Human wisdom is of little or no value’, wrote Plato in his Apology. And yet the ancient Greeks, including Plato himself, more than any other people of antiquity were fascinated by the pursuit
of the wisdom they called philosophia. That search for knowledge involved an extensive use of maxims and quotations, as we can see from those expressions of Homer prefaced by the phrase ’as
people say’. Homer, the Seven Sages and the Pre-Socratic philosophers are still extensively quoted in all the major western languages. Yet for all their popularity, until now there has been no
single resource to which interested readers might turn. This unique reference book offers one of the most comprehensive selections of Greek quotations ever committed to print. With its English
text matched by the original Greek, the volume collects 7500 entries, ranging from the archaic period to late antiquity, and across philosophy, drama, poetry, history, science and medicine,
each indexed with key words to enable fast sourcing. Together, these selections provide an incomparable insight into the glories of Greek civilization.
