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The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb; /loʊb/ , German: [løːp] ) is a series of books originally published by Heinemann in London, but is currently published by Harvard University Press. [1] The library contains important works of ancient Greek and Latin literature 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.
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 Thomas Ethelbert Page, W. H. D. Rouse, and Edward Capps, and published by William Heinemann, Ltd. (London) in 1912, already in their distinctive green (for Greek text) and red (for Latin) hardcover bindings. [2] 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 bowdlerization from earlier editions, which often reversed the gender of the subjects of romantic interest to disguise homosexual references or (in the case of early editions of Longus's Daphnis and Chloe ) translated sexually explicit passages from the Ancient Greek into Latin, rather than English. [3]
Since 1934, the library has been co-published with Harvard University. [4] 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. [5]
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." [6]
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." [7] [8]
The Loeb Library serves as a model to be emulated for:
The listings of Loeb volumes at online bookstores and library catalogues vary considerably and are often best navigated via ISBN numbers.
(edited by Bart Ehrman, replacing Kirsopp Lake's edition)
Claudius Aelianus, commonly Aelian, born at Praeneste, was a Roman author and teacher of rhetoric who flourished under Septimius Severus and probably outlived Elagabalus, who died in 222. He spoke Greek so fluently that he was called "honey-tongued" ; Roman-born, he preferred Greek authors, and wrote in a slightly archaizing Greek himself.
Polybius was a Greek historian of the middle Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work The Histories, a universal history documenting the rise of Rome in the Mediterranean in the third and second centuries BC. It covered the period of 264–146 BC, recording in detail events in Italy, Iberia, Greece, Macedonia, Syria, Egypt and Africa, and documented the Punic Wars and Macedonian Wars among many others.
Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, each letter with a fixed integer value. Modern style uses only these seven:
A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, usually known as the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (NPNF), is a set of books containing translations of early Christian writings into English. It was published between 1886 and 1900.
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Adrasteia, also spelled Adrastia, Adrastea, Adrestea, Adastreia or Adrasta), originally a Phrygian mountain goddess, probably associated with Cybele, was later a Cretan nymph, and daughter of Melisseus, who was charged by Rhea with nurturing the infant Zeus in secret, to protect him from his father Cronus. By at latest the fifth century BC, she became identified with Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution.
In Greek mythology, Amphiaraus or Amphiaraos was the son of Oicles, a seer, and one of the leaders of the Seven against Thebes. Amphiaraus at first refused to go with Adrastus on this expedition against Thebes as he foresaw the death of everyone who joined the expedition. His wife, Eriphyle, eventually compelled him to go.
Crates of Thebes was a Greek Cynic philosopher, the principal pupil of Diogenes of Sinope and the husband of Hipparchia of Maroneia who lived in the same manner as him. Crates gave away his money to live a life of poverty on the streets of Athens. Respected by the people of Athens, he is remembered for being the teacher of Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism. Various fragments of Crates' teachings survive, including his description of the ideal Cynic state.
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Selene is the goddess and personification of the Moon. Also known as Mene, she is traditionally the daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, and sister of the sun god Helios and the dawn goddess Eos. She drives her moon chariot across the heavens. Several lovers are attributed to her in various myths, including Zeus, Pan, and the mortal Endymion. In post-classical times, Selene was often identified with Artemis, much as her brother, Helios, was identified with Apollo. Selene and Artemis were also associated with Hecate and all three were regarded as moon and lunar goddesses, but only Selene was regarded as the personification of the Moon itself. Her Roman equivalent is Luna.
In Greek mythology, Psamathe is a Nereid, one of the fifty daughters of the sea god Nereus and the Oceanid Doris. By Aeacus, the king of Aegina, she is the mother of a son, Phocus. When Phocus is killed by his half-brothers Peleus and Telamon, Psamathe sends a giant wolf at Peleus' herd.
In Greek mythology, Hellen is the eponymous progenitor of the Hellenes. He is the child of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the father of three sons, Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus, by whom he is the ancestor of the Greek peoples.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Emperor Augustus. His literary style was atticistic – imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.
The gens Tullia was a family at ancient Rome, with both patrician and plebeian branches. The first of this gens to obtain the consulship was Manius Tullius Longus in 500 BC, but the most illustrious of the family was Marcus Tullius Cicero, the statesman, orator, and scholar of the first century BC. The earliest of the Tullii who appear in history were patrician, but all of the Tullii mentioned in later times were plebeian, and some of them were descended from freedmen. The English form Tully, often found in older works, especially in reference to Cicero, is now considered antiquated.
Nicomedes III Euergetes was the king of Bithynia, from c. 127 BC to c. 94 BC. He was the son and successor of Nicomedes II of Bithynia.
The Palatine Anthology, sometimes abbreviated AP, is the collection of Greek poems and epigrams discovered in 1606 in the Palatine Library in Heidelberg. It is based on the lost collection of Constantinus Cephalas of the 10th century, which in turn is based on older anthologies. It contains material from the 7th century BC until 600 AD and later on was the main part of the Greek Anthology which also included the Anthology of Planudes and more material.
William Roger Paton, usually cited as W. R. Paton, was a Scottish author and translator of ancient Greek texts, mostly known for his translation of the Greek Anthology.
In Greek mythology, Aeolus or Aiolos was the son of Hellen, the ruler of Aeolia, and the eponym of the Aeolians, one of the four main tribes of the Greeks. According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Aeolus was the father of seven sons: Cretheus, Sisyphus, Athamas, Salmoneus, Deion, Magnes, Perieres, and five daughters: Canace, Alcyone, Pisidice, Calyce, and Perimede. He was said to have killed his daughter Canace because she had committed incest with her brother Macareus. This Aeolus was sometimes confused with the Aeolus who was the ruler of the winds.
In Greek mythology, Phocus, was a prince of Aegina and son of Aeacus and Psamathe.
In Greek mythology, Thoas was a son of Jason and Hypsipyle, and a grandson of the Lemnian king Thoas, and the twin brother of Euneus. Thoas and Euneus took part in the funeral games of the Nemean king Lycurgus' infant son Opheltes, after which they succeeded in rescuing their mother Hypsipyle from her servitude.
Hypsipyle is a partially preserved tragedy by Euripides, about the legend of queen Hypsipyle of Lemnos, daughter of King Thoas. It was one of his last and most elaborate plays. It was performed c. 411–407, along with The Phoenician Women which survives in full, and the lost Antiope.
Phaethon is the title of a lost tragedy written by Athenian playwright Euripides, first produced circa 420 BC, and covered the myth of Phaethon, the young mortal boy who asked his father the sun god Helios to drive his solar chariot for a single day. The play has been lost, though several fragments of it survive. Another treatment of the myth had been delivered earlier by Aeschylus in his lost play Heliades, whose content and plot are even more fragmentary and obscure. The influence of Euripides' play on Ovid's version of the myth can be easily recognized. From this now lost play only twelve fragments remain, covering around 400 lines or so.
The Loeb Classical Library® is published and distributed by Harvard University Press.
A footnote then gave in Latin the real meaning of the Greek line.