St. John’s’ Curriculum

• Below is the reading list for freshman and sophomore students at St. John's College. According to St. John's, the list "had its beginnings at Columbia College, at the University of Chicago, and at the University of Virginia."

  FRESHMAN YEAR

HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey

AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound

SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes, Ajax

THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War

EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae

HERODOTUS: Histories

ARISTOPHANES: Clouds

PLATO: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus

ARISTOTLE: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals

EUCLID: Elements

LUCRETIUS: On the Nature of Things

PLUTARCH: Lycurgus, Solon

NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic

LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry

HARVEY: Motion of the Heart and Blood

Essays by: Archimedes, Fahrenheit, Avogadro, Dalton, Cannizzaro, Virchow, Mariotte, Driesch, Gay-Lussac, Spemann, Stears, J.J. Thompson, Mendeleyev, Berthollet, J.L. Proust.

SOPHOMORE YEAR

HEBREW BIBLE

THE BIBLE: New Testament

ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories

APOLLONIUS: Conics

VIRGIL: Aeneid

PLUTARCH: "Caesar," "Cato the Younger," "Antony," "Brutus"

EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual

TACITUS: Annals

PTOLEMY: Almagest

PLOTINUS: The Enneads

AUGUSTINE: Confessions

MAIMONIDES: Guide for the Perplexed

ST. ANSELM: Proslogium

AQUINAS: Summa Theologica

DANTE: Divine Comedy

CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales

MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses

KEPLER: Epitome IV

RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel

PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli

MONTAIGNE: Essays

VIETE: Introduction to the Analytical Art

BACON: Novum Organum

SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and Sonnets

POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16thand 17th-century poets

DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method

PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections

BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions

HAYDN: Quartets

MOZART: Operas

BEETHOVEN: Third Symphony

SCHUBERT: Songs

MONTEVERDI: L'Orfeo

STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms

. . .

The remainder of the curriculum is available at http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/academic/readlist.shtml.