Greece
5 works · kept by Mine
See my list for Rome above for an explanation. In terms of the Greeks I would start with the life of Themistocles.
Any of the Athenian tragedies can be read in a few hours. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles is absolute dynamite. Try to do it in one go, without distraction. We all know what is coming, and have done for a very long time, but it's still incredibly compelling. Antigone about Oedipus’ Daughter/half sister is also brilliant, though not as well known. The Oresteia by Aeschylus is a trilogy of tragedies, a weekend of reading and best read consecutively and uninterrupted. All the Athenian tragedies are mental, very interesting and very good reads. They allow you to step into the minds, morality and worldview of a completely alien culture. The classics remain classics because they still resonate with us, but they are also worth reading for how deeply strange they are: they allow us to step into a wholly alien, outrageous but complete civililsation. We get something similar from Homer's depiction of Achilles treatment of Hectors corpse, or Odysseus and the Suitors, but that feels less disconcerting because at that time the Greeks were savage. But Athens is the fount of western civ. It seems so wrong, at first, that they were so different to us. The core value of the tragedies is that by reading them carefully (and you really should try at least one from each of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides) we can begin to actually understand.
The Iliad and The Odyssey - Homer
The argument I would use to convince a sceptic to read these is the magnitude of their impact on everything that came afterwards. These are the ur-texts of western literature; essentially every educated person of the last 2500 odd years was throughly familiar with both, from Alexander sleeping with the Iliad under his pillow to yank hockey players reading the Odyssey at the last winter Olymics. Knowing these epics will bring a lot more life to other works, and not just books. If you walk into a random old building anywhere in Europe there's a good chance you will find references in sculpture or paint to episodes from Homer. Aside from that they are tremendous works in their own right (Duh! They wouldn't have survived for two and a half millennia, painstakingly and lovingly transcribed and transmitted by dozens of generations, scribes with quills twitching by candle light, monks fleeing barbarians with only time to grab a few precious items, and you don't even have the gratitude to read them!) Fagle's translations are the best modern translations in English. I have tried others. One very popular and very recent translation is not worth a moment of your time, it is so far from the spirit of the original. The Iliad comes first chronologically, but I think the Odyssey is more fun and more interesting, so probably a better place to start.
Xenophon was a student of Socrates and contemporary of Plato. This is his account of going to Persia, with the disapproval of his teacher, to fight as a mercenary for a want-to-be emperor. He gives a first hand account of his leadership of his fellow Greek mercenaries, after their leaders had been treacherously massacred, from the far side of Arabia back to the Mediterranean. A kind of ancient heart of darkness/apocalypse now.
The father of history Literally the first history book in the sense that we understand the term, and what a great first effort. The focus is supposed to be the war to keep the persians out of greece, but he takes forever to get there One example of an anecodte in there thats been borne out... sailors south of the equator