Book Description

'Only god is truly wise: human wisdom is of little or no value', declaimed Plato in his Apology. And yet the ancient Greeks, including Plato himself, more than any other people of antiquity were fascinated by the pursuit of the wisdom they called philosophia. That search for knowledge involved an extensive use of maxims and quotations, as we can see from those expressions of Homer prefaced by the phrase 'as people say'. Classical Greek lore and sagacity have throughout history continued to provide inspiration to figures as diverse as the Church Fathers, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Marx and John F Kennedy. Indeed, Homer, the Seven Sages and the Pre-Socratic philosophers are still extensively quoted in all the major western languages, while the admired sayings of Heraclitus, for instance, are known only through his quotations, his actual writings having long been lost. Yet for all their popularity and ubiquity, until now there has been no single resource for these quotations to which interested readers might turn. This unique and handsome reference book offers one of the most comprehensive selections of Greek quotations ever committed to print. Organised alphabetically, with the original Greek followed by an accompanying English translation, it collects some 7500 entries, ranging from the archaic period to late antiquity, and across philosophy, drama, poetry, history, science and medicine. Containing a full list of translators and of abbreviations, its index of key words enables the fast and efficient sourcing of each entry. This is a handbook designed for years of pleasurable and profitable browsing. Many readers may find that the views expressed twenty centuries ago, and now helpfully contained between one set of covers, are as pertinent and provocative today as they were then.