I want to learn more about Ancient Greece
 

Where do I start?

I have never taken an ancient history class (took Intellectual Trad of the West at the U).

There is a book by Sarah Pomeroy that is good. I'll see if I can find the title. It is a textbook, but reads a little better than your run-of-the-mill dry textbook IIRC. It's been about 7 years since I read it in Greek History class.

[Edit:]

Okay, here it is:

http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Greece...7214826&sr=8-2

It is much pricier than I remember, though this is of course an updated edition. I was just looking through my books and remembered that I sold the book back to the bookstore after the class was over. I regret that now. I really wish I had kept it.

thanks... its on my amazon wish list.

Any more? Best translation of the Illiad and Odyssee?

The best translations in my opinion are by Stanley Lombardo or Robert Fagles, depending on your taste. Fagles' is the most well known. Lombardo's is considered a little more in the modern vernacular but both have been equally praised. I have both and tend to gravitate toward Lombardo's when re-reading. Maybe that means I'm a wuss. Be sure to read the introductions of whatever versions you get. They're worth the price of admission.

Both Fagles and Lombardo have translated both works.

This is a good, recent history of the Classical world through Hadrian:

http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Worl.../dp/0465024963

thanks

Don't buy the Pomeroy book. I just got an instructors copy of the second edition and will send you my copy of the first. It's a fine general history of Greece.

You'll never go wrong reading Homer. I agree with SU that these two are the most readable translations. Lombardo is more loyal to the Greek; Fagles' language is more vivid for Anglophones.

For my Greek Civ. class, we use Charles Freeman's The Greek Achievement. It's simplistic, overgeneralized, and occasionally inaccurate, but then again survey courses are simplistic, overgeneralized, and occasionally inaccurate. I like it because it's intended for the layperson, but not the stupid layperson. It also has nice map/glossary/chronology appendices and is arranged thematically instead of strictly chronologically. He has chapters on art, slavery, relationships (men-women; homosexual), barbarians, etc. in addition to the usual nuts and bolts of war and politics.

This is a classic:

http://www.amazon.com/Greeks-Penguin...7561564&sr=1-1

Kitto is great. In many ways, he's a better source for the 1950s than ancient Greece. From pg. 279 of the 1991 Penguin reprint:

"Most men are interested in women, and most women in themselves. Let us therefore consider the position of women in Athens."

His entire discussion on women in Athens is riddled with 1950s stereotypes and expectations.

I love those old histories that endure as literature in their own right. Shirer, Gibbon, Kitto, Churchill, etc.