The Library
1774 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
600–501 BC
1 work
traditionally c. 600 BC; survives in fragments
Greek
Epimenides of Knossos
A poem in the voice of Minos addressing Zeus, from a Cretan seer said to have slept fifty-seven years in a cave and to have cleansed Athens of a plague by loosing sheep on the Areopagus and sacrificing each where it lay. It rebukes the Cretans for building Zeus a tomb: they are always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies — but you are not dead, for in you we live and move and have our being.
400–301 BC
1 work
c. 320 BC; survives in fragments
Greek
Menander of Athens · c. 342 – c. 291 BC
A lost play of the New Comedy, named for its courtesan and known from scattered lines. One of them became a proverb long before Paul reached for it: bad company corrupts good character.
300–201 BC
1 work
c. 275 BC
Greek
Aratus of Soli · c. 315 – c. 240 BC
A didactic poem mapping the constellations and the signs of weather, opening not with the stars but with Zeus — every street and every market full of him, every harbour and sea, and we all have need of him always, for we are also his offspring.
101–200
1 work
c. 160–190
Greek
An elder of Asia
Paul's travels from Damascus to his beheading in Rome, including the baptised lion that later refuses to eat him in the arena, and the description of the man himself — small, bald, bandy-legged, eyebrows meeting, nose slightly hooked, full of grace.
201–300
1 work
c. 3rd–4th century
Latin
Attributed to Paul
Twenty short verses supplying the letter Colossians 4:16 says Paul sent to Laodicea and which nobody had. It is assembled almost entirely out of phrases from Philippians and says nothing that Paul had not already written elsewhere — which may be why it survived so long unchallenged.
301–400
1 work
c. 380–400
Greek
Visio Pauli
Anonymous
An account of what Paul saw when he was caught up to the third heaven and said he could not tell. An angel takes him to watch souls met at death by their own deeds, then through the city of Christ and out to the punishments — each fitted to its sin, and clergy among the worst off. At the end the damned are granted a day's respite every Sunday, because Paul and Michael ask for it.
6 of 1774 works