Classical Reference Library
The Trojan War
The Greeks destroyed Troy—but victory proved far more complicated. Achilles was dead, Agamemnon returned home only to be murdered, Odysseus wandered for another ten years, and the defeated Trojans lived on in legend. The ancient stories leave us with a surprisingly modern question: if war devastates victors and vanquished alike, what does it really mean to win?
Read resource →ESSAY ON THE ODYSSEY
A New Generation Discovers The Odyssey. This gives educators a new opportunity.
Read resource →TEACHING THE CLASSICS
Renewed interest in The Odyssey is bringing Homer to a new generation. The challenge for educators is helping students encounter the poem in an accessible form without sacrificing its language, ideas, and enduring questions.
Read resource →The Trojan War
The Greeks destroyed Troy—but victory proved far more complicated. Achilles was dead, Agamemnon returned home only to be murdered, Odysseus wandered for another ten years, and the defeated Trojans lived on in legend. The ancient stories leave us with a surprisingly modern question: if war devastates victors and vanquished alike, what does it really mean to win?
Read resource →THE ODYSSEY
You may never have sailed past the Sirens or faced a Cyclops, but you probably speak Homer's language more often than you realize. From odyssey and mentor to siren song, lotus-eater, and between Scylla and Charybdis, discover how a 3,000-year-old poem still lives on in the words and expressions we use today.
Read resource →ESSAY ON THE ODYSSEY
A New Generation Discovers The Odyssey. This gives educators a new opportunity.
Read resource →TEACHING THE CLASSICS
Renewed interest in The Odyssey is bringing Homer to a new generation. The challenge for educators is helping students encounter the poem in an accessible form without sacrificing its language, ideas, and enduring questions.
Read resource →The Trojan War
The Greeks destroyed Troy—but victory proved far more complicated. Achilles was dead, Agamemnon returned home only to be murdered, Odysseus wandered for another ten years, and the defeated Trojans lived on in legend. The ancient stories leave us with a surprisingly modern question: if war devastates victors and vanquished alike, what does it really mean to win?
Read resource →THE ENDURING ODYSSEY
For nearly three thousand years, Odysseus has remained one of literature’s most compelling heroes. His intelligence, pride, failures, endurance, and longing for home still raise questions that feel remarkably familiar: what makes a hero, what does hardship do to us, and what does it really mean to find our way home?
Read resource →THE ODYSSEY
You may never have sailed past the Sirens or faced a Cyclops, but you probably speak Homer's language more often than you realize. From odyssey and mentor to siren song, lotus-eater, and between Scylla and Charybdis, discover how a 3,000-year-old poem still lives on in the words and expressions we use today.
Read resource →HISTORY OF SCIENCE
Ian Johnston traces the changing understanding of science from ancient Greek natural philosophy through medieval cosmology to modern experimental science, exploring how the pursuit of knowledge shifted from contemplation of nature and its purposes toward prediction, control, and power.
Read resource →CRITICAL ESSAY
Ian Johnston examines Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, considering its scientific claims, its Epicurean vision of nature, and its enduring influence on Western thought. He argues that the poem’s greatest importance lies not in its science but in its powerful attempt to reshape how we understand nature and our place within it.
Read resource →CRITICAL ESSAY
What makes Oedipus a tragic hero? Ian Johnston examines the tension between fate and free will in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, arguing that the very qualities that make Oedipus great—his intelligence, courage, confidence, and relentless pursuit of truth—also lead him toward catastrophe.
Read resource →GREEK TRAGEDY
Sophocles turns a murder investigation into something far more unsettling: a search for the truth about the investigator himself.
Read resource →TIMELESS WISDOM, ENDURING RELEVANCE
How the ancient world still shapes our world today
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