I have never understood this thing about being asked to study old texts in Philosophy. In no other field that I have studied have people suggested that my first introduction to the field must be a book written decades ago, forget two millennia ago. If I want to study physics, nobody tells me to read Newton or Einstein's paper. Instead I should read an introductory textbook, whose contents and presentation are much better than the original texts.
If you are telling me that in the twenty centuries, no one has taken what Pythagoras/Plato said and has rewritten it in a better way, with modern exposition and examples and graphics and what not, I fail to believe you. Because that would mean philosophy as a discipline is not improving by building upon the works of those past, unlike every other intellectual discipline. I know this is not true, so stop suggesting old texts to beginners and start suggesting books written in the last twenty years.
If you are telling me that in the twenty centuries, no one has taken what Pythagoras/Plato said and has rewritten it in a better way, with modern exposition and examples and graphics and what not, I fail to believe you. Because that would mean philosophy as a discipline is not improving by building upon the works of those past, unlike every other intellectual discipline. I know this is not true, so stop suggesting old texts to beginners and start suggesting books written in the last twenty years.