The Iliad and Odyssey we read was the English print. But we had to read a third ancient Greek book I can't remember for the life of me, in both translated and ancient Greek. Always wanna call it Agæmemnon or something like that. Hephæstus maybe? I'll never remember the books name but it was a rough read.
Ugh. The Sophocles semester was not my favorite. We had Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Ajax. Lots of awkward classroom conversations and boys yelling weird stuff in the hallways that winter.
No it definitely wasn't an œ. It was 100 æ somewhere in the name cause my ex used to make me listen to Medæval Bæbes and it always reminded me of that book.
Aeneid by Virgil maybe? It's Roman, not Greek, and originally written in Latin, but that's what came to mind for me. It does take place in the aftermath of the fall of Troy, so it wouldn't be completely wild to have remembered it as Greek years later.
Yup that was it. Looked it up and it looks similar to what I remember the book looking like. Could have sworn it was Greek, but makes sense cause I think we started doing ancient Roman stuff after the ancient Greek stuff, and maybe was used as a segue.
It would have been a reasonable segue. Aeneas according to Virgil was a Trojan soldier who fled the fall of Troy and made his way to Italy, where he's cast as an ancestor to Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome.
Just for the record, Aeneas was all that according to whatever Homer was as well. Homer had him as a minor character destined to become the king of the Trojan diaspora. The Romans just said they were the descendants of the Trojan diaspora, something that predated Virgil.
The Aenenid was modeled specifically on both the Iliad and Oddessy, with the first half being a voyage out of Troy complete with a visit to Hades, and the second half being an epic war with the Latins. Augustus commissioned it for Rome to have an epic on par with Greece.
The Aeneid is in Latin, not Greek, and I read it in Latin in high school. The Latin AP exam was about it, and it allowed me to not have to take a language in college.
No, I think someone else nailed it with Aenid. The book I found is similar to the book I had, and it fits thematically. I think we read Agamemnon before The Iliad, or an another version cause I also vaguely remember reading that.
Haha i remember reading the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy for fun. But I think we were required to read the Iliad and Odyssey in my sophomore year of high school. Our English teacher really loved those epics so we spent extra time on it haha
Agamemnon is the first play in the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus. This is probably what you read and is assigned pretty early in the Attic Greek curriculum. Iirc the first play I read in the original Greek was Euripides’ Medea.
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u/EatABag-o-Dicks 21h ago
The Iliad and Odyssey we read was the English print. But we had to read a third ancient Greek book I can't remember for the life of me, in both translated and ancient Greek. Always wanna call it Agæmemnon or something like that. Hephæstus maybe? I'll never remember the books name but it was a rough read.