Balder Ex-Libris - Great Books of the Western WorldReview of books rare and missing2024-03-16T01:56:42+00:00urn:md5:aa728a70505b2fae05796923271581c2DotclearGreat Books of the Western World - Volume 14 Plutarchurn:md5:d96a01e9c140d244c3f5a0cb19cea2d72013-01-29T00:20:00+00:002013-01-29T00:21:06+00:00balderGreat Books of the Western WorldRome <p><img src="https://balderexlibris.com/public/img2/.Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_14_Plutarch_s.jpg" alt="" /><br />
Author : <strong>Great Books of the Western World - Hutchins Robert Maynard</strong><br />
Title : <strong>Volume 14 Plutarch</strong><br />
Year : 1952<br />
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Link download : <a href="https://balderexlibris.com/public/ebook/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_14_Plutarch.zip">Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_14_Plutarch.zip</a><br />
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PLUTARCH lived in the time of the emperors Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian, a time usually thought of as the beginning of the best age of the Roman imperial period. and as the last great era of Greek and Roman literature. He is not quoted nor even mentioned by his celebrated contemporaries, Juvenal, Quintilian, Martial, Tacitus, and the younger Pliny. He never wrote directly of himself, and the sources for his . life are the many scattered passages where some reminiscence appears incidentally. Later, when his fame became widespread, legends grew up to supplement the little extant knowledge. The legends tended to confirm the impression made by his works that he was to an exceptional degree representative of his time. Plutarch was pictured as tutor to Trajan, to whom he was supposed to have dedicated a treatise on the good of a prince after the manner of Plato's epistle to Dion. He was supposed to have lived for a long period in Rome, where he was held in great-esteem, honored with consular rank, and later appointed governor of Greece by the Emperor, who had been his pupil. These legendary titles and distinctions apparently have no basis in fact. The truth seems to be that the man who wrote of the fall of Athens, of the growth of Roman dominion over the East, of the overthrow of the Roman republic, was a Theban provincial, fortunate in his ancestors and in his education, contented with his family and his friends, and loyal in a spirited way to his town. He did go to Rome on several occasions. His visits were short. He himself records that he had "no leisure while there to study and exercise the Latin tongue, as well for the business I had then to do, as also to satisfy them that came to learn philosophy of me."He adds, however, that he had familiar conversation with many of the highest men in Rome; his lack of Latin would not prevent that in the "Greek city," as Juvenal indignantly called it. From this "great place, containing plenty of all sorts of books" he returned to "his poor little town and remained there willingly, being loath to make it less by the withdrawal of even one." The place of his birth was Chaeronea in Boeotia. It was a town not incapable of stirring the imagination by the contrast of its memories with its present obscurity. Plutarch relates that long ago Epaminondas had called it "the playfield of Mars." Not as long ago as that, Macedon and the allied armies of Thebes and Athens had fought on its plains a battle "fatal to Greek liberty." Chaeronea appears in Plutarch's life of Antony, where he recalls the story he had from his great-grandfather Nicarchus. The citizens of the town, Nicarchus among them; had been forced by Antony's supply officers to carry corn like beasts of burden. They were starting out in file on their second trip to the sea when news came of Antony's defeat at Actium. "Antony's purveyors and soldiers fled upon the news, and the citizens of Chaeronea divided the corn among themselves." Among the sons of Nicarchus was Lamprias, Plutarch's grandfather. Plutarch remembers him with joy as a man whose wit was affected by wine as incense by fire. Lamprias too figures in the life of Antony as able to pass on, from a friend who had lived in Alexandria, tales of the luxurious revels of Antony and Cleopatra. Plutarch's father is mentioned by him a number of times, once with vivid gratitude for the way in which he taught his son to share honor and avoid envy. As a young man, Plutarch studied at Athens with Ammonius, reputedly an Egyptian who taught at Alexandria before settling in Athens. Plutarch boarded in his teacher's house and records that one of his fellow students was a descendant of Themistocles. It is not known when he wrote the series of treatises collected under the title Moralia.Many of them, he tells us, were expansions of his notes for lectures at Rome. It was after his return to Chaeronea that he compiled his Symposiacs, or Table Talk, wherein a variety of personages are depicted in discussion of a wide variety of lively, often trivial, problems. According to most opinion, he began work on the Parallel Lives towards the end of his life. He states that his original intention had been to in struct others, but in the course of writing he discovered that more and more it was he himself who was deriving profit and stimulation from "lodging these men one after the other in his house." In his native Chaeronea, Plutarch seems to have held many municipal offices. When he was ridiculed on one occasion for his patience in discharging trivial duties, he said: "You remember what Antisthenes said, whell someone was surprised that he carried some pickled fish home from the market: 'But it is for myself.' When you reproach me for watching tiles measured out and stone and mortar brought up, I give you the converse answer: 'It is not for myself, but for the city.''' He filled the position of Archon a number of times and served as a priest of Apollo at Delphi. His term in this last office seems to have lasted to the end of his life, for in one of his Symposiacs he argues on the question Whether an Old Man should continue in Public Life by submitting that no one would say to him: "You have served for many pythiads, you have taken part enough in the sacrifices, processions, and dances, and it is high time, Plutarch, now you are an old man, to lay aside your garland and retire as superannuated from the oracle." There is much testimony in his writing of the tenderness and warmth in the smaller circle of his family. Plutarch wrote affectionate descriptions of his little girl, Timoxena;and a famous letter of consolation to his wife at the time of this child's death. In another letter to his wife he writes that he finds '~scarcely an erasure, as in a book well-written" in the happiness of his long life. Legend reports that the people of Rome requested after his death that a statue be erected to honor his virtue. This translation was made by many hands, but is commonly called the Dryden Translation. <strong>...</strong></p>Great Books of the Western World - Volume 05 Aeschylus Sophocles Euripides Aristophanesurn:md5:ed1d482abc976f6d09599087335b9a612013-01-04T14:52:00+00:002013-01-04T14:56:51+00:00balderGreat Books of the Western WorldGreecePoem <p><img src="https://balderexlibris.com/public/img/.Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_05_Aeschylus_Sophocles_Euripides_Aristophanes_s.jpg" alt="" /><br />
Author : <strong>Great Books of the Western World - Hutchins Robert Maynard</strong><br />
Title : <strong>Volume 05 Aeschylus Sophocles Euripides Aristophanes</strong><br />
Year : 1952<br />
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. AESCHYLUS the poet was born at Eleusis around the year 525 B.C. His father, Euphorion, belonged to the "Eupatridae," or old nobility, of Athens. Whether Aeschylus was actually initiated into the Eleusinian Mvsteries is not known. The accusation that he divulged the secrets of Demeter has been interpreted both as supporting and as refuting the view that he was an initiate. Aeschylus fought against the Persian invader at Marathon in 490, and he may also have been with the Athenians seven years later at Salamis, and even at Artemisium and Plataea. Some scholars have found in the poet's knowledge of Thracian geography and customs an indication that he took part in one or more of the northern expeditions in the years following the Persian War. The first of Aeschylus' plays was exhibited in 499, only thirty years after the establishment by Peisistratus of the annual contest in tragedy at the festival of the City Dionysia. Thespis, who won the prize at that competition, was called by the ancients the earliest tragic poet. But Aeschylus himself would seem to be the true founder of tragedy, since, according to Aristotle, he first introduced a second actor, diminished the importance of the chorus, and assigned the leading part to the dialogue. Aeschylus' first recorded victory was in 484, when he had been competing for fifteen years. Between that date and the performance of his last work, the Oresteian trilogy and the satyr play Proteus, in 458, he won the prize at least twelve times. He wrote more than ninety plays, of which seven survive. The oldest of these, the Suppliant Maidens, cannot be much later than 490. The Persians, which is the only extant Greek tragedy on an historical subject, was exhibited in 472, the Seven against Thebes in 467, the Prometheus probably not long before 458, the date of the trilogy made up of the Agamemnon, the Choephoroe, and the Eumenides. The plays were exhibited in groups of four-three tragedies and a satyr play. Sometimes, as in the case of the surviving trilogy, but not always, the tragedies formed a dramatic cycle, integrated in fable and in theme. The poet acted in his own plays. According to Aristotle, Aeschylus was charged with impiety for revealing certain parts of the Eleusinian ritual, and defended himself by saying that he was not aware the matter was a secret. But the ancients knew neither the name of the offending play nor the precise nature of what was revealed. A later tradition adds to the fact of the accusa tion, the doubtful details that Aeschylus escaped the fury of the audience by clasping the altar of Dionysus in the theater, and that he was later acquitted by the Court of the Areopagus hecause he had fought bravely at Marathon. The first of Aeschylus' several trips to Sicily appears to have been made some time b~tween 476 and 473. Like Pindar and Simonides he was invited to visit the court of King Hiero of Syracuse. After the eruption of Etna, Hiero had re-established the town of the same name at the base of the mountain. To celebrate the new city and to honor his patron, Aeschylus wrote and produced the Women of Etna. On a second visit to Sicily around 472 the poet is said to have repeated for Hiero the Persians, which had just been crowned with the first prize at Athens. Sometime after 458 he was yet a third time in Sicily. There is little reason to believe the various explanations offered in antiquity for Aeschylus' leaving Athens. Most of them are based upon his supposed envy of the popularity of Sophocles and Simonides, and are made improbable, if not impossible, by known facts and dates. The fable that he met his death from an eagle letting fall a tortoise upon his bald head, presumably mistaking it for a stone upon which to break the animal's shell, may have had its origin in an attempt to interpret the allegorical representation of an apotheosis. Aeschylus died and was buried at Gela in 456. The epitaph inscribed on his tomb is attributed by some to Aeschvlus himself: This memorial stone covers Aeschylus the Athenian, Euphorion's son, who died in wheat-bearing Gela. His famed valor the precinct of Marathon could tell and the long-haired Mede, who knows it well. Shortly after the dea th of Aesch ylus the Athenians passed a decree that his plays should be exhibited at public expense, and that whoever desired to produce one of his plays should "receive a chorus." His tomb became a place of pilgrimage, and in the middle of the fourth century, at the proposal of the orator Lycurgus, his statue was set up in the Theatre of Dionysus at Athens. <strong>...</strong></p>Great Books of the Western World - Volume 04 The Iliad of Homer The Odysseyurn:md5:d61824eb615768b968a0b1861b618bb22013-01-04T14:47:00+00:002013-01-04T14:49:00+00:00balderGreat Books of the Western WorldEuropeGreece <p><img src="https://balderexlibris.com/public/img/.Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_04_The_Iliad_of_Homer_The_Odyssey_s.jpg" alt="" /><br />
Author : <strong>Great Books of the Western World - Hutchins Robert Maynard</strong><br />
Title : <strong>Volume 04 The Iliad of Homer The Odyssey</strong><br />
Year : 1952<br />
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. HOMER. HOMER is not a man known to have existed, to whom the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey is imputed. Homer is the author of the Homeric poems, a hypothesis constructed to account for their existence and quality. There were several "Lives of Homer" in antiquity. Their date is uncertain, but the Homer they present is certainly a figure of romance and conjecture. Seven cities, though not always the same seven, are recorded as claiming to be the birth-place of Homer; six centuries are proposed as containing his birth-date. Homeric scholarship turns around the facts known about the existence of a written text of the Iliad and Odyssey. It is established that the works of Homer, "and no other poet," were recited at the Panathenaic festivals and that there was a fixed order for these recitations. It is accordingly inferred that there was some standard Athenian text by the second half of the sixth century B.C. If there was such a text, it did not maintain itself, because the quotations from Homer made in the fourth and third centuries B.C. show the texts then current to have been widely divergent. This disagreement in the texts does not appear to have been resolved until about 150 B.C., when the Alexandrian librarian, Aristarchus of Samothrace, published editions which were afterwards regarded as authoritative. It is not known whether Aristarchus prepared his edition from many, widely differing manuscripts or whether he had recourse to an impressive single text from earlier times. The modern vulgate text is thought to be derived from that of Aristarchus. Extrinsic evidence, then, does not reveal an Iliad or Odyssey, written poems, in anything like their present form, before 550 B.C. However, intrinsic evidence convinces scholars that such a date was a late stage in the history of "Homeric" poetry. To reconstruct that history has always been the Homeric problem. This reconstruction, when made by argument from the text of the present poems, has sometimes seemed to involve a denial of their artistic unity. Certain scholars have seen the epics as only imperfectly unified, resulting from accretion to an imagined short original or from a joining of several remembered songs. Further, the poems have been held to be neither of the same period, nor by the same author; Samuel Butler contended on this last point that the Odyssey was written by a woman. In recent times, although the inclusion of traditional material and the probability of later interpolation are admitted, most scholars seem to believe in one Iliad, one Odyssey, undated, and in one Homer, unknown, as author of them both. <strong>...</strong></p>Great Books of the Western World - Volume 02 The great ideas Iurn:md5:f501b004aa69e3249a0738682b72d9142012-12-26T13:30:00+00:002012-12-26T13:30:00+00:00balderGreat Books of the Western WorldEuropeMetaphysicsReligionRevolutionScienceSlaverySymbol <p><img src="https://balderexlibris.com/public/img/.Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_02_The_great_ideas_I_s.jpg" alt="" /><br />
Author : <strong>Great Books of the Western World - Hutchins Robert Maynard</strong><br />
Title : <strong>Volume 02 The great ideas I A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Westren World</strong><br />
Year : 1952<br />
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Link download : <a href="https://balderexlibris.com/public/ebook/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_02_The_great_ideas_I.zip">Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_02_The_great_ideas_I.zip</a><br />
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By calling this work "a Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World," the editors hope to characterize its nature, to indicate the function it performs in relation to the set as a whole, and to assert its originality as an intellectual instrument. The relation of these two volumes of The Great Ideas to the rest of the set is the key to the nature of the Syntopicon and its originality as an instrument. Apart from this relation, The Great Ideas, though to some extent readable in itself, does not perform the function for which it was created-to show that the 443 works which comprise Volumes 4 to 54 can be seen and used as something more than a collection of books. The great books are pre-eminently those which have given the western tradition its life and light. The unity of this set of books does not consist merely in the fact that each member of it is a great book worth reading. A deeper unity exists in the relation of all the books to one tradition, a unity shown by the continuity of the discussion of common themes and problems. It is claimed for this set of great books that all the works in it are significantly related to one another and that, taken together, they adequately present the ideas and issues, the terms and topics, that have made the western tradition what it is. More than a collection of books, then, this set is a certain kind of whole that can and should be read as such. The Great Ideas results froni and records such a reading of the great books. The aim of this "syntopical reading" was to discover the unity and continuity of western thought in the discussion of common themes and problems from one end of the tradition to the other. The Syntopicon does not reproduce or present the results of this reading in a digest to save others the trouble of reading the great books for themselves. On the contrary, it only lays down the lines along which a syntopical reading of the great books can be done, and shows why and how it should be done. <strong>...</strong></p>Great Books of the Western World - Volume 12 Lucretius Epictetus Marcus Aureliusurn:md5:75b40621a20c2e42d8fb7e38d3de538c2012-12-23T20:48:00+00:002012-12-23T20:49:56+00:00balderGreat Books of the Western WorldGreeceMetaphysicsRome <p><img src="https://balderexlibris.com/public/img/.Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_12_Lucretius_Epictetus_Marcus_Aurelius_s.jpg" alt="" /><br />
Author : <strong>Great Books of the Western World - Hutchins Robert Maynard</strong><br />
Title : <strong>Volume 12 Lucretius Epictetus Marcus Aurelius. Lucretius : on the nature of things. The discourses of Epitetus. The meditations of Marcus Aurelius. </strong><br />
Year : 1952<br />
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LUCRETIUS, C.98-C.55 B. C. TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS was born somewhere between 99 and 95 B.C., probably at Rome. The Lucretian gens to which he belonged was one of the oldest of the great Roman houses, and it is likely that he was a member of either a senatorial or an equestrian family. In his poem he speaks to the aristocratic Gaius Memmius, to whom he dedicated his work, as to an equal. Nothing is known of the poet's education except what might be inferred from the presence in Rome during his youth of eminent Greek teachers of the Epicurean sect who lived on terms of intimacy with members of the governing class. Lucretius' reading is evident from his poem. In addition to the works of his master, Epicurus, he shows knowledge of the philosophical poem of Empedocles and at least an acquaintance with the works of Democritus, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Plato, and the Stoics. Of the other Greek prose writers he knew Thucydides and Hippocrates. Among the poets he expresses highest admiration for Homer, frequently reproduces Euripides, and shows a close study of Ennius. The only account of Lucretius' life is a short note by St. Jerome written more than four centuries after the poet's death. St. Jerome in his Chronicle under the year 94 B.C. has the entry: "Titus Lucretius the poet is born. He was rendered insane by a love-philtre and, after writing during intervals of lucidity, some books, which Cicero emended, he died by his own hand in the forty-third year of his life." The account of St. Jerome, though perhaps based on a lost work of Suetonius, has not been traced to any earlier source and has been found incapable of either proof or disproof. Historians have pointed out that love potions, which occasionally caused madness, were sufficiently common at the time of Lucretius to necessitate a legal penalty against their use. Some critics have argued that the supposed mental ailment is compatible with the impression the poem makes and have pointed to the evidence of its not having received a final revision. Other critics have inferred that the whole story is a fiction invented by the enemies of Epicureanism to discredit the work of its greatest expositor. Cicero's relation to the poem as emender or editor rests on no other authority than that of St. Jerome. A letter of Cicero's to his brother does reveal that the poem, probably published posthumously, was being read in 54 B.C. Donatus, in his Life of Virgil, states that Lucretius died on the same day in 55 B.C. that Virgil assumed the toga virilis. <strong>...</strong></p>Great Books of the Western World - Volume 03 The great ideas : IIurn:md5:ff4e99bba3987f1a8a60f9e6891eac9c2012-12-23T20:25:00+00:002012-12-23T20:50:14+00:00balderGreat Books of the Western WorldEuropeMetaphysicsReligionRevolutionScienceSlaverySymbol <p><img src="https://balderexlibris.com/public/img/.Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_03_The_great_ideas_II_s.jpg" alt="" /><br />
Author : <strong>Great Books of the Western World - Hutchins Robert Maynard</strong><br />
Title : <strong>Volume 03 The great ideas : II A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Westren World</strong><br />
Year : 1952<br />
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Link download : <a href="https://balderexlibris.com/public/ebook/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_03_The_great_ideas_II.zip">Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_03_The_great_ideas_II.zip</a><br />
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WHETHER or not the proper study of mankind is man, it is the only study in which the knower and the known are one, in which the object of the science is the nature of the scientist. If we consider every effort men have made in response to the ancient injunction "know thyself," then psychology has perhaps a longer tradition than any other science. But by a stricter conception of science, more is required than individual insight or self-consciousness. Definitions, principles, analyses applicable to all men must be established, and it has been questioned whether the method of introspection suffices for this purpose. What methods should be used by the psychologist dependS in part upon the precise object and scope of his inquiry. According as different subject matters and different methods define psychology, there seem to be several disciplines bearing that name, each with its own tradition in western thought. In one conception, psychology begins with the dialogues of Plato and with Aristotle's treatise On the Soul. As Aristotle's title indicates, and as the Greek roots of the word "psychology" connote, the soul rather than man is the object of the science. Anthropology, Kant later suggests, would be a more appropriate name for the science of man. The Greek inquiry into the soul extends, beyond man, to all living things. It is because "the soul is in some sense the principle of animal life," Aristotle writes, that "the knowledge of the soul admittedly contributes greatly to the advance of truth in general, and, above all, to our understanding of Nature." Nevertheless, psychology for the Greeks is principally concerned with the study of man. The analysis of the parts or faculties of the human soul is an analysis of the properties of human nature-the powers which man has and the characteristically human acts or functions he can perform. The methods by which this analysis is developed are, for the most part, the same methods which the Greek philosophers use in physics. "The study of the soul," Aristotle writes, "falls within the science of Nature. " The definitions of the psychologist, like those of the physicist, give "a certain mode of movement of such and such a body (or part or faculty of a body) by this or that cause and for this or that end." In the case of the human soul, however, the psychologist can employ a method not applicable to other things. The human intellect is able to examine itself. Mind can thus know things about mind which are not otherwise observable. The subject matter of psychology narrows somewhat when, at a later moment in the tradition, the study of mind tends to replace the study of man. This narrowing takes place gradually. Though Descartes identifies soul with mind or intellect, he treats of the passions and the will as well as thought and knowledge. Differing from Descartes with regard to body and soul, Hobbes and Spinoza also give as much attention to the emotions as to ideas and reasoning. But with Locke, Berkeley, and Hume there is an increasing tendency to analyze the contents of consciousness and the acts of the understanding, treated exclusively as a faculty of thinking or knowing. Where in the earlier tradition the observation of human behavior and the behavior of other animals appears to be useful in psychology, here the main source of psychological knowledge seems to be introspection. <strong>...</strong></p>Great Books of the Western World - Volume 01 The Great Conversationurn:md5:6c25f4b190ee13890f94983e602179d22012-12-21T13:23:00+00:002012-12-23T20:50:28+00:00balderGreat Books of the Western WorldAustraliaCanadaEnglandEuropeNorth AmericaUnited States <p><img src="https://balderexlibris.com/public/img/.Great_Books_of_the_Western_World_-_Volume_01_The_Great_Conversation_s.jpg" alt="" /><br />
Author : <strong>Great Books of the Western World - Hutchins Robert Maynard</strong><br />
Title : <strong>Volume 01 The Great Conversation The Substance of a Liberal Education</strong><br />
Year : 1952<br />
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This private library edition of Great Books of the Western World was originally made possible in 1952 by the generous support oj the subscribers to the Founders' Edition. The Publisher and Editors are grateful to those who, by their subscription at a cost of $500 a set to the limited Founders' Edition of 500 sets, facilitated the general publication of these books. In addition to individual persons, the subscription list included business corporations and educational institutions-libraries or schools. Some subscribers purchased sets for themselves and some donated the sets they purchased to educational institutions. <strong>...</strong></p>