Herodotus of Halicarnassus

>>25616455
Why were they so homosexual?

>>25616679
You’re projecting your own hedonism onto a more pure society that you lack the capacity to conceptualize due to being corrupted.

>>25616455
>Herodotus, Histories
>Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
>Xenophon, Hellenica
This gives you the Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath. Augment with Xenophon's Anabasis and Katabasis. Then move on to Plutarch's Parallel Lives. There will be a lot of philosophy in Thucydides, but practical philosophy, not Socrates' vanities.
However, if you want to understand the Greeks, you have to start with Homer (both the Iliad and the Odyssey). The Iliad contextualizes the beginning of Herodotus, and while all of western philosophy may be a footnote to Plato, Plato is just a response to Homer.

Alternatively, if you want a chronological reading list of Greek mythology that antedates known Greek history:
>Hesiod, Theogony
>Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
>Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica
>Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
>Euripides, Heracles
>Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes
>Homer, Iliad
>Homer, Odyssey
>Aeschylus, Oresteia

>>25616699
They owned slaves and engaged in pretty hedonistic activities themselves. Not all, but many. I suppose we just live in a sordid world and denying it doesn't help us.

>>25616699
Pederasty was commonplace

>>25616721
thank you

>>25616455
There are some logographers earlier than Herodotus who discuss things like the origins of certain city states, their affiliated myths, etc.

>>25618896
such as?

>>25616721
Heracles takes place after Seven Against Thebes. Anyway, here's a tentative list of extant attic drama sorted by order of mythological events (A: Aeschylus; S: Sophocles; E: Euripides):
>Prometheus Bound (A?)
>The Suppliants (A)
>Ion (E) / very underrated, I recommend it
>The Bacchae (E)
>Medea (E)
>Alcestis (E)
>Oedipus Rex (S)
>Oedipus in Colonus (S)
>Seven Against Thebes (A)
>Phoenician Women (E)
>Antigone (S)
>The Suppliants (E)
>Heracles (E)
>The Women of Trachis (S)
>Hippolytus (E)
>Heraclidae (E)
>Iphigenia in Aulis (E)
>Rhesus (E?) / Book 10 of the Iliad
>Ajax (S)
>Philoctetes (S)
>The Trojan Women (E)
>Hecuba (E)
>Agamemnon (A)
>Cyclops (E) / The Odyssey
>The Libation Bearers (A)
>Electra (S)
>Electra (E)
>Helen (E)
>Eumenids (A)
>Iphigenia among the Taurians (E)
>Orestes (E)
>Andromache (E)
>The Persians (A) / only extant non-mythological tragedy

I could be off in some places. Many of these tell of the same events in a different way, or alter the events from other dramas or works. For instance, in Medea it was Aegeus who was the Argonaut, and Theseus not being born yet due to his father's infertility was an important point in the drama. Also note that most tragedies speak of contemporary events in 5th c. Greece while at the same time telling a mythological story. It helps to know a thing or two about what was going on at that time, especially when it comes to the politics of Athens and its ideological rival Delphi.
Lyric poets starting from Stesichorus tackle mythical events as well, in fact it was he who started that whole "Helen was in Egypt the whole time" version of the myth, rendering Trojan War completely pointless. Victory odes by Simonides, Bacchylides, and Pindar cover mythology extensively.

sneed

Wrong board