The Great Books for You and for Me

At the end of August this summer, I’m going to be back in the college classroom for the first time in three years—or, technically, almost six years, since the last on-campus class I taught was in Spring 2020 and the subsequent three years were all online. I’m especially excited, because I will be teaching Greek history—which means that we will begin the semester by reading Homer’s Odyssey in its entirety. We’ll go from there to read Herodotus, Thucydides, a smattering of Athenian comedies and tragedies, before concluding the semester by reading Plato’s Apology and putting Socrates back on trial in our own classroom. We’ll see if this group of students awards him his request of free dinners for life.