Prometheus

 

I couldn't wait to develop the 4 year plan for reading "good for me" literature (who even does that?).so I began right away with Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus,

I had heard about Prometheus and his giving fire to humans and his providing an eagle with a daily liver charcuterie but I didn't know who he was or who chained him or why he was chained. I read the play (total transparency here: I fell asleep twice) and realizing I needed help, I looked to YouTube. Luckily I found Zaireeto's synopsis of the Prometheus Bound - Ancient Greek Play. 

I then read the play again, this time with eyes open.

As a result I met Hephaestus, Ion, and Hermes and I whet my appetite to get Prometheus' full story.

It turns out that the Wikipedia article Prometheus has the full story, but, alas, I found myself falling asleep (AGAIN!).  So I looked for some fun ways to feed my mind:

• If you want the full story, watch the 5 minute TED ed production of The Myth of Prometheus. Iseult Gillespie does a good job of weaving together the various writings in which Prometheus lives.  Iseult also includes 19th century works in which he plays a starring role, which is a way that artists and thinkers participate in Hutchins' and Adler's the Great Conversation. The only quibble that I have with Iseult is that he uses a vulture instead of an eagle. (2018)

• For a tease about how widespread the myth is watch the 8 minute PBS production of Why Prometheus risked everything for humans. Iseult Gillespie also wrote this and includes snippets of Promethean heroes in other cultures. (2023)

• As I mentioned above, here's the 6 minute Zaireeto synopsis of the Prometheus Bound - Ancient Greek Play written by Aeschylus. (2023) 

Finally, if you want to read the play and part of Plato's dialogue:

• A 40 page script of Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, translated by Ian Johnston. (2012)

• A paraphrase of the paragraph in the dialogue Protagoras by Plato, where Protagoras uses Prometheus to illustrate his claim that virtue can be taught.

 One great read complete, 199 to go! : )

[NOTE: 20250223 I met Azazel in Paradise Lost and learned that, besides being in the Pandemonium, he's also the demon that claims the scapegoat every Yom Kippur. Interestingly enough, in another Hebrew story (Book of Enoch) he was punished for giving humans forbidden knowledge and subsequently punished when the Archangel Raphael chained him to jagged rocks until Judgement Day. Granite (a little pun), I might be guilty of a little confirmation bias for seeing links (sorry, I couldn't help myself) between Azazel and Prometheus]

200 Great Books to Read

Okay, okay . . .

You might not think that a list of of 200 books is much of a paring down from a list of 398, but its a do-able number, especially if I'm considering a 4 year time frame.

I used 16 other lists to hone the Great Books of the Western World. Half of these are more current 'classical'  (Baylor University Scholar, How to Read a Book, Joseph Brodsky's List of 83, etc) and half are literary/popular (20th Century Literature, Library Center, Best Sellers, Goodread lists, etc). 

I set up my spreadsheet to accommodate weights and ran various options:

• Equal weights
• Classical only
• Popular only

I looked at the results and decided to weight my final list heavy classical.  Here is a comparison of my final version compared to  a Classical only list:

TIME PERIOD	FINAL	ALL CLASSIC
20th Century	13%	11%
19th Century	14%	14%
18th Century	8%	9%
17th Century	17%	14%
Between 1000 and 1600	8%	8%
Between 0 and 1000	7%	7%
BCE	34%	38%

I won't bore you with the any more geeky details (but if you are interested, the List of Lists is at the bottom).

It's an exciting list of intriguing heroes, dastardly characters, talented writers, interesting stories, and thoughtful ideas to explore.  I've already met Prometheus, Vulcan, Io, and Mercury and want to map out who's who in Greek myths . . .  

. . . but I best put on the brakes and develop a plan first.

Classical Education Reading List 200 Great Books to Read
TITLE	AUTHOR	DATE	rank
Don Quixote	Miguel de Cervantes	1605	1
The Odyssey	Homer	-700	2
The Prince	Niccolò Machiavelli	1532	3
Discourse on the Method	René Descartes	1637	4
Candide	Voltaire	1759	5
Antigone	Sophocles	-450	6
Gargantua and Pantagruel	François Rabelais	1564
The Iliad	Homer	-700	8
Paradise Lost	John Milton	1667	9
Histories	Herodotus	-430	10
Oedipus Rex	Sophocles	-450	11
Leviathan	Thomas Hobbes	1651	12
Essays	Michel Eyquem de Montaigne	1592	13
Prometheus Bound	Aeschylus	-424	14
The Frogs	Aristophanes	-405	15
Hippolytus	Euripides	-428	16
Institutes of the Christian Religion	John Calvin	1536	17
Gulliver's Travels	Jonathan Swift	1726	18
To the Lighthouse	Virginia Woolf	1927	19
Divine Comedy	Dante Alighieri	1321	20
Emma	Jane Austen	1815	21
War and Peace	Count Leo Tolstoy	1867	22
Macbeth	William Shakespeare	1606	23
Confessions	Augustine of Hippo	400	24
adventures of huckleberry finn	Mark Twain	1884	25
the aeneid	Virgil	-19	26
Heart of Darkness	Joseph Conrad	1902	27
On Liberty	John Stuart Mill	1859	28
The Oresteia	Aeschylus	-450	29
Oedipus at Colonus	Sophocles	-401	30
Faust	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe	1829	31
The Bacchae	Euripides	-405	32
The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	1925	33
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man	James Joyce	1916	34
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations	Adam Smith	1776	35
On Christian Doctrine	Augustine of Hippo	426	36
On the Natural Faculties	Galen	199	37
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding	John Locke	1689	38
Tartuffe	Molière	1666	39
Seven Against Thebes	Aeschylus	-467	40
The Persians	Aeschylus	-472	41
The Suppliants	Aeschylus	-458	42
Lysistrata	Aristophanes	-411	43
The Birds	Aristophanes	-414	44
The Wasps	Aristophanes	-422	45
On the Soul	Aristotle	-350	46
Physics	Aristotle	-350	47
Ethics	Baruch Spinoza	1677	48
Apology	Plato	-390	49
Crito	Plato	-390	50
Phaedo	Plato	-367	51
Dialogues	Plato	-370	52
Ajax	Sophocles	-450	53
The History of the Peloponnesian War	Thucydides	-400	54
Eclogues	Virgil	-38	55
Georgics	Virgil	-29	56
In Praise of Folly	Erasmus	1511	57
The Annals	Tacitus	117	58
crime and punishment	Fyodor Dostoevsky	1866	59
Middlemarch	George Eliot	1871	60
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling	Henry Fielding	1749	61
Waiting for Godot	Samuel Beckett	1952	62
ulysses	James Joyce	1922	63
pride and prejudice	Jane Austen	1813	64
A Doll's House	Henrik Ibsen	1879	65
Metaphysics	Aristotle	-322	66
Nicomachean Ethics	Aristotle	-322	67
Politics	Aristotle	-322	68
The Brothers Karamazov	Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky	1880	69
anna karenina	Leo Tolstoy	1873	70
hamlet	William Shakespeare	1600	71
Animal Farm	George Orwell	1945	72
Utopia	Thomas More	1516	73
The Critique of Pure Reason	Immanuel Kant	1781	74
The Meditations	Marcus Aurelius	180	75
Democracy in America	Alexis de Tocqueville	1835	76
Beowulf	Anonymous	1025	77
Pensées	Blaise Pascal	1670	78
Metamorphoses	Ovid	8	79
Electra (Sophocles play)	Sophocles	-450	80
Fear and Trembling	Søren Kierkegaard	1843	81
King Lear	William Shakespeare	1605	82
medea	Euripides	-431	83
the scarlet letter	Nathaniel Hawthorne	1850	84
The Interpretation of Dreams	Sigmund Freud	1900	85
Death In Venice	Thomas Mann	1912	86
The City of God	Augustine of Hippo	426	87
Treatise on Light	Christiaan Huygens	1690	88
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding	David Hume	1748	89
New Atlantis	Francis Bacon	1627	90
Novum Organum	Francis Bacon	1620	91
Beyond Good and Evil	Friedrich Nietzsche	1886	92
The Principles of Human Knowledge	George Berkeley	1710	93
Saint Joan	George Bernard Shaw	1924	94
Hedda Gabler	Henrik Ibsen	1890	95
The Master Builder	Henrik Ibsen	1892	96
The Wild Duck	Henrik Ibsen	1884	97
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy	Isaac Newton	1687	98
Optics	Isaac Newton	1704	99
A Letter Concerning Toleration	John Locke	1689	100
Areopagitica	John Milton	1644	101
Utilitarianism	John Stuart Mill	1861	102
Don Juan	Moliere	1665	103
The Miser	Moliere	1668	104
Almagest	Ptolemy	170	105
Meditations on First Philosophy	René Descartes	1641	106
Rules for the Direction of the Mind	René Descartes	1701	107
Civilization and Its Discontents	Sigmund Freud	1930	108
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals	William Harvey	1657	109
Poetics	Aristotle	-335	110
Discourses	Epictetus	108	111
Electra	Euripides	-414	112
The Phoenician Women	Euripides	-425	113
On the Nature of Things	Lucretius	1473	114
Gorgias	Plato	-375	115
Meno	Plato	-367	116
Phaedrus	Plato	-367	117
Protagoras	Plato	-390	118
Symposium	Plato	-367	119
Euthyphro	Plato	-390	120
Timaeus	Plato	-387	121
Summa Theologica	Thomas Aquinas	1274	122
Antony and Cleopatra	William Shakespeare	1607	123
Phèdre	Jean Racine	1677	124
robinson crusoe	Daniel Defoe	1719	125
The Waste Land	T. S. Eliot	1922	126
the ambassadors	Henry James	1903	127
The Metamorphosis	Franz Kafka	1915	128
the sound and the fury	William Faulkner	1929	129
the castle	Franz Kafka	1926	130
The Republic	Plato	-375	131
the charterhouse of parma	Stendhal	1839	132
brideshead revisited	Evelyn Waugh	1945	133
lolita	Vladimir Nabokov	1955	134
Persian Letters	Montesquieu	1721	135
The Tempest	William Shakespeare	1611	136
A Modest Proposal	Jonathan Swift	1729	137
The Merchant of Venice	William Shakespeare	1596	138
on the origin of species	Charles Darwin	1859	139
a room of one's own	Virginia Woolf	1929	140
invisible man	Ralph Ellison	1952	141
An Introduction to Mathematics	Alfred North Whitehead	1911	142
Science and the Modern World	Alfred North Whitehead	1925	143
Elements of Chemistry	Antoine Lavoisier	1789	144
The Problems of Philosophy	Bertrand Russell	1912	145
Scientific Treatises	Blaise Pascal	1658	146
The Provincial Letters	Blaise Pascal	1657	147
Articles of Confederation	Continental Congress	1777	148
Elements	Euclid	300	149
Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences	Galileo Galilei	1638	150
Troilus and Criseyde	Geoffrey Chaucer	1385	151
The Philosophy of History	Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel	1837	152
The Philosophy of Right	Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel	1821	153
Science and Hypothesis	Henri Poincare	1902	154
Berenice	Jean Racine	1670	155
Concerning Civil Government, Second Essay	John Locke	1690	156
Samson Agonistes	John Milton	1674	157
Capital	Karl Marx	1894	158
Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers	Max Planck	1947	159
Experimental Researches in Electricity	Michael Faraday	1832	160
The Critique of the School for Wives	Moliere	1663	161
The Imaginary Invalid	Moliere	1673	162
The School for Wives	Moliere	1662	163
Introduction to Arithmetic	Nicomachus	120	164
The Geometry	René Descartes	1649	165
Declaration of Independence	Thomas Jefferson Committee of Five	1776	166
On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies	William Gilbert	1893	167
The Principles of Psychology	William James	1918	168
Pragmatism	William James	1907	169
mansfield park	Jane Austen	1814	170
Song of Roland	Anonymous	1040	171
The Clouds	Aristophanes	-423	172
The Women at the Thesmophoria Festival	Aristophanes	-411	173
Odes	Horace	-13	174
Second Treatise on Government	John Locke	1689	175
Tristram Shandy	Laurence Sterne	1759	176
Ion (dialogue)	Plato	-390	177
Sophist	Plato	-361	178
Theaetetus	Plato	-367	179
Charmides	Plato	-390	180
Cratylus	Plato	-367	181
Critias	Plato	-387	182
Euthydemus	Plato	-367	183
Laches	Plato	-390	184
Laws	Plato	-367	185
Lysis	Plato	-387	186
Parmenides	Plato	-367	187
Philebus	Plato	-387	188
Statesman	Plato	-387	189
The Enneads	Plotinus	270	190
The Parallel Lives	Plutarch	100	191
Henry V	William Shakespeare	1599	192
Agamemnon	Aeschylus	-450	193
On Conic Sections	Apollonius of Perga	-190	194
Rhetoric	Aristotle	-322	195
Iphigenia in Aulis	Euripides	-406	196
The Trojan Women	Euripides	-415	197
Aphorisms	Hippocrates	-400	198
Of the Epidemics	Hippocrates	-400	199
On Airs, Water, and Places	Hippocrates	-400	200

LIST OF LISTS
NAME OF LIST	ITEMS	Wt	ITEMS IN FINAL	% of FINAL
Great Books of Westren World	391	4	169	85%
The Harvard Classics	323	4	38	19%
Greatest Western Books of All Time July 2024	407	1	63	32%
Baylor University scholars: Independent Reading List Fall 2022	268	4	100	50%
UCLA Department of English 19th Century American Literature gradute reading lists	232	3	9	5%
How to Read a Book	503	4	172	86%
Mortimer J. Adler reading list created February 5th, 2018 by Victoria Rosa (Goodreads)	96	4	49	25%
Great Books selected by Mortimer Adler	214	4	136	68%
Joseph Brodsky’s List of 83 Books You Should Read to Have an Intelligent Conversation	156	4	92	46%
List extracted from Why Read Classics by Italo Calvino	45	4	8	4%
List extracted from the course Art of Reading by Timothy Spurgin, Ph.D. Professor, Lawrence University	135	2	15	8%
20th Century in Literature Wikipedia	891	3	17	9%
Goodreads Literature	404	1	38	19%
Goodreads Best Books of the 20th Century	200	1	10	5%
The Complete 500 compiled by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center)	500	2	29	15%
List of best-selling books Wikipedia	289	1	6	3%
Modern Library: 100 Best Novels, 100 Best Nonfiction 2000	200	2	12	6%