Guides: CLST 143 Great Books of Greece and Rome : 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.

Oxford Classical Dictionary Online
Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization ONLINE
Provides an authoritative survey of the Greek and Roman worlds in all their aspects, including articles on diverse fields such as, history and politics; ethics and morals; law and punishment; social and family life; language, literature, and art; religion and mythology; technology, science, and medicine.
Brill's New Pauly
Encyclopedic entries on most aspects of the ancient world. 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
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 ONLINE

A Selection of Primary Texts

The Odyssey by Homer; Emily Wilson (Translator)
Call Number: Van Pelt Library PA4025.A5 W56 2018
ISBN: 9780393089059
Publication Date: 2017
A new translation by Penn professor, Emily Wilson
The Iliad by Homer; Emily Wilson, translator
ISBN: 9781324001805
Publication Date: 2023
The Histories, Tacitus by Cynthia Damon (Editor)
Call Number: Van Pelt Library PA6705.H6 B1 2003
ISBN: 0521570727
Publication Date: 2002
The first historical work by Tacitus. Book I covers the beginning of the infamous 'Year of the Four Emperors' (69 CE.
Annals by Tacitus; Cynthia Damon (Introduction by, Translator)
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. PA6705 .A6 2012
ISBN: 9780140455649
Publication Date: 2013
Penn professor Cynthia Damon's translation of Tacitus' Annals, which includes the major historical events from the years shortly before the death of Augustus to the death of Nero in AD 68.
The Aeneid by Vergil; Sarah Ruden, translator
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. PA6807.A5 R83 2021
ISBN: 9780300240108
Publication Date: 2021
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--
Wake, Siren by Nina MacLaughlin
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. PS3613.A27358 A6 2019
ISBN: 9780374538583
Publication Date: 2019
Not really a primary text. In her new work, Penn Alumna, MacLaughlin brings out the woman's voice in her reimagining of Ovid's Metamorphoses

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.
Mary Beard's Blog: A Don's Life
Bring the present day in touch with the ancient past.

Women's Life in Greece and Rome by Mary R. Lefkowitz; Maureen B. Fant
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. HQ1127 .W653 2016
ISBN: 9781472578471
Publication Date: 2016
Provides a unique look into the public and private lives and legal status of Greek and Roman women.

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
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.

Portrait medal of Dido, Queen of Carthage (obverse); A View of Carthage (reverse)
ca. 1550 (Pubilc Domain) From the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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

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.

Penn Libraries

Van Pelt-Dietrich Library
Collections focus on humanities and social sciences (but not exclusively). Includes books for history, literature, philosophy, politics, economics ..
Fisher 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

A sampling from the catalog

Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age by Donna Zuckerberg
Call Number: ONLINE
ISBN: 9780674975552
Publication Date: 2018-
How the alt-right has appropriated ancient texts to support their misogynistic and racist ideology. Also available in print: Van Pelt - New Book Display. HN49.R33 Z83 2018
Omeros by Derek Walcott
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. PR9272.9.W3 O44 1990 AND SEE ONLINE LINK BELOW
ISBN: 0374225915
Publication Date: 1990
A poem in five books, of circular narrative design, titled with the Greek name for Homer. Walcott writes of Native American tribal losses, African enslavement, and the suffering caused by exile.
Also available online
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
Sula by Toni Morrison
Call Number: ONLINE
ISBN: 9781400033430
Publication Date: 2004 (1973)
Echoes of Sophocles' Ajax
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
The Darker Face of the Earth by Rita Dove
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. PS3554.O884 D68 2000
ISBN: 1885266944
Publication Date: 2000
Dove calls on Sophocles' Oedipus The King. You can also find this text online
The Gods are Not to Blame by Ola Rotimi
Call Number: ONLINE
ISBN: 0192113585
Publication Date: 1971
Available in print and online. Rotimi, like Rita Dove, used Sophocles' Oedipus the King as inspiration for his work.
Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds by Lorna Hardwick and Carol Gillespie, editors
Call Number: Van Pelt Library. PR9080.5 .C6 2007 and online
ISBN: 9780199296101
Publication Date: 2007
From colonial authority to Post-colonial resistance
Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought by Vanda Zajko, et al., eds.
Call Number: ONLINE
ISBN: 9780199237944
Publication Date: 2008
Covers a widerange of subject areas including poetry, philosophy, science, history, and psychoanalysis as well as classics
Toni Morrison and the Classical Tradition by Tessa Roynon
Call Number: ONLINE
ISBN: 9780199698684
Publication Date: 2014
In this volume, Roynon explores Toni Morrison's widespread engagement with ancient Greek and Roman tradition.
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.