Images in the Margins (Medieval Imagination)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.03 — 65 ratings — published 2009
Machiavellian Democracy (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.18 — 44 ratings — published 2011
Revelations of Divine Love (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.98 — 8,036 ratings — published 1393
History of the Peloponnesian War (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.94 — 40,564 ratings — published -411
Lucian, Volume VII: Dialogues of the Dead. Dialogues of the Sea-Gods. Dialogues of the Gods. Dialogues of the Courtesans (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.12 — 193 ratings — published 1961
A History of My Times (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.03 — 3,381 ratings — published -362
Metamorphoses (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.10 — 78,236 ratings — published 8
The Conquest of Gaul (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.02 — 13,538 ratings — published -50
Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.38 — 2,155 ratings — published -416
The Campaigns of Alexander (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.17 — 5,341 ratings — published 150
The Twelve Caesars (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.03 — 22,781 ratings — published 121
Roman Lives: A Selection of Eight Lives (Aemilius Paulus, Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Grachus, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Marc Anthony)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.09 — 845 ratings — published 100
The Man of Feeling (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.00 — 1,885 ratings — published 1771
Praise of Folly (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.83 — 20,362 ratings — published 1508
Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.91 — 58 ratings — published
Theological-Political Treatise (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.08 — 5,165 ratings — published 1670
Inferno (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.03 — 206,019 ratings — published 1321
The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.74 — 7,541 ratings — published 2022
A People's History of Civilization (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.12 — 85 ratings — published
The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros: A Seventeenth-Century African Biography of an Ethiopian Woman (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.09 — 34 ratings — published 1672
Voltaire's Politics: The Poet as Realist (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.30 — 10 ratings — published 1959
The Complete Essays (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.23 — 22,060 ratings — published 1580
Black Athena: Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. 1: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785-1985 (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.09 — 566 ratings — published 1987
Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España. (Sepan Cuantos, #300)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.83 — 60 ratings — published 1577
'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.69 — 5,261 ratings — published 1633
Romantic Rationalist: A William Godwin Reader (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.25 — 12 ratings — published
تروكرل 'المثنوي المقدس' (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.38 — 1,180 ratings — published 1812
The Teachings of Ptahhotep: The Oldest Book in the World (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.16 — 457 ratings — published -2400
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.79 — 18,918 ratings — published 1755
The Tempest (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.78 — 227,191 ratings — published 1611
تذکرة الاولیاء (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 4.27 — 995 ratings — published 1220
Hippolytos (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as archaic)
avg rating 3.81 — 7,020 ratings — published -428
“My hypothesis is mimetic: because humans imitate one another more than animals, they have had to find a means of dealing with contagious similarity, which could lead to the pure and simple disappearance of their society. The mechanism that reintroduces difference into a situation in which everyone has come to resemble everyone else is sacrifice. Humanity results from sacrifice; we are thus the children of religion. What I call after Freud the founding murder, in other words, the immolation of a sacrificial victim that is both guilty of disorder and able to restore order, is constantly re-enacted in the rituals at the origin of our institutions. Since the dawn of humanity, millions of innocent victims have been killed in this way in order to enable their fellow humans to live together, or at least not to destroy one another. This is the implacable logic of the sacred, which myths dissimulate less and less as humans become increasingly self-aware. The decisive point in this evolution is Christian revelation, a kind of divine expiation in which God through his Son could be seen as asking for forgiveness from humans for having revealed the mechanisms of their violence so late. Rituals had slowly educated them; from then on, humans had to do without.
Christianity demystifies religion. Demystification, which is good in the absolute, has proven bad in the relative, for we were not prepared to shoulder its consequences. We are not Christian enough. The paradox can be put a different way. Christianity is the only religion that has foreseen its own failure. This prescience is known as the apocalypse. Indeed, it is in the apocalyptic texts that the word of God is most forceful, repudiating mistakes that are entirely the fault of humans, who are less and less inclined to acknowledge the mechanisms of their violence. The longer we persist in our error, the stronger God’s voice will emerge from the devastation. […] The Passion unveiled the sacrificial origin of humanity once and for all. It dismantled the sacred and revealed its violence. […] By accepting crucifixion, Christ brought to light what had been ‘hidden since the foundation of the world,’ in other words, the foundation itself, the unanimous murder that appeared in broad daylight for the first time on the cross. In order to function, archaic religions need to hide their founding murder, which was being repeated continually in ritual sacrifices, thereby protecting human societies from their own violence. By revealing the founding murder, Christianity destroyed the ignorance and superstition that are indispensable to such religions. It thus made possible an advance in knowledge that was until then unimaginable.
[…] A scapegoat remains effective as long as we believe in its guilt. Having a scapegoat means not knowing that we have one. Learning that we have a scapegoat is to lose it forever and to expose ourselves to mimetic conflicts with no possible resolution. This is the implacable law of the escalation to extremes. The protective system of scapegoats is finally destroyed by the Crucifixion narratives as they reveal Jesus’ innocence, and, little by little, that of all analogous victims. The process of education away from violent sacrifice is thus underway, but it is going very slowly, making advances that are almost always unconscious. […] Mimetic theory does not seek to demonstrate that myth is null, but to shed light on the fundamental discontinuity and continuity between the passion and archaic religion. Christ’s divinity which precedes the Crucifixion introduces a radical rupture with the archaic, but Christ’s resurrection is in complete continuity with all forms of religion that preceded it. The way out of archaic religion comes at this price. A good theory about humanity must be based on a good theory about God. […] We can all participate in the divinity of Christ so long as we renounce our own violence.”
― Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre
Christianity demystifies religion. Demystification, which is good in the absolute, has proven bad in the relative, for we were not prepared to shoulder its consequences. We are not Christian enough. The paradox can be put a different way. Christianity is the only religion that has foreseen its own failure. This prescience is known as the apocalypse. Indeed, it is in the apocalyptic texts that the word of God is most forceful, repudiating mistakes that are entirely the fault of humans, who are less and less inclined to acknowledge the mechanisms of their violence. The longer we persist in our error, the stronger God’s voice will emerge from the devastation. […] The Passion unveiled the sacrificial origin of humanity once and for all. It dismantled the sacred and revealed its violence. […] By accepting crucifixion, Christ brought to light what had been ‘hidden since the foundation of the world,’ in other words, the foundation itself, the unanimous murder that appeared in broad daylight for the first time on the cross. In order to function, archaic religions need to hide their founding murder, which was being repeated continually in ritual sacrifices, thereby protecting human societies from their own violence. By revealing the founding murder, Christianity destroyed the ignorance and superstition that are indispensable to such religions. It thus made possible an advance in knowledge that was until then unimaginable.
[…] A scapegoat remains effective as long as we believe in its guilt. Having a scapegoat means not knowing that we have one. Learning that we have a scapegoat is to lose it forever and to expose ourselves to mimetic conflicts with no possible resolution. This is the implacable law of the escalation to extremes. The protective system of scapegoats is finally destroyed by the Crucifixion narratives as they reveal Jesus’ innocence, and, little by little, that of all analogous victims. The process of education away from violent sacrifice is thus underway, but it is going very slowly, making advances that are almost always unconscious. […] Mimetic theory does not seek to demonstrate that myth is null, but to shed light on the fundamental discontinuity and continuity between the passion and archaic religion. Christ’s divinity which precedes the Crucifixion introduces a radical rupture with the archaic, but Christ’s resurrection is in complete continuity with all forms of religion that preceded it. The way out of archaic religion comes at this price. A good theory about humanity must be based on a good theory about God. […] We can all participate in the divinity of Christ so long as we renounce our own violence.”
― Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre
“He never knew a single second could be expanded into something timeless and so archaic. It shook him to his core – there were no words for it.”
― The Sands Of Time
― The Sands Of Time



