Loeb Classical Library

Volume 170N of the Greek collection in the Loeb Classical Library, revised edition
Volume 6 of the Latin collection in the Loeb Classical Library, second edition 1988

The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb /lb/) is a series of books, today published by Harvard University Press, which presents important works of ancient Greek and Latin literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience, by presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each left-hand page, and a fairly literal translation on the facing page. The General Editor is Jeffrey Henderson, holder of the William Goodwin Aurelio Professorship of Greek Language and Literature at Boston University.

History

The Loeb Classical Library was conceived and initially funded by the Jewish-German-American banker and philanthropist James Loeb (1867–1933). The first volumes were edited by T. E. Page, W. H. D. Rouse, and Edward Capps, and published by William Heinemann, Ltd. in 1912, already in their distinctive green (for Greek text) and red (for Latin) hardcover bindings. Since then scores of new titles have been added, and the earliest translations have been revised several times. In recent years, this has included the removal of earlier editions' bowdlerization, which habitually extended to reversal of gender to disguise homosexual references or, (in the case of early editions of Longus' Daphnis and Chloe) translated sexually explicit passages into Latin, rather than English.

Profit from the editions continues to fund graduate student fellowships at Harvard University.

The Loebs have only a minimal critical apparatus, when compared to other publications of the text. They are intended for the amateur reader of Greek or Latin, and are so nearly ubiquitous as to be instantly recognizable.

In 1917 Virginia Woolf wrote (in The Times Literary Supplement):

The Loeb Library, with its Greek or Latin on one side of the page and its English on the other, came as a gift of freedom. ... The existence of the amateur was recognised by the publication of this Library, and to a great extent made respectable. ... The difficulty of Greek is not sufficiently dwelt upon, chiefly perhaps because the sirens who lure us to these perilous waters are generally scholars [who] have forgotten ... what those difficulties are. But for the ordinary amateur they are very real and very great; and we shall do well to recognise the fact and to make up our minds that we shall never be independent of our Loeb.

Harvard University assumed complete responsibility for the series in 1989 and in recent years four or five new or re-edited volumes have been published annually.

In 2001, Harvard University Press began issuing a second series of books with a similar format. The I Tatti Renaissance Library presents key Renaissance works in Latin with a facing English translation; it is bound similarly to the Loeb Classics, but in a larger format and with blue covers. A third series, the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, was introduced in 2010 covering works in Byzantine Greek, Medieval Latin, and Old English. Volumes have the same format as the I Tatti series, but with a brown cover. The Clay Sanskrit Library, bound in teal cloth, was also modeled on the Loeb Classical Library.

As the command of Latin among generalist historians and archaeologists shrank in the course of the 20th century, professionals came increasingly to rely on these texts designed for amateurs. As Birgitta Hoffmann remarked in 2001 of Tacitus' Agricola, "Unfortunately the first thing that happens in bilingual versions like the Loebs is that most of this apparatus vanishes and, if you use a translation, there is usually no way of knowing that there were problems with the text in the first place."[1]

In 2014, the Loeb Classical Library Foundation and Harvard University Press launched the digital Loeb Classical Library, described as "an interconnected, fully searchable, perpetually growing, virtual library of all that is important in Greek and Latin literature."[2][3]

Volumes

The listings of Loeb volumes at online bookstores and library catalogues vary considerably and are often best navigated via ISBN numbers.

Greek

Poetry

Homer
Hesiod
Nonnus
Other Epic Poetry
Lyric, Iambic and Elegiac Poetry
Other Hellenistic poetry
Greek Anthology

Drama

Aeschylus
Sophocles
Euripides
Aristophanes
Fragments of Old Comedy
Menander

Philosophers

Early Greek Philosophy
Aristotle
Athenaeus
Epictetus
Marcus Aurelius
Philo
Plato
Plotinus
Plutarch
Ptolemy
Sextus Empiricus
Theophrastus
Greek Mathematics (extracts)

Historians

Appian
Arrian
Dio Cassius
Diodorus Siculus
Herodian
Herodotus
Josephus
Manetho
Polybius
Procopius
Thucydides
Xenophon

Attic orators

Aeschines
Demosthenes
Isaeus
Isocrates
Lysias
Minor Attic Orators

Biography

Plutarch
Diogenes Laertius
Philostratus

Ancient Greek novel

Greek Fathers

Basil
Clement of Alexandria
Eusebius
John Damascene
Apostolic Fathers

(edited by Bart Ehrman, replacing Kirsopp Lake's edition)

Other Greek prose

Aelian
Aeneas Tacticus
Babrius and Phaedrus
Alciphron
Apollodorus
Dio Chrysostom
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Galen
Hippocrates
Julian
Libanius
Lucian
Pausanias
Philostratus
Philostratus the Elder and Philostratus the Younger
Strabo

Papyri

Latin

Ammianus Marcellinus

Apuleius

Augustine

Ausonius

Bede

Boethius

Julius Caesar

Cato and Varro

Catullus

Celsus

Cicero

Claudian

Columella

Cornelius Nepos

Curtius

Florus

Frontinus

Fronto

Gellius

Horace

Jerome

Juvenal and Persius

Livy

Lucan

Lucretius

Macrobius

Manilius

Martial

Ovid

Petronius

Plautus

Pliny the Younger

Pliny

Propertius

Prudentius

Quintilian

Sallust

Seneca the Elder

Seneca the Younger

Sidonius

Silius Italicus

Statius

Suetonius

Tacitus

Terence

Tertullian and Marcus Minucius Felix

Valerius Flaccus

Valerius Maximus

Varro

Velleius Paterculus

Virgil

Vitruvius

Minor Latin Poets edited by J. W. Duff

The Augustan History, edited by D. Magie

Old Latin, edited by Warmington, E.H.

References

  1. Birgitta Hoffmann, "Archaeology versus Tacitus' "Agricola: a first-century worst-case scenario" given to the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference, (Dublin) 15 December 2001.
  2. Harvard's Loeb Classical Library goes digital, Francesca Annicchiarico, Harvard Magazine, September–October 2014
  3. About the Library | Loeb Classical Library

Sources and external links

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