Guides: Ancient Drama: Home

Get a comprehensive view of your particular area of interest through these scholarly handbooks and guides

These resources can help you come up with dates, names, additional vocabulary and variant spellings for your research. They can also help you develop a better understanding of your topic or give you ideas for comparisons and contrasts.

Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre Online
Chapters on performance traditions and culture, Aristophanies, Menander and Terrance, audiences, costumes, and more
Brill's Companion to Roman Tragedy Online
Covering Republican and Imperial drama
Oxford Classical Dictionary Online
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome Online
Encyclopedia of Ancient History Online
Oxford Handbooks Online: Classics
Currently more than 35 handbooks with nearly 1,400 articles (chapters) covering as many discrete topics within broad fields within Classical Studies.
Cambridge Companions Online
A little more difficult to navigate than the Oxford Handbooks -- you'll need to browse through titles or do key word searches.
Wiley-Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World Online
Individual volumes on discrete topics, available in print and in some cases electronically. Located on the shelves in Van Pelt or via the Web. Coverage of literature, history, and culture. Most of these companions are

A Selection of Primary Texts

Medea by Sheila Murnaghan (Contribution by)
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. PA3975.M4 M77 2018
ISBN: 9780393265453
Publication Date: 2018
New translation with a full introduction and explanatory annotations by Sheila Murnaghan, Penn professor in Classical Studies.
Sophocles: The Theban Plays by Ruth Fainlight (Translator)
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. PA4414.A2 F33 2009
ISBN: 9780801891335
Publication Date: 2009
Sophocles' Theban Plays--Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone--
Six Tragedies by Emily Wilson, translator
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. PA6666 .A1 2010
ISBN: 9780192807069
Publication Date: 2010
Phaedra * Oedipus * Medea * Trojan Women * Hercules Furens * Thyestes
The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite by Wole Soyinka
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. PR9387.9.S6 B3 1974
ISBN: 9780393043969
Publication Date: 1974
A interpretation of Euripides by Nobel Prize-winning author, Soyinka
Lysistrata by Aristophanes; Sarah Ruden, translator
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. PA3877 .L8 2003 Print
ISBN: 0872206033
Publication Date: 2003

Other resources

Eidolon (Classics without Fragility)
A contemporary and often iconoclastic look at classical texts
Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR)
Update daily, a book review database for new editions and critical analysis of classical studies broadly speaking. If it has been published, you are likely to find it summarized and reviewed here.

Use keywords or subject terms to search article databases

These databases will also uncover book chapters along with articles in journals

JSTOR
JSTOR provides access to about 119 archaeology journals and 78 classical studies journals. It can be tricky to find just the right articles because it is searching every word in every article in the database. You may want to watch this short video on how to search JSTOR for classical studies.
L'Annee Philologique
The standard database for research in the broad area of Classical Studies. It indexes the current scholarship from over 1,500 journals and as well as books, edited volumes and conference papers. (Compare with JSTOR). Watch a short video on how to search L'Annee Phil.
Oxford Bibliographies Online Classics--Drama
An online resource to academic articles. Focused on multiple aspects of ancient studies including archaeology, history, literature, economics, and more. For a quick tour on how best to use, see this short video.
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Includes bibliographic articles on Latin Drama, Hellenistic Tragedy, individual authors, Greek Performance Culture, more ...

Hecuba Wails
Susane lee / CC BY-SA

Google Scholar
Use this link to search Google Scholar to incorporate Penntext access to Penn subscribed and owned resources. Scroll through at least several pages for best results.
Articles+
Penn Libraries' equivalent to Google Scholar -- all of our subscribed and open access content. Search by keyword and subject terms or search authors and titles -- connect to online content or find print in Penn Libraries collections. Limit your search by checking "Scholarly and Peer Review," and discipline "Drama." You can also limit by language, and date.
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If you have an article and are not sure how to find it, Articles+ is a good place to start.

Digital Loeb

Digital Loeb
Digital Loeb provides fully searchable access to the entire bilingual Loeb library of critical editions of Greek and Latin text. Find editions of the Odyssey, Iliad, Aeneid, Herodotus, Sappho, and most ancient Greek and Latin texts. You'll want to explore other translations as well.
Oxford Scholarly Editions Online
Like Loeb, provides bilingual editions of the ancient Greek and Latin authors. Follow this link, then scroll down to see link for "only classical authors." Follow this link, then click on "Browse authors."
Oxford Scholarship Online
A great majority of Oxford University Press books in all titles completely online and available for download and reading online.

Theatrical masks

Terracotta tragic mask, representing a female character with arched brows; Roman, 1st – 2nd century AD.
British Museum

Penn Libraries

Van Pelt-Dietrich Library
Collections focus on humanities and social sciences (but not exclusively). Includes books for history, literature, philosophy, politics, economics ..
Fischer Fine Arts Library
Collections focus on art history, architecture, urban and landscape studies, "above ground" archaeology (structures, artifacts)
Museum Library
Collections focus on anthropology, world-wide ancient archaeology, Egyptian history

Research Assistance

Rebecca Stuhr is the librarian specialists for Classical Studies.
You can arrange individual appointments or ask questions by email by contacting Rebecca at stuhrreb @ upenn.edu or click the button just below to find a time that works for you:

Schedule an Appointment

Please contact me for assistance at any time by email or use the link above to schedule an appointment. You may also want to connect with a librarian by chat--see box below to connect or send in a question.

Chat is available 9-5 Monday through Friday

A sampling from the catalog

Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy by Hanna M. Roisman
Call Number: Online
ISBN: 9781444335927
Publication Date: 2013
A comprehensive reference work to cover all facets of the distinct form of dramatic theater that flourished in ancient Greece with its apex in the 5th century BCE. Covers the 32 extant plays and playwrights of the period, including information on some lost works and surviving fragments
Roman Republican Theatre by Gesine Manuwald
Call Number: Online
ISBN: 9780521110167
Publication Date: 2011
Ffrom the tragedies of Ennius and Pacuvius to the comedies of Plautus and Terence and the mimes of Laberius, this book discusses the origins of Roman drama and the historical, social and institutional backgrounds of the dramatic genres of the Republic (tragedy, praetexta, comedy, togata, Atellana, mime and pantomime).
Greek Drama V by Marshall and Marshall, editors
Call Number: ONLINE
ISBN: 9781350142350
Publication Date: 2020
"Drawing together new research from emerging and senior scholars, this selection of papers from the decennial Greek Drama V conference (Vancouver, 2017) explores the works of the ancient Greek playwrights and showcases new methodologies with which to study them."
Afro-Greeks: Dialogues between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century by Emily Greenwood
Call Number: ONLINE
ISBN: 9780199575244
Publication Date: 2010
Greenwood focuses on the ways in which Greco-Roman antiquity has been put to creative use in Anglophone Caribbean literature. Available in print and online.
Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone, and dramas of the African diaspora by Barbara Goff and Michael Simpson
Call Number: text available online
ISBN: 9780199217182
Publication Date: 20086
Also available in print: Van Pelt Library. PR9343 .G64 2007
Diversifying Greek Tragedy on the Contemporary US Stage by Melinda Powers
Call Number: ONLINE
ISBN: 9780198777359
Publication Date: 2018
This volume investigates a cross-section of theatrical productions on the contemporary American stage that have reimagined Greek tragedy in order to address the political and social concerns of minority communities.
Ruins: Classical Theater and Broken Memories by Odai Johnson
Call Number: Online
ISBN: 9780472131068
Publication Date: 2018
"Traces the remains, the remembering, and the forgetting of performance traditions of classical theater."
An Introduction to Roman Tragedy by Anthony J. Boyle
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. PA6068 .B69 2006 Print
ISBN: 0415251028
Publication Date: 2005
A detailed cultural and theatrical history of Roman tragedy. E-book on order
Roman Drama and Its Contexts by Stavros Frangoulidis (Editor); Stephen J. Harrison (Editor); Gesine Manuwald (Editor)
Call Number: Online
ISBN: 9783110455571
Publication Date: 2016
This collection of essays examines single plays and Roman dramatic genres from both the Republican and imperial periods in literary and historical contexts.
Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture Around the Black Sea by David Braund, Edith Hall, and Rosie Wyles, editors
Call Number: Online
ISBN: 9781107170599
Publication Date: 2019