Gregory Hays

The Last Reversal

Two books consider the stories we’ve told ourselves over thousands of years about the way the world ends.

Apocalypse and Golden Age: The End of the World in Greek and Roman Thought

by Christopher Star

The Next Apocalypse: The Art and Science of Survival

by Chris Begley

August 18, 2022 issue

A Mind in Pain

For Robert Burton, describing melancholy was a way of describing the world. Two recent books on depression suggest that today, virtually all we know about the subject is still open to debate.

The Anatomy of Melancholy

by Robert Burton, edited by Angus Gowland

The Empire of Depression: A New History

by Jonathan Sadowsky

How to Be Depressed

by George Scialabba

October 21, 2021 issue

Which Musonius?

April 29, 2021 issue

Tune Out & Lean In

The recent revival of Stoic philosophy has stayed surprisingly true to its ancient roots while gaining popularity among executives and tech-bros.

That One Should Disdain Hardships: The Teachings of a Roman Stoic

by Musonius Rufus, translated from the Greek by Cora E. Lutz, with an introduction by Gretchen Reydams-Schils

How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management

by Seneca, selected, translated from the Latin, and with an introduction by James Romm

How to Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life

by Epictetus, translated from the Greek and with an introduction by A.A. Long

The Pocket Stoic

by John Sellars

Stillness Is the Key

by Ryan Holiday

Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age

by Donna Zuckerberg

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March 11, 2021 issue

Letter

Gretchen Reydams-Schils

Which Musonius?

April 29, 2021 issue

Hope Against Hope

October 28, 2020

Horace; detail from Luca Signorelli’s fresco of the Last Judgment in the Cathedral of Orvieto, Italy, 1500–1503

Horace’s How-To

“Human” is the opening word of the ‘Ars Poetica.’ This is unlikely to be an accident.

Horace’s Ars Poetica: Family, Friendship, and the Art of Living

by Jennifer Ferriss-Hill

June 11, 2020 issue

Brutus and Caesar’s ghost; illustration by William Blake for an edition of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, 1808

From Hercules to Hamlet

How the Classics Made Shakespeare

by Jonathan Bate

September 26, 2019 issue

Street musicians in a scene from a comedy by the Greek playwright Menander; mosaic by Dioscorides of Samos from the Villa of Cicero, Pompeii, circa 100 BCE

Found in Translation

Beyond Greek: The Beginnings of Latin Literature

by Denis Feeney

June 22, 2017 issue

Max Beckmann: Odysseus and Calypso, 1943

What’s So Great About the Greeks?

Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

by Edith Hall

December 3, 2015 issue

Illustration by John Leech from The Comic History of Rome, 1852

Roman Jokers

Mary Beard’s ‘Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up’

Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up

by Mary Beard

July 10, 2014 issue

Drawing by Edward Gorey from Rex Warner’s Men and Gods: Myths and Legends of the Ancient Greeks, published by NYRB Classics

The Homeric MOOC

Gregory Nagy’s ‘The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours’

The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours

by Gregory Nagy

May 22, 2014 issue