Magna Moralia (Ancient Greek: ΗΟΙΚΩΝ ΜΕΓΑΛΩΝ, English: Great Ethics) discusses topics including friendship, virtue, happiness and God. It is disputed whether Aristotle wrote Magna Moralia. This author concludes that it is absurd to suggest that God contemplates only God but does not propose an alternative activity for God.

The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) is the first original drama written in English by a woman. Elizabeth Cary drew on Jewish histories by Josephus to create a closet drama (written to be read, rather than performed live) about Mariam, the second wife of Herod the Great. At the beginning of the play, Mariam believes that Herod has been killed by Octavius, and struggles with how to respond. On the one hand, she is relieved, as she is angry with Herod for killing her brother and grandfather. On the other, she knows that he loved her, and she feels caught by her sense of duty as his wife. When Herod unexpectedly returns, Mariam must decide what to do.

The full title of this book, published in 1909, is The Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew and Thomas. As early as the second century, numerous legends concerning the fates of the Christian apostles were in circulation. These Acts, widely regarded as originating circa 150 CE, are among the earliest accounts still in existence of the lives, preaching and martyrdoms of the apostles Paul, Peter, John, Andrew and Thomas. They are written in a fantastic and romantic style, and although they were influential in later Christian conceptions of these apostles, they are historically worthless as biographies...

The Stories of Old Greece and Rome is an easy to read summary of all of the famous and not so famous Greek and Roman mythological stories. All of the famous Heroes are here: Theseus, Jason, Hercules, and all of the well known Deities. These stories tell the real detail of the myths, not the ones that have become sanitized (and dare I say it, 'Disneyfied') over the centuries. These are not stories for children, as the old gods and heroes were vengeful and some might say sadistic in their treatment of minor slights and misdemeanors...

The Odysseys are a collection of stories about Ulysses' journey home from the war at Troy purportedly written in the 8th century BCE by Homer, a blind poet thought to have lived in the Greek colonies in Asia Minor, possibly at Smyrna. The events described are thought to have occurred centuries before being recorded by Homer, handed down orally since the twelfth century BCE, the golden era of the Greek Bronze Age when the world was populated by heroic mortals and often visited by the Gods. This verse...

Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, known in English as Juvenal, was a Roman poet active in the late 1st and early 2nd century AD. The details of the author's life are unclear, although references within his text to known persons of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD fix his terminus post quem (earliest date of composition). The Satires are a collection of satirical poems by Juvenal written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD. Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five books; all are in the Roman genre of satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a wide-ranging discussion of society and social mores in dactylic hexameter...

In 1906, Eben Francis Thompson,scholar and poet, published a limited edition of his translation of the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam. This edition contains 878 quatrains, and represents the most extensive translation of Omar's rubai in any language.In the Introduction, Nathan Haskell Dole writes: Mr Thompson has put into English verse this whole body of Persian poetry. It is a marvel of close translation, accurate and satisfactory. He has succeeded in doing exactly what he set out to do - to add nothing and to take nothing away, but to put into the typical quatrain, as determined by Fitzgerald and others, exactly what Omar and his unknown imitators said.

Vairagya Shatakam is one of the best books that gives the true picture of Renunciation. The book talks on how a common man gets lured by the endless desires which when satisfied fetches him nothing but the desires again. It concludes saying how these unsatiable desires mislead the man from knowing his real nature-omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience!

De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) outlines Stoic, Epicurean and Academic (Skeptical) views on religious questions. Problems discussed include: evil, the origin of the world, divination, and characteristics of God(s).

One of the greatest works of poetry in history, this lyric poem presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet on subjects such as life, death, love, God and destiny.

The Constitution of Athens (Greek: Ἀθηναίων πολιτεία) was written by Aristotle or his student. The text was lost until discovered in the late 19th century in Egypt. Topics discussed include Solon's legislative reforms abolishing debt slavery and the rise and decline of democracy and tyranny in Athens.

In spite of Nicea's condemnation of Arius in 325, Arianism was far from dead. For decades after Nicea, political intrigue and personality clashes continued to confuse the doctrinal issues. Additionally, the line separating othodoxy from Arianism was blurred by a number of "semi-Arians" who agreed with the theology of orthodoxy but continued to object to the "homoousios" of the Nicene Formula. In this milieu, Athanasius of Alexandria tirelessly worked to cut through the confusion and restore unity...

The term ‘Hitopadesha’ is a combination of two Sanskrit terms, ‘Hita’ (welfare/ benefit) and ‘Upadesha’ (counsel). As the term suggests, The Hitopadesha is a collection of tales that gives good counsel. Hitopadesa was presumably written by Narayan Pandit and is an independent treatment of the Vishnu Sarman's Panchatantra (3rd century BC) which it resembles in form. In Hitopadesha, Vishnu Sarman is depicted as a Sage who undertakes to give good counsel to the sons of Sudarsana, the king of Pataliputra, through stories within stories involving talking animals...

The 7 Wonders of the Ancient World is a list of masterpieces of architecture and art of classical antiquity. First compiled in the second century BC, it served as a guidebook for the interested Hellenic traveller. This small book gives an introduction to all the entries on the list: The Pyramid of Khufu, the Walls of Babylon, the Satue of the Olympian Zeus, the Temple of Diana , the Tomb of King Mausolus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Pharos of Alexandria. Sadly for the modern tourist, all but the Pyramid of Giza have been destroyed centuries ago.

More medieval romance than history, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae represents the oldest versions we have of many legends of Britain, populated by such characters as the Leir, Cymbeline, Uther and Arthur Pendragon and Cadwallader. This is Giles' 1848 revision of Thompson's 1718 edition. - Summary by SkyRider

Egyptian stories translated from ancient, often incomplete, documents. - Summary by Timothy Ferguson

It is not generally agreed whether Plato was the author of any of these books. I. Hippias Major II. Second Alcibiades III. Theages IV. The Rivals V. Hipparchus

This volume contains the four speeches delivered by Cicero in 63 BC, when he was a consul, against the conspiracy headed by L. Sergius Catilina. Catilina was scheming to bring about a general uprising in the country if he could not rise to a position of power by election. This volume includes an English introduction and notes on the speeches by E.A. Upcott.The e-text used to produce this audiobook also includes further helpful study material for Latin scholars, which has been omitted from this audio version. - Summary by Carolin

Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. The surviving lives contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman, as well as four unpaired, single lives. Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives and destinies of famous men. The first pair of lives the Epaminondas-Scipio Africanus no longer exists, and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers...

The six Enneads are the collected writings of the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus arranged by his student Porphyry into fifty-four books with each Ennead containing nine. The translator Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie arranged these books chronologically rather than according to Porphyry's numeration. This recording is organized according to Porphyry's numeration with Roman numerals indicating the Ennead and Hindu-Arabic numerals indicating the book e.g. VI.9 would be the ninth book of the sixth Ennead. A hyperlinked table of contents at Volume 1 Page 3 of the gutenberg.org text will enable you to jump to the specific Ennead if you wish to read along with the recording.

This is the first volume in the ten volume collection of the world's most famous orations, as compiled by William Jennings Bryant and Francis Whiting Halsey. The first volume concerns ancient Greece, and contains such famous persons as Achilles, Pericles, and Socrates, with their most famous orations and speeches. - Summary by Carolin

A detailed and exhaustive history of the Norwegian People, written in two volumes. The author, Knut Gjerset, was born in Western Norway in 1865 and immigrated to Chippewa County, Minnesota, in the US with his parents in 1871 and his brother Oluf later got elected to public office there. He received a B.A. in Literature from the University of Minnesota, and also studied at John's Hopkins University from 1895-1896, and the University of Heidelberg, where he was awarded a PhD, from 1896-1898. This first...

In 1906, William Jennings Bryan, himself a famous American orator, and Francis Whiting Halsey compiled a series of the most famous orations of all time. They are ordered by both geographic area and time period, ranging from Ancient Greece to their contemporary United States. This is the second volume in this series, in which the most famous speeches of great Roman statesmen are collected, including Cicero, Seneca, and Julius Caesar. - Summary by Carolin

The Meditations is divided into 12 books that chronicle different periods of Marcus' life. Each book is not in chronological order and it was written for no one but himself. The style of writing that permeates the text is one that is simplified, straightforward, and perhaps reflecting Marcus' Stoic perspective on the text. Depending on the English translation, Marcus' style is not viewed as anything regal or belonging to royalty, but rather a man among other men which allows the reader to relate to his wisdom...

This volume by the British historian J.H.B. Masterman is a short survey of the first four centuries after the fall of Rome. The author writes of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, who sought to impose order on a shattered Italy, of the rise of the Franks under Clovis, and of the resurgence of the Eastern Empire under Justinian and his general, Belisarius. At the close of the book, Charlemagne's descendants are wrangling for power among themselves, while, writes Masterman, from "the north came the Norsemen, ravaging and plundering along every river valley which their long ships could sail; from the south came the Saracens, the pirates of the Mediterranean, and ...

This late fourth century common era narrative of a Christian pilgrimage is the earliest such text which survives to us. It is an important source of information about early Christian practices. This book has an extended introduction which provides invaluable context and summaries, though some of it is a bit scholarly and dry. The text is damaged with some parts missing; missing parts will be designated in this recording by this verbal usage: “dot dot dot dot” . More information: Egeria, Etheria or Aetheria was a woman, widely regarded to be the author of a detailed account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land...

W.R.W. Stephens, the Anglican Dean of Winchester, writes a short, lively biography of the great church reformer, Hildebrand of Sovana , afterwards Pope Gregory VII, setting his life within the larger context of the struggle for dominance between the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The roots of the conflict can be traced to the alliance made between Pope Stephen II and his successors and the Frankish King Pippin and his son Charlemagne to break the power of the Lombard Kingdom in Italy...

William Wolfe Capes was an Anglican cleric, a classicist, and a historian. This is his short chronicle of the early Roman Empire, from the aftermath of the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.E. to the assassination of the tyrannical Domitian in 96 C.E.. Capes writes about the intervening emperors, including the notorious Caligula and Nero, and then devotes chapters to Roman citizenship, life in the provinces, trade, religion, the frontiers, and the army.

On the Parts of Animals by Aristotle . The first book asks whether animals were designed or came into existence by chance. The remaining three books focus on particular examples of various animals and the functions of their organs. The translator William Ogle, who was both a medical doctor and classicist, presented Charles Darwin with a copy of this translation.

Naturalis Historia is an encyclopedia published circa AD 77-79 by Pliny the Elder. It is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman empire to the modern day and purports to cover the entire field of ancient knowledge, based on the best authorities available to Pliny. The work became a model for all later encyclopedias in terms of the breadth of subject matter examined, the need to reference original authors, and a comprehensive index list of the contents. The scheme of his great work is vast and comprehensive, being nothing short of an encyclopedia of learning and of art so far as they are connected with nature or draw their materials from nature...

This short overview of the Roman Empire from AD 96-180 opens as the murderers of Domitian raise to power the wise old senator, Nerva. Ignoring assassination rumors, his successor, the brave soldier Trajan, "went about the streets almost unguarded" and was easy of access to all classes. He was followed by the brilliant, gay emperor, Hadrian, who "revised the imperial budget with the skill of a trained accountant." We meet the immortal Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor who spent his life fighting barbarians along the Danube. The book closes with chapters on the religions of the empire, on the state's response to Christianity, and on imperial administration.

The history of Egypt from the earliest times to the conquest by Alexander the Great, covering the development of Egyptian civilization: science, religion, art, language and literature. This book is written for the interested layperson, requiring no prior knowledge of Egypt, and in approachable everyday language.