Greek Literature

Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 32.9 (Codex Laurentianus), fol. 1r — opening of Sophocles' Ajax in Byzantine minuscule, 10th–11th century

Sophocles I: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

Reading companion and full text of Sophocles, Volume I (Loeb Classical Library 20), translated by F. Storr — the three Theban plays in the order they appear in the manuscript tradition: Oedipus the King, the founding masterpiece of tragic recognition; Oedipus at Colonus, the poet's final work, produced posthumously; and Antigone, the first of the three to be composed and the one in which the conflict between divine and human law receives its definitive dramatic statement.

Lithograph portrait of Jakob Burckhardt, Antistes of Basel, published by H. Fischer & Co., Basel, c. 1854.

History of Greek Culture

Jacob Burckhardt's magisterial survey of ancient Greek civilization, examining its art, religion, politics, and poetry as expressions of a unified cultural spirit that set the foundations of Western thought.