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Posted by Glenn A. Knight on February 15, 19102 at 14:42:12:
In Reply to: What to read... posted by Natalie Woodruff on February 12, 19102 at 09:10:17:
There are a couple of alternative approaches here. Since a lot of the classical references in drama are to a relatively small number of books, you might start with those: 1) the Bible, 2) the Iliad, 3) the Odyssey, 4) the Aeneid, 5) Plato's Republic, 6) Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian Wars, 7) Herodotus' History of the Persian Wars, 8) Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Wars in Gaul, 9) Tacitus' Histories, 10) Tacitus' Annals, 11) Livy's ab conditio urbe (since the founding of the city [of Rome], and, 12) Polybius' Rise of the Roman Republic are contenders for serious popularity.
Several of these are available in the Great Books of the Western World or the Harvard Classics. Your local library probably has them cataloged around 808.8. They are also available in various English translations from Penguin Classics, Oxford Classics, Signet Classics, Bantam Classics, etc.
Since you are already interested in drama, you might also might to dig into the Greek drama: tragedies by Aeschylus (7), Sophocles (7), and Euripides (17) survive, and are all available in various editions. Aristophanes wrote comedies, and eleven of them have survived. You will find that there are numerous references back to the Iliad and the Odyssey in these places.
And you might want to get Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days. That outlines the genealogy of the gods (that's what theogony means), and is a basic source for a lot of classical references.
Two other classical sources that get a lot of use are Plutarch's "Lives" and the writings and speeches of Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Good luck.