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Plato's Ion and Meno
by Plato
Credits: Audio Download
Socrates questions Ion, an actor, about his ability to interpret the poetry of Homer. In the Meno, the topic is whether goodness can be taught. Both dialogues provide more questions than answers.
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Plato's Gorgias
by Plato
Credits: Audio Download
Gorgias of Leontini, who teaches rhetoric, is in Athens, to instruct potential leaders in politics and business. A group has gathered at Callicles' house where Socrates questions him in his usual way.
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Plato's Symposium
by Plato
Credits: Audio Download
The dramatic nature of Plato's dialogues is delightfully evident in the Symposium. The marriage between character and thought bursts forth as the guests gather at Agathon's house and talk about love.
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Antigone
by Jean Anouilh
Credits: Audio Download
The body of Polynices, Antigone's brother, has been ordered to remain unburied by Creon, the new king of Thebes. Antigone defies the law, sealing her fate.
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Bard of the Middle Ages: The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer
by Michael Drout
Credits: Audio Download
Had Geoffrey Chaucer not written, or not written so well, the last 600 years of English literature would have been decidedly different. His creative style and use of language served as one of the primary foundations on which later writers built.
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Aesop's Fables
by Aesop
Credits: Audio Download
With an abreviated but keen sense of observation Aesop tells stories that never attempt to portray the real world; yet within this fantastic setting he gives us a vision of the human condition that still provides deep insight to this day.
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Greek Gods
by William Smith
Credits: Audio Download
Here we present 14 brief audio sketches of each of the major Greek Deities; providing the listener with information on lineage, characteristics, historical significance and artistic renditions.
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Oedipus the King
by Sophocles
Credits: Audio Download | Audio CD
In the hands of Sophocles, the master dramatist, the anguished tale of a man fated to kill his father and marry his mother retains its power to shock and move beyond any Freudian reference...
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Plato's Phaedrus
by Plato
Credits: Audio Download
Phaedrus treats the nature of love, mythical visions of human nature and destiny, and the essence of beauty. It ends with a penetrating discussion of speaking, writing, and the love of wisdom.
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Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth
by Joseph Campbell
Credits: Audio CD
Among his many gifts, Joseph Campbell's most impressive was the unique ability to take a contemporary situation, such as the murder and funeral of President John F. Kennedy, and help us understand its impact in the context of ancient mythology.
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Beowulf
Credits: Audio Download
The oldest long poem in Old English, written about 1000 AD, tells the story of a great warrior in Southern Scandinavia in both youth and maturity.
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The Odyssey
by Homer
Credits: Audio Download
Homer's Odyssey is the thrilling and moving tale of the wanderings of the hero Odysseus after the end of the Trojan war. For ten years he experiences storms, shipwrecks, and...
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The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer
Credits: Audio Download
Chaucer's greatest work, written towards the end of the fourteenth century, paints a brilliant picture of medieval life, society and values. The stories range from the romantic...
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The Odyssey
by Homer
Credits: Audio CD
If "The Iliad" is the world's greatest war story, then "The Odyssey" is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey through life.
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The Odyssey
by Homer
Credits: Audio Download
The Odyssey - the greatest adventure story of them all - is packed with excitement: monsters...
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Dao De Jing
by Lao Zi
Credits: Audio Download
Socrates' account of his own quest in Plato's Apology resembles that of Lao Zi. Ancient philosophy in China and in Greece, places self-knowledge as the center of human existence as East meets West.
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Dante and His Divine Comedy
by Timothy B. Shutt
Credits: Audio Download
By near universal agreement, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy stands very high among the greatest literary works ever written. This may come as a surprise, because Dante is best known for the Inferno, the first cantica of the Commedia, which is, by any standard, fairly grim in some respects.
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Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
Credits: Audio Download
Zen is a way of life, a religion, and an aesthetic, as well as one of the oldest and most profound religious...
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The General Prologue & the Physician's Tale
by Geoffrey Chaucer
Credits: Audio Download
In an authoritative performance by actor Richard Bebb, two sections from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are presented in Old English, under the advisement of the leading living scholar on Chaucerian pronunciation, Professor Derek Brewer.
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The Iliad
by Homer
Credits: Audio Download
Perhaps the greatest poem of the Western world, The Iliad tells the story of 50 critical days toward the end of the Trojan war...
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Odyssey of the West I - A Classic Education through the Great Books: Hebrews and Greeks
by Timothy B. Shutt
Credits: Audio Download
The lectures address-in chronological sequence-a series of major works that have shaped the ongoing development of Western thought both in their own right and in cultural dialogue with other traditions.
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Greek Drama: Tragedy and Comedy
by Peter Meineck
Credits: Audio Download
The plays of one ancient city 2,500 years ago by just four playwrights have had a profound effect on the development of all subsequent Western drama, not only on the theatrical stage, but on opera, film, television, stand-up comedy, and dance…
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Poems of Rumi
by Rumi
Credits: Audio Download
Rumi (1207-1273) was one of the world’s most profound and influential spiritual masters.
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Greek Lives
by Plutarch
Credits: Audio Download | Audio CD
Written at the beginning of the second century, Plutarch's collection of accounts of the lives of noble Grecians is a brilliant social history of the ancient world by one of the greatest biographers and moralists of all time.
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The Aeneid
by Virgil
Credits: Audio Download
The masterpiece of Rome's greatest poet, Virgil's Aeneid has inspired generations of readers and holds a central place in Western literature.
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