PagineAchilles’ rage and Odysseus’ voyage home, Oedipus and Antigone, Socrates on trial, the founding of Rome, an emperor’s private notes on how to live — the Greek and Roman classics are where Western literature, philosophy and history began. Here are 54 essential ancient books, all in the public domain in older translations, with short guides to the great classical authors and where to start.
New to Greek & Roman literature? Begin with one of these — or follow our step-by-step guide, What to Read for Greek & Roman Classics →
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Short biographies, what to read first, and every book of theirs on this list.
Homer is the name the ancient Greeks gave to the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the oldest works of Western literature. Whether he was one blind bard or a tradition of oral poets is still debated. The Iliad tells of a few weeks in the Trojan War and the wrath of Achilles; the Odyssey follows clever Odysseus’ ten-year journey home past the Cyclops, the Sirens and the witch Circe. For centuries every educated Greek learned them by heart.
Where to start: The Odyssey
On this list: The Iliad · The Odyssey
Aesop, according to the historian Herodotus, was an enslaved storyteller on the island of Samos. Hundreds of short fables are credited to him — The Tortoise and the Hare, The Fox and the Grapes, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Ant and the Grasshopper — each ending with a moral. They were collected and retold for centuries after his death.
Where to start: Aesop’s Fables
On this list: Aesop’s Fables
Sophocles wrote some 120 plays for the festivals of Athens, winning first prize more often than any rival; only seven survive. Oedipus the King, in which a king investigating a plague discovers he himself is the cause, was Aristotle’s model of the perfect tragedy, and Antigone, about a young woman who defies the king to bury her brother, still sparks debate about law and conscience.
Where to start: Antigone
On this list: Antigone · Oedipus the King · Electra · Oedipus at Colonus
Euripides, the youngest of the three great Athenian tragedians, gave voice to women, slaves and outsiders and questioned the gods. Eighteen or nineteen of his plays survive, more than Aeschylus and Sophocles combined, including Medea (431 BC), The Trojan Women (415 BC) and The Bacchae.
Where to start: Medea
On this list: Medea · The Trojan Women · The Bacchae
Herodotus, called “the father of history” by Cicero, travelled widely to research his Histories — an account of the wars between the Greeks and the Persian Empire, full of digressions about Egypt, Scythia, strange customs and wonderful stories. Thucydides, who followed him, wrote a sterner history of the Peloponnesian War.
Where to start: The Histories
On this list: The Histories
Plato was a student of Socrates, who wrote nothing himself; almost everything we know of Socrates comes from Plato’s dialogues. The Apology records Socrates’ defence at his trial; Phaedo his last day; the Symposium a dinner party about love; and the Republic asks what justice is, with its famous allegory of the cave. Plato founded the Academy in Athens, where Aristotle studied for twenty years.
Where to start: Apology
On this list: Apology · Symposium · Phaedo · The Republic
Aristotle studied with Plato, tutored the young Alexander the Great and founded his own school, the Lyceum, in Athens. He wrote on almost everything — logic, biology, physics, politics, rhetoric — and his Nicomachean Ethics (on how to live well), Politics and Poetics (the first theory of tragedy) still shape how we think.
Where to start: Nicomachean Ethics
On this list: Nicomachean Ethics · Politics · Poetics
Virgil was Rome’s greatest poet. After the pastoral Eclogues and the farming poem Georgics, he spent his last decade on the Aeneid, the epic of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who flees burning Troy and journeys to Italy to found the Roman people. Dying with the poem unfinished, he asked for it to be burned; the emperor Augustus refused.
Where to start: The Aeneid
On this list: The Eclogues · The Georgics · The Aeneid
Ovid was the wittiest of the Roman poets. His Metamorphoses (AD 8) weaves some 250 myths of transformation — Echo and Narcissus, Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe — into one flowing poem, and became the main source of Greek myth for later artists from Shakespeare to Titian. In AD 8 the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis on the Black Sea for reasons that remain a mystery.
Where to start: Metamorphoses
On this list: Metamorphoses
Marcus Aurelius was Roman emperor from AD 161 to 180, much of it spent on military campaigns along the Danube. In private notebooks written in Greek, never meant for publication, he reminded himself how to live by Stoic principles: accept what you cannot control, act justly, and remember that life is short. Those notes, now called the Meditations, are among the most widely read books of philosophy today.
Where to start: Meditations
On this list: Meditations
8 of these are free to read in Pagine right now (📖 Read free). The rest link to a free public-domain edition or to Open Library, where many can be borrowed free.
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Android16 free books by Greek & Roman authors in Pagine — including titles beyond this list.
Every title on the list links to the free sources that may have it. Public-domain books are free to read and download; newer books can often be borrowed free.
All of these books are in the public domain in older translations — Samuel Butler’s and Alexander Pope’s Homer, Jowett’s Plato, Dryden’s Virgil, Long’s Marcus Aurelius — and are free in Pagine or on Project Gutenberg. Modern translations (for Homer, Emily Wilson’s Odyssey, for example) can be easier to read; borrow them from your library or Open Library. Love the myths? Our library also has children’s retellings of the Greek myths.
The Odyssey, Aesop’s Fables, Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato’s Apology and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations are short or gripping first choices. Then try the Iliad and the Aeneid.
Most readers find the Odyssey easier — an adventure with monsters, disguises and a homecoming. The Iliad is a darker war poem; read it second.
Yes. The original works are thousands of years old and many English translations are in the public domain, so you can read them free in Pagine and on Project Gutenberg.
Stoicism is an ancient philosophy about focusing on what you can control and living with virtue. Start with Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Epictetus’ Enchiridion and Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic.
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