There was one moment when I wanted to look up something and I realised there was Plato on absolutely every flat surface in my study — and that’s not taking into account anything on my e-reader, which has all of Plato and Xenophon conveniently in the original and in translation. What a wonderful modern age we live in!
Plato
- The Republic
- The Laws
- Phaedrus
- Symposium
- Apology
- Crito
- Phaedo
- Euthyphro
- Timaeus
- Critias
- Gorgias
- Eryxias
- Lysis
- Laches
- Menexenus
- Cratylus
- Alkibiades I and II
- Thaetetus
- Sophist
- Statesman
- Protagoras
- Charmides
- Ion
- Meno
- Parmenides
I thoroughly recommend the new (2013) Loeb translation of The Republic, which is lucid and excellent and well worth the price. Otherwise, the Everyman (A.D. Lindsay) translation is way better than the Penguin. The Jowett (linked above) has the great advantage of being free online, and generally the online free translations of Plato are pretty good, and the only reasonable way to get the obscure ones. Apart from the Republic, the Penguin translations are good.
Xenophon
- Memories of Socrates
- The Apology of Socrates
- The Economist
- The Polity of the Athenians
- The Symposium
I have a complete Xenophon on my Kindle, and one day I’ll read more than the Socratic ones and the Anabasis. The difference between Plato’s Socrates and Xenophon’s is very instuctive.
Other Classical Sources
- The Circle of Socrates — awesome new collection of the writing about Socrates that isn’t P or X
- Herodotus: The Histories
- The Greek Anthology
- Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns
- Homer: The Iliad & The Odyssey (Fagles translation, worth paying for)
- Diogenes Laertius The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
- Cicero Letters
- Cicero Tusculan Disputations
- Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy
- Ovid Metamorphoses
- Pausanius Description of Greece
Renaissance Sources
- Marsilio Ficino: Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love
- Marsilio Ficino: When Philosophers Rule — commentary on the Republic and the Laws
- Meditations on the Soul: Letters of Marsilio Ficino
- Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses
- Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Oration on the Dignity of Man
Useful Links
- Plato for free on Gutenberg
- Xenophon for free on Gutenberg
- Orbis — the geospatial model of the Roman World
- The Oath in Classical and Archaic Greece (I used this constantly)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Mapping the Catalogue of Ships
- Pico Project
- Polis – economics of Classical Greee