Author: Larry Kooper

Original language: Greek. Gerasa is now Jerash, Jordan. When Nicomachus was born it was in the Roman province of Syria. Introduction to Arithmetic I downloaded a copy of the book from Google Books. It was translated by Martin Luther D’Ooge (sic) and published in 1926 by Macmillan. I did not read every word of the…

Original language: Greek. Epictetus was born in Phrygia, at that time in the Roman Empire, and in the present day in western Turkey. I read the Penguin Classics edition of Discourses and Selected Writings (2008), translated and edited by Robert Dobbin. I really enjoyed the book. This is Epictetus speaking to his students, not a…

Original language: Latin. I read Annals in the Penguin Classics edition (2012) translated by Cynthia Damon, and Histories in the Oxford World’s Classics edition translated by W.H. Fyfe (1912) revised and edited by D.S. Levene (1997). Annals is a history covering Rome in the years AD 14-68 (the first five emperors). It’s not as compelling…

Plutarch was born at Chaeronea, which is in present-day Greece, not far from Athens. Original language: Greek. I read some of Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (also called Parallel Lives). Of the 46 lives, I read the entirety of six – Theseus, Romulus, Lycurgus, Numa, Solon, and Publicola, and parts of two more…

Original language: Greek. Philo was Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. I read the green-covered Loeb Classical Library edition of Philo Volume 1 (1929), translated by F.H. Colson and G.H. Whitaker. It has the Greek and English on facing pages, which I mention not because I can read Greek (I can’t), but because…

Original language: Latin. I read Metamorphoses in the Penguin Classics edition (2004), translated by David Raeburn, with an introduction by Denis Feeney. Nothing that great. A catalog/encyclopedia of Greek and Roman myths, but it only superficially goes into each myth, unlike, say, the Greek dramatists who would devote a whole play to a myth. Of…

Original language: Latin. Livy was Rome’s foremost historian. His work Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City) covers Rome from its beginning to Livy’s lifetime. I fell in love with Livy’s writing so much that I spent two wonderful months reading all his surviving work, which amounts to about 25% of what he…

Original language: Latin. I read the Odes, the Epodes, and Ars Poetica. For the Odes and Epodes I read the Joseph P. Clancy translation published 1960 by U. of Chicago Press. I found Horace’s lyric poetry beautiful. The Clancy translations are excellent. They flow, they are idiomatic English, they feel and look poetic. I love…

Original language: Latin. The Aeneid I read the Rolfe Humphries translation, published 1951 by Scribners. It’s the story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fought in the Trojan war, had some more adventures, then went to Italy and became the ancestor of Rome’s founders. Along the way he won and broke the heart of Queen Dido…

The dates of his birth and death are uncertain; first half of 1st century BC. Original language: Latin. De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) I read the Rolfe Humphries translation published 1968 by Indiana University Press. What a restless mind, ever thinking, ranging over physics and biology. And proving propositions with logic.  …