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
2 works
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.
c. 260–250 BC
Greek
Cleanthes of Assos · c. 330 – c. 230 BC
Thirty-nine lines from the second head of the Stoic school, addressed to the most glorious of immortals, many-named, forever all-powerful — who guides the common law through all things, from whom we are sprung, and who can straighten even what is crooked and make the unloved lovely.
4 of 1774 works