 | The Three Theban Plays: 'Antigone', 'Oedipus the King', 'Oedipus at Colonus' (Penguin Classics) by Sophocles
Buy used from: £0.98 The Oedipus Tyrannus is perhaps the greatest and best known of Greek tragedies. It is a mighty exploration of human emotions. Fagles' translation is powerful and faithful to the original Greek
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 | Aristophanes: Lysistrata /The Acharnians/The Clouds by Aristophanes
Buy used from: £0.01 Aristophanes is an astute commentator and comic. Sommerstein understands him and portrays the playful atmosphere well. The themes - war and sex - are ones that will never go away.
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 | Republic (Oxford World's Classics) by Plato
Buy used from: £0.01 Plato is very good at using images and discussion to create pithy explanations of complex problems. The result is a thought-provoking and seminal work, which is rendered very clearly by Waterfield.
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 | Tales from Ovid: Twenty-four Passages from the "Metamorphoses" by Ted Hughes
Buy new: £8.84 / Used from: £0.99 They say only poets can translate poetry. Ovid's poetry of love and creation is beautifully transformed into English poetry by the much-missed Ted Hughes.
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 | Sappho: A New Translation by M Barnard
Buy new: £9.95 / Used from: £3.00 A must have for all who love tender, haunting poetry. The first famous female poet was described by Cicero (it wasn't easy to impress him) as The Ninth Muse.
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 | Medea and Other Plays : Medea; Hecabe; Electra; Heracles (Penguin Classics) by Euripides
Buy new: £4.85 / Used from: £0.01 The Medea is one of the most important plays of the last 3000 years... it is still regularly performed now. Read it, and the Electra, then go and see a performance, and make up your own mind.
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 | The Iliad (Penguin Classics) by Homer
Buy new: £6.99 / Used from: £4.54 Someone once said 'I cried more at the death of one horse in the Iliad than that of a hundred men in the Odyssey'. Often seen as a lesser epic than the Odyssey, it is quite brilliant. Seminal.
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 | The Odyssey by Homer
Buy new: £12.74 / Used from: £8.50 Still a moving, rollicking read. This new translation portrays brilliantly the contrast between the tales of the Cyclops and Circe and the horror of the Suitors' ending...
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 | Garrison Life at Vindolanda: A Band of Brothers by Anthony Birley
Buy new: £9.77 / Used from: £4.57 A very different set of texts from the other books on this list - not the mighty tales of well-known authors, but personal letters sent from and to Hadrian's Wall 2000 years ago. Amazingly revealing.
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 | The Poems of Catullus (Classics) by Gaius Valerius Catullus
Buy used from: £0.01 Funny, touching and often rude, Catullus' poems are personal and introspective, and open up a window to the soul.
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