Ancient & Medieval Classics Audio Books

If "The Iliad" is the world's greatest war story, then "The Odyssey" is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey through life.

Read by Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Kathleen Turner, and Matthew Broderick, here are the stories of the immortals of Olympus - the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece - as freshly described as if they were alive today.

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.

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.

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.

This wondrous tale of cosmic adventure immerses the listener in a world of heroes, gods, and demons...

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...

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.

Rome grew from a tiny community of small hill villages near the River Tiber in central Italy to one of the most powerful empires the world has seen. The Romans themselves believed that their great city was founded in the middle of the eighth century BCE.

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…