Classics

Sources for Background Information

Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

• New Pauly Online: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World The standard encyclopedia of Classical Antiquity.
• Brill's New Jacoby A fundamental source for Ancient Greek historical scholarship containing texts of Greek historians with English translation, critical commentary and bibliographical references.
• Oxford Classical Dictionary
• Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization
• Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature

Blackwell companions to the ancient world

These Blackwell Companions offer state-of-the-question surveys of scholarship on specific topics in the world of Classical Antiquity.

• A companion to ancient philosophy.
• A companion to ancient history.
• A companion to ancient epic.
• A companion to Greek and Roman political thought.
• A companion to Greek and Roman historiography.
• A companion to Archaic Greece.
• A companion to the classical Greek world.
• A companion to Greek tragedy.
• A companion to Greek rhetoric.
• A companion to Greek religion.
• A companion to the Ancient Greek language.
• A companion to Ancient Macedonia.
• A companion to the Hellenistic world.
• A companion to the Roman Republic.
• A companion to the Roman Empire.
• A companion to the Roman army.
• A companion to Latin literature.
• A companion to Roman rhetoric.
• A companion to Roman religion.
• A companion to Roman Britain.
• A companion to Late Antiquity.
• A companion to the Classical tradition.
• A companion to Classical receptions .

Cambridge Ancient History.

The standard history of Classical Antiquity. These titles offer up-to-date, authoritative surveys of all aspects of Classical Antiquity.

• 1:1. Prolegomena and Prehistory.
• 1:2. Early History of the Middle East.
• 2:1. History of the Middle East and the Aegean Region c. 1800–1380 B.C.
• 2:2. History of the Middle East and the Aegean Region c. 1380–1000 B.C.
• 3:1. The Prehistory of the Balkans; and the Middle East and the Aegean world, tenth to eighth centuries B.C.
• 3:2. The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and other States of the Near East, from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries B.C.
• 3:3. The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries B.C.
• 4. Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean C. 525 to 479 B.C.
• 5. The Fifth Century B.C.
• 6. The Fourth Century B.C.
• 7:1. The Hellenistic World.
• 7:2. The Rise of Rome to 220 B.C.
• 8. Rome and the Mediterranean to 133 B.C.
• 9. The Last Age of the Roman Republic, 146–43 B.C.
• 10. The Augustan Empire, 43 B.C–A.D. 69.
• 11. The High Empire, A.D. 70–192.
• 12. The Crisis of Empire, A.D. 193–337.
• 13. The Late Empire, A.D. 337–425.
• 14. Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–600.

Searching the Library Catalogue

Use the basic word(s) anywhere or advanced keyword search in the library catalogue. You can search using words like - rhetoric, rhetori?, politic?, etc.

Search tips

Core and additional databases.

Periodical indexes for Classics and closely-related subjects:
Click on "Info?" for a detailed description of the database contents and coverage.

• Année philologique (Classical Antiquity), coverage 1924-2008 Info?
  Indexes scholarly publications (books, journal articles, conference proceedings, articles in collections) written in major European languages. Abstracts accompany most entries, but may not be in the language of the publication (e.g. an Italian abstract may accompany an English article). The database may be searched by personal names of ancient and modern authors and anonymous ancient texts, but there are no subject headings for individual items. A “full text” search will look for “natural language” words in appearing titles and abstracts only, so it is necessary to be inventive both in terms of vocabulary and languages searched, as a German term found in an abstract may turn up an English-language article. It is often useful to limit the search to a specific subject category. These categories changed, often substantially, in 1997, so older and more recent articles should be searched separately. Multiple searches may be combined with Boolean operators (and, or, not) using the “search history” function.
• Philosopher's Index, coverage 1940- Info?
• BHInet (British Humanities Index), coverage 1962- Info?
• FRANCIS, coverage 1984- Info?
• Gnomon: Kritische Zeitschrift für die gesamte Klassische Altertumswissenschaft. Humanities and Social Sciences (McLennan) has Bd.1-2, 21-37, 39 onwards (1925 to date). The printed volumes of Gnomon are available online via JSTOR from 1925 to 2003 and via Metapress from 2009 onwards.
• Gnomon Bibliographic Database, coverage 1990- Although the search form (field names, etc.) is in German, English terms may be used.

Periodical Indexes, Bibliographies, Full-text Databases

Very large, multi-subject periodical indexes. There is a lot of content dealing with Classical Antiquity in these databases and very many full-text files. Years of coverage vary greatly.

• WilsonWeb OmniFile Full Text Mega, coverage mainly 1984-
  For retrospective coverage 1907-1984, go to WilsonWeb, open the database selection area and select "Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retro." To search thousands of collections of essays, open the database selection area and select "Essay and General Literature Index." All three databases can be combined in the same search.
• ProQuest Research Library - (Years of coverage vary)
• Academic Search Premier (EBSCO) - (Years of coverage vary)
• Expanded Academic ASAP (Gale) - (Years of coverage vary)

Biography

• Who's Who in the Classical World
• Who's Who in Classical Mythology
• Who's Who in the Roman World

Selected Internet Sites

• Voice of the Shuttle: Classical Studies Sponsored by the University of California at Santa Barbara.
• Intute Classics Resources Sponsored by the Joint Information Systems Committee in the UK.
• Perseus Digital Library Maintained by Tufts University.
• Electronic Resources for Classicists: The Second Generation Maintained by Thesaurus Linguae Graecae at the University of California, Irvine.
• Index Antiquus
  A searchable index for the classics texts hosted by Montclair College.

Other Resources

Related Subject Guides

• Philosophy
• Religious Studies