MAJOR CLASSICAL AUTHORS and GENRES

This list was created by the Classics faculty at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, for students majoring or minoring in Classics.

GREEK

Homer (8^th century B.C., epic)

            Iliad, Odyssey

Homeric Hymns (7^th century, anonymous)

Hesiod (7^th century B.C., poetry)

            Theogony, Works and Days (Erga kai Hemerai)

Sappho, Alcaeus, Archilochus (7^th-6^th centuries, lyric poetry)

Pindar (6^th century, poetry)

            Epinicia

Herodotus, Thucydides (5^th century, history)

Aeschylus (5^th century, tragedy)

            Oresteia (Agamamenon, Choephoroi [Libation Bearers], Eumenides)

            Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, Suppliant Women

Sophocles (5^th century, tragedy)

            Ajax, Antigone, Oedipus at Thebes, Philoctetes, Electra, Trachinian Women, Oedipus at Colonus

Euripides (5^th century, tragedy)

            Medea, Troades (Trojan Women), Electra, Alcestis, Bacchae, Hippolytus, etc.

Aristophanes (5^th century, comedy)

            Lysistrata, Birds, Clouds, Wasps

Plato (4^th century, philosophy)

            Republic, Ion, Phaedra, Phaedo, Apology, etc.

Aristotle (4^th century, philosophy)

            Poetics, Ethics

Menander (4^th century, comedy)

            Dyskolos

ROMAN

Plautus and Terence (2^nd century, comedy)

Catullus (1^st century, lyric poetry)

Lucretius (1^st century B.C., epic)

            De Rerum Natura

Caesar (1^st century, history)

Cicero (1^st century B.C., rhetoric, philosophy)

            Ad Catilinam, Pro Archia, De Amicitia, De Senectute, Epistulae

Vergil (1^st century B.C., epic and poetry)

            Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid

Horace (1^st century B.C., lyric poetry)

            Odes, Epodes, Sermones

Livy (1^st century B.C., history)

            Ab Urbe Condita

Ovid (1^st century A.D., poetry)

            Metamorphoses, Amores, Remedia Amoris, Tristia, Fasti      

Propertius and Tibullus (1^st century A.D., love elegy)

Petronius (1^st century A.D., satire)

            Satyricon

Perseus and Juvenal (1^st century A.D., satires)

Seneca the Elder (1^st century A.D., rhetoric)

            Suasoriae et Controversiae

Pliny the Elder (1^st century A.D.)

            Natural History

Seneca the Younger (1^st century A.D., philosophy and tragedy)

            De Consolatione, De Ira, De Bona Vita, Dialogues

Tacitus (1^st century A.D., history)

Martial (1^st-2^nd centuries A.D., epigrams)

Pliny the Younger (1^st century A.D.
            Epistulae

Marcus Aurelius (2^nd century A.D.)

            Meditations