Greek and Latin Resources

Last updated 01 Jul 2024: added some more authors I like, with suggested editions and translations, and also added PHI as a repository for texts

I’ve been collecting links on Classics topics for years. Lexica, texts, language learning resources, &c. &c. And I would love to share it with y’all. I have a lot of links in my bookmarks, many of which are probably dead, but for this post I’m going through and curating a list of the best links I have found. I’ll try to split it up by category as well as I can.

I’ll need to add more to this over time, but this is a start at least.

Lexica

• Logeion is a searchable collection of various lexica for Greek and Latin. LSJ (Liddell & Scott’s A Greek-English Lexicon), L&S (Lewis & Short, A Latin Dictionary), and others are searchable by headwords on this site. It even has limited capabilities for English->Latin or English->Greek!
• Perseus is a resource beloved by undergrad and grad students everywhere, a collection not only of lexica and word searching tools, but also many, many Greek, Latin, and even other non-English (and English!) texts!
• Neo-Latin Lexicon (aka Lexicon Morganianum) is exactly what it sounds like: a lexicon consisting of Latin words adapted for modern ideas, concepts, and words in general. It’s fun to explore, and very useful for spoken Latin! There’s even some Greek involved!
• Ancient Digitized Greek Dictionaries: Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. Lots of lexica, knock yourself out!
• Greek & Latin Dictionaries: Greek & Latin dictionaries, many converted into .slob format, usable in Aard2. I use Aard2 literally all the time, not only for LSJ & L&S, but also Wiktionary, on my phone!
• Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (aka TLL): This is an excellent project, with PDFs of the corpus kindly offered for free in a partnership with De Gruyter, who publishes the lexicon. The idea for the TLL came about back in 1893, and volumes have been slowly published ever since then, and are continuing to be published now. The aim of the lexicon is to catalogue the whole of Latin. I use the PDFs with Diogenes and it’s overwhelming but lovely.

Textbooks

Greek

• Hansen, Hardy & Quinn, Gerald. Greek: an Intensive Course: This is the Greek textbook I learned from. It isn’t kidding about being an “intensive” course; AFAIK it is intended to be used for a summer course. I used it for supplementary material for my students, here and there, but it’s not for the faint of heart, IMHO.
• Balme, Maurice, Lawall, Gordon, & Morwood, James. Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek: I used this teaching high school students. It’s a pretty decent text (two volumes), and is a little friendlier than the venerable Hansen & Quinn, IMHO.
• Groton, Anne. From Alpha to Omega: I used this textbook when teaching Greek to undergrads during my master’s program. It’s not bad at all!

Latin

• Wheelock, Frederic, & LaFleur, Richard. Wheelock’s Latin: This is the textbook I learned Latin from. It’s been around for ages, and a ton of undergrad programs use it; I also see it used sometimes in middle and high school. Please note that this is a very grammar-based approach, with charts and paradigms and all of that, which are to be memorized.
• Shelmerdine, Susan. Introduction to Latin: I used this when teaching summer Latin classes. It is definitely doable to learn a year worth of Latin in two summer semesters. It’s a pretty decent text, but I supplemented it a lot with things from Wheelock’s and my own material. Also very grammar-based, like most of the texts until very recently.
• Ørberg, Hans. Lingua Latina per se illustrata I: Familia Romana: This text, affectionately known as LLPSI, is an entirely monolingual text. That is, the text and even exegetical material, is all in Latin, with pictures and other guides to help with understanding. It’s a weird paradigm shift to get used to, but we used it with great success in middle and high school when I was teaching. I would highly recommend trying this method out, working at pattern recognition, and trying to immerse yourself. I am very much a grammar-based learner myself, so Wheelock was great for me, but I definitely see the value in the LLPSI approach.
  • There is a lot of supplemental material for LLPSI out there on the internet, well worth seeking out.
• Ludus Latinus: a fascinating digitized version of a Latin-learning course, all in Latin, from the 1930s.

Plenty of people learned with the Cambridge Latin Course or Oxford Latin Course or tons of others; I have used Cambridge, and really didn’t like it that well, at least for teaching, and I don’t think I would have enjoyed it much for learning either. But if you like them, go for it!

Primary Texts

Greek

• Greek Learner Texts Project: a nice collection of Greek texts and lexica for those learning Greek!
• Colson’s Greek Reader by E. H. Colson (1965) is nice. It used to be available on Internet Archive, but you may still be able to find it on Google Books perhaps.

Latin

• The Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) database: A very large, free database of Latin texts from a variety of authors! It’s pretty bare-bones but does offer limited search capabilities.
• Commenius, John. Orbis sensualium pictus: Comenius’ work introduces readers to names for everyday things in Latin. It is a fascinating work; the edition I have is from 1705, but the linked one seems a little different.
• Fay, Marjorie. Carolus et Maria: This is a great little school text of straightforward Latin stories!
• Maxey, Mima. Cornelia: another great little comprehensible school text!
• Reed, Maud. Julia: More of the same. A lot of these seemed to come out in the ’30s and ’40s!

General Resources

• “Tools” on The Digital Classicist Wiki: a collection of various tools. I don’t know a lot about this, but there is a ton to peruse!
• Latin Resources on the Internet: Just as it says! Helpful list of links, kinda like this one.
• Latinitium: Run by Daniel Petterson, this is a lovely site, chock-full of information. And Daniel has also published a number of Latin-learning books, including his lovely reprint of the fun 1930s Latin novel Ad Alpes; see here for more on that book.
• A Style Guide for Gender Inclusivity in the Latin Language: A lovely resource with some suggested adaptations of Latin for more gender inclusivity in what is a very gendered language.
• LacusCurtius: Bill Thayer’s put a ton of work into this site, which serves as a repository for a ton of texts, both English and Latin, and even some Greek ones! I’ve found it very useful. He has also transcribed a lot of the Loebs that are in the public domain. This is undoubtedly, indubitably, a public service. (At the time of writing, 28 Jun 2024, the site appears to be down; hopefully it comes back soon!)
• Livy’s Periochae: T. Livius’ (Livy) monumental Roman historical work, Ab urbe condita, was originally 142 books, of which about 35 have come down to us complete. The Periochae (= Gk. περιοχαί, “summaries”) are just that, summaries of each book of Livy, including all of the lost ones, so we have some idea of what they contained, at least. Sort of like Proclus’ Chrestomathy, which preserves, in prose summary, chunks of the Epic Cycle. This is a very cool site and well worth checking out.

My Favorite Works

Here’s where I wanted to talk about some of the authors and works I love reading personally. Many of these texts are available online through Perseus or elsewhere, so you can usually find them for free.

Greek

• Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are, of course, excellent, and everyone should read them. Emily Wilson’s translations of the former and latter are excellent, too, but I also really love Richmond Lattimore’s translations also.
  • There are countless editions of Homer out there in Greek, as well as commentaries. I love M.L. West’s two-volume Teubner edition of the Iliad, and the nice, compact edition of the Odyssey by Peter von der Mühll (available here from a scan of microform, but of course is available in print as well).
  • I am partial to the Bristol commentaries on the Iliad (vol. 1) (vol. 2) by M.M. Willcock, and Odyssey (vol. 1) (vol. 2) by W.B. Stanford.
• The Homeric Hymns: these are poems dedicated to various gods and goddesses, such as Demeter, Apollo, Aphrodite, &c. The Loeb is particularly nice, but if you’re looking for a translation alone, I highly recommend the one by Apostolos Athanassakis.
• Hesiod: often considered on par with Homer, Hesiod presents himself as a farmer in Boeotia (Askra, to be precise); his poems include, inter alia, Theogony (“birth of the gods”) and Works and Days (a poem about farming and other matters). Theogony is lovely, and while it reads sometimes like the Bible (“so-and-so begat so-and-so,” &c.), it is also a fascinating look at the genealogy and origins of the Greek pantheon.
  • The two Loebs are nice; one includes Theogony and Works and Days, and the other, minor poems such as The Shield and other fragments.
  • I really recommend, again, Athanassakis’ translation of Hesiod; this is a newer edition but older ones are just fine!
• Any of Aeschylus’ tragedies are lovely, but the Oresteia is especially powerful: the story of the great Greek hero Agamemnon’s disastrous return home, and his son Orestes’ righteous vengeance, and a foundation myth for the law-courts in Athens. I like the Grene and Lattimore “Complete Greek Tragedies” translations, but I’m sure there are other good ones out there. I am also very partial to the Seven Against Thebes, as I really enjoy the Oedipus Cycle of myths (and that is the aftermath of all of that).
• Any of Sophocles’ tragedies are also lovely. I spent a lot of time with Sophocles for my dissertation, focusing on the Oedipus Rex, Ajax, and Oedipus at Colonus, for example. All great tragedies. There really isn’t a bad one in the bunch. Sophocles is kind of in the middle between Aeschylus’ old-school traditionalism and the more progressive and experimental Euripides.
• Euripides’ tragedies are really interesting. I haven’t spent a ton of time with any particular one of them, but the Bacchae is very powerful, and the Trojan Women is also really great. He wrote a ton of tragedies, only a fraction of which we have, and we still have a whole lot of them!
• Pindar: Most of what we have are Pindar’s victory-odes, written to celebrate athletic victories in various sports. At the center of each of these odes, though, tends to be a kernel of mythology, fascinating glimpses at parts of the Epic Cycle and, sometimes, alternate histories of Homeric myths. I loved reading about Achilles’ family, the Aiakidai, in some of the odes, for example, and learning myths we do not see in Homer.
  • Note that Pindar’s Greek is incredibly hard and obscure, but well, well worth reading, and worth meeting the challenge.
  • I highly recommend William Race’s two-volume Loeb set. I met Race once and he was very friendly and personable!
• Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica: Most people have never heard of Quintus of Smyrna, or Quintus Smyrnaeus. I honestly don’t know how I found out about him. I ended up writing my master’s thesis on Quintus, though. The Posthomerica, written probably in the 3rd-4th century CE, retells, in excellent Homeric Greek, the myths from the end of the Iliad to the fall of Troy. Quintus was fairly well-appreciated when the text of his poem was rediscovered (I think in the 16th or 17th century?), but was much-maligned for a long time after that as a subpar imitator of Homer. However, in the last decade or so, he has been rehabilitated, and people are starting to appreciate his work more. I love that Quintus’ work “preserves,” essentially, these myths that have largely been lost to us from the Epic Cycle and its various poems.
  • I highly recommend Alan James’ translation, The Trojan Epic. Not only is it a great translation, but it has copious notes to help with understanding.
  • If you want a good Greek text, the Loeb by A. S. Way is pretty good. If you want a splurge, the 3-volume text by Francis Vian is excellent.
• Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautika is everything to love: an epic with tons of adventure, even some romance! Jason and the Argonauts travel from Greece all around the Mediterranean in search of the fabled Golden Fleece! Apollonius was a librarian of Alexandria, and this is definitely a scholar’s epic, but it’s lovely. Medea is also a fierce presence in this epic, known previously from Euripides’ tragedy of the same name.
  • William Race also did a nice Loeb. Or, just like with Quintus, if you want a splurge, Francis Vian also did a nice multi-volume text also (it’s in the search results, although Guy Lachenaud’s scholia volume is also on my shelf and is great too!)
• Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaka: Just imagine, a 48-book late Greek epic (likely ~5th century CE), written, like Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica, in lovely Homeric Greek, all about the god Dionysus! This work is supposed to be bonkers.
  • There is a nice 3-volume Loeb set of this.
  • However, a lovely English translation came out in the past few years, which I bought recently from my favorite local indie. Tales of Dionysus was edited by William Levitan & Stanley Lombardo, and the book is translated by 42 (!) different translators. I am excited to read it for sure, but haven’t gotten around to tackling it yet.
  • Nonnus is another author who has been much-maligned in the past, but is getting greater recognition now.

Latin

• Vergil: my first love, boringly enough, like many others, was Vergil and his lovely Aeneid. I took a class on ancient epic in translation, and we read the Iliad, Odyssey, and then Aeneid. I loved all of them. The Aeneid is a really interesting work, almost a Homeric “fan-fiction,” lovingly-crafted, and is as much about the fall of Troy and the founding of Rome as it is the beginning of the Roman Empire.
  • A good, tried-and-true school text is Clyde Pharr’s Vergil’s Aeneid: books I-VI, affectionally dubbed the “Purple Vergil” by its fans. We used this in my undergrad class, and while it’s only half the work (the full poem is 12 books), it’s a great, friendly text of the first half.
  • R. D. Williams’ Bristol texts/commentaries on I-VI and VII-XII are also excellent.
  • I am partial to the Robert Fagles translation is pretty good (I got the hardcover as a gift), but my first exposure to it was the Allen Mandelbaum translation which is also quite good.
• Lucretius, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things): Lucretius is said to have lived from 99-55 BCE, and undoubtedly inspired Vergil in his works. His only known work, De rerum natura, is a didactic Latin epic on how the world works. Namely, everything is made up of atoms, falling through an infinite void. Lucretius’ work is presumably inspired by the Greek Presocratic philosopher Epicurus’ περὶ φύσεως (peri phuseos), or On Nature. I find Lucretius so fascinating since, as he even says himself that the “poverty of our ancestral tongue” (patrii sermonis egestas, 1.832) makes it difficult to put difficult Greek philosophical concepts into the Latin language. He was literally creating a new philosophical vocabulary for Latin!
  • Cyril Bailey’s 3-volume text and commentary is the gold standard, but his OCT (Oxford Classical Text) is also excellent. (Apologies; I tried to find Internet Archive links for the text/commentary, but they are unavailable at this time, ugh)
  • I really, really like Anthony Esolen’s excellent translation.
• Quintus Ennius: Ennius, who, according to Aulus Gellius, “said that he had three hearts, because he knew how to speak Greek, Oscan, and Latin” (Quintus Ennius tria corda habere sese dicebat, quod loqui Graece et Osce et Latine sciret, Noctes Atticae 17.17.1-2), is a fascinating figure. He is most famous, arguably, for the Annales (Annals), an originally 18-book Latin epic on Roman history. His dates are roughly 239-169 BCE, and his work definitely covers some of the Punic Wars. Only about 600 lines survive of the Annales, which was largely supplanted in the schools by the Aeneid (*shakes fist at Vergil*). I find him an interesting and enigmatic character, and would have loved to read the whole thing, despite Ovid calling “nothing shaggier than it” (nihil est hirsutius illis [Annalibus], Tristia 2.259).
  • Otto Skutsch’s The Annals of Q. Ennius was my “white whale” for a long time, but I eventually found a copy of it, while still quite expensive, deeply discounted.
  • I was going to recommend the E. H. Warmington Remains of Old Latin vol. 1 Loeb, but apparently there is a newer one with a newer text. Might be worth checking out!
  • I used Mario Erasmo’s Archaic Latin Verse with undergrads, and found it very accessible. Bonus, this also includes fragments of Livius Andronicus (Odysia, a Saturnine verse translation of the Odyssey into Latin), and fragments of Gnaeus Naevius’ Bellum Punicum (Punic War). It’s a cool little text!
• Ovid: a poet famous for his love poems (Amores, or Loves), cheeky manual on how to find love (Ars Amatoria, or The Art of Love), but known very widely for his massive mythological epic, Metamorphoses, or Changes. Other works include the Heroides, or Heroines, poems written from the POV of mythological heroines to their lovers; the Medicamina Faciei Femineae, or Medications for the Feminine Face, a treatise on makeup. Ovid even wrote his own Latin version of the (perhaps lost?) Greek Ibis, about the Egyptian bird. Ovid is also famous for his exilic poems, such as the Tristia, or Sad Things, or his Epistulae ex Ponto, or Letters from the Black Sea. Ovid was said to have been exiled to Tomis on the Black Sea for carmen et error (“a poem and an error”); some question whether he was ever exiled at all and think it may have been a poetic invention. I doubt it, but yeah…
  • Ovid also wrote the Fasti (“festival-calendar” of dies fasti or “festival-days”), a mythological poem chronicling the festivals of the year; only six books were completed of what was presumably going to be 12. I don’t know as much about this work, but would love to read it.
  • Plenty of editions available. There is a nice OCT of the Amores, Ars Amatoria, and some minor works. I have another OCT of the Tristia and Ex Ponto. I think the Metamorphoses OCT is huge, but one volume.
  • I do have a text & commentary on Metamorphoses 1-5, and I think the author also did a 6-10, not sure about an 11-15, however, but I’m sure someone has done one.
• Marcus Manilius: Manilius wrote the Astronomica (Astronomy) sometime in the 1st century CE (as far as I remember reading, it was dated using a mention of the Roman defeat in the Teutoburg Forest ca. 9 CE). I haven’t spent much time with the poem, but I remember enjoying exploring it in an undergrad class on astrology. See also in Greek Aratus’ Phaenomena (Phenomena), a pretty little poem on weather and astronomy, which Cicero and many others translated into Latin with varying success.
  • The Loeb of Manilius is just fine!

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll try to add more to this list as I can. Thanks for reading!