Skip to main content

Subject-specific eGuides

Classics and Classical Archaeology

Searching for resources

There are two key library catalogues you may use when studying at Cambridge:

Girton Library catalogue (Heritage) – search Girton Library’s collection and see if items are available or already on loan. See our eGuide for further information.

iDiscover – to search across the University’s print and electronic collections (including books, eBooks, journals, newspapers, articles and much more, from other colleges, faculty and department libraries, and the University Library. Most, but not all, of Girton’s collection can be found here. See our Searching iDiscover eGuide for further information.

You will be able to borrow from Girton’s Library and the University Library and you may also wish to use the Classical Faculty Library. However, there may be other libraries within Cambridge which stock useful resources. For a full list of the Cambridge libraries see the directory and check each library for access guidelines.

Search Spacefinder to find places of study outside of College.

Subject-specific resources

You can find and search for databases that might help you on the Database A-Z LibGuide. However, some key resources for your subject include:

Bibliographies and Encyclopaedias:

  • Année Philologique Essential bibliographic resource for all Classical disciplines. Useful for finding books and articles on specific subjects or on particular ancient authors. It can be searched using a range of criteria, e.g. modern author, ancient author, keyword, subject, date, etc. Useful for decoding abbreviations used for journal titles.
  • Brill’s New Pauly The New Pauly provides comprehensive coverage of the ancient world from the prehistory of the Aegean (2nd millennium BCE) to Late Antiquity (600-800 CE).
  • Encyclopedia of Ancient History The only comprehensive collection of twenty-first-century scholarship available on the entire ancient Mediterranean world. Entries extend to all Mediterranean civilizations, including the Near East and Egypt.
  • Oxford Bibliographies Classics Authoritative research guide to Classics, combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia.
  • Oxford Reference Online It includes the Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford companion to classical civilization, Who’s Who in the Classical World and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome. Hover over the images on the home page to find Classical Studies to narrow down to those books or search across all entries.
  • Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt It offers the most complete picture available of ancient Egyptian civilization, from the predynastic era to its eclipse in the seventh century CE.
  • Web of Science ISI Web of Science accesses multi-disciplinary databases of bibliographic information and abstracts gathered from thousands of scholarly journals and includes the Arts and Humanities Citation Index.

Greek language and literature:

  • Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek English translation of Franco Montanari’s Vocabolario della Lingua Greca. The most important modern dictionary for Ancient Greek, it brings together 140,000 headwords taken from the literature, papyri, inscriptions and other sources of the archaic period up to the 6th Century CE, and occasionally beyond.
  • Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics A unique work that brings together the latest research from across a range of disciplines which contribute to our knowledge of Ancient Greek. It is an indispensable research tool for scholars and students of Greek, of linguistics, and of other Indo-European languages, as well as of Biblical literature.
  • Eustathius' Odyssey Commentary This online publication offers a new text edition of Eusthathius of Thessalonica’s Commentary on the Odyssey and a modern, English translation of the Commentary.
  • Loeb Classical Library The digital Loeb Classical Library is a fully searchable, perpetually growing virtual library of all that is important in Greek and Latin literature and includes single and dual-language reading modes.
  • New Jacoby Brill's New Jacoby provides a revised edition of the Greek texts of Felix Jacoby’s Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker where relevant. It includes several new authors and many fragments of existing authors that were either unknown to Jacoby or excluded by him. It also gives commentaries in those cases where Jacoby failed to do so. Brill's New Jacoby presents facing English translations of the Greek fragments, a new, critical commentary, and a brief encyclopedia-style entry about each historian’s life and works, with a select bibliography.
  • Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum Online SEG systematically collects newly published Greek inscriptions as well as publications on previously known documents. It presents complete Greek texts of all new inscriptions with a critical apparatus.
  • Thesaurus Linguae Graecae Database for searching virtually all ancient Greek literary texts surviving from the period between Homer (8th century B.C.) and 600 A.D., and a large number of texts deriving from the period between 600 A.D. and 1453.
  • Trismegistos Texts Database Trismegistos Texts is a searchable online database of metadata of all published and semi-published texts from Egypt and the Nile valley, between roughly BC 800 and 800 AD, not only in Greek, Latin, and Egyptian in its various scripts (Demotic, hieroglyphic, hieratic and Coptic), but also in Meroitic, Aramaic, Arabic, Nabataean, Carian, and other languages (currently in all 823167 records).

Open access databases:

  • Corpus Medicorum Graecorum / Latinorum Earlier publications of its series CMG, CML, CMG Supplementum and CMG Supplementum Orientale. Open Access.
  • English-Greek Dictionary by S.C. Woodhouse A facsimile of S.C. Woodhouse's English-Greek Dictionary (1910) with a keyword search for terms. Open Access.
  • Papyri.info Aggregates material on papyri including the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri. Databases may be searched or browsed. Open Access.
  • Perseus Digital Library Perseus Digital Library of Greek and Roman texts with translations, vocab tools and references. Open Access.
  • PHI Searchable Greek Inscriptions An open access online searchable database of Greek Inscriptions based on the Packard Humanities Institute PHI7 CD-ROM. Allows searching or browsing by region.

Latin language and literature:

  • Aristoteles Latinus Database Contains the complete corpus of medieval translations of the works of Aristotle, comprising those texts that have been critically edited in the printed Aristoteles Latinus series, as well as other corpora that have already been published or that are currently in preparation or unpublished. The database is not identical to the printed edition, as it omits the prefaces describing the manuscript tradition; nor does it include the apparatus of variant readings, the Greek-Latin comparative apparatus, or the bilingual indexes of the printed version. The texts included are prepared and supervised by the Aristoteles Latinus Centre of the Catholic University of Leuven, and produced in collaboration with the CTLO.
  • Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina Provides online access to the standard editions (editions maiores) of the Bibliotheca scriptorum Romanorum Teubneriana. The database includes classical Latin literature in almost its entirety for the period up to the second century, together with the important non-Christian authors from the second century through to the Carolingian Renaissance, and the complete corpus of texts of the 'Grammatici Latini' and 'Servius Grammaticus.' The Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina is the central reference database for Latin literature from the Roman Republic to the Imperial Period and Late Antiquity.
  • Codices Vossiani Latini Online
  • Library of Latin texts. Series A Fully searchable texts of Latin literature spanning the Classical, Patristic, Medieval, and Neo-Latin periods.
  • Library of Latin texts. Series B A complementary database to Library of Latin texts. Series A by Brepolis. Smaller number of texts but growing.
  • Latin Cross Database searchtool Provides simultaneous searching of four databases: Library of Latin Texts (CLCLT); Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH); Aristoteles Latinus Database (ALD), and the Archive of Celtic-Latin Literature (ACLL).
  • Database of Latin Dictionaries (DLD) Provides access to a growing number of Latin dictionaries.
  • In Principio Includes most of the incipits from the major manuscript resources of Europe. With its wide-ranging, “generalist” character, covers all Latin texts that have been transmitted in manuscript since the origins of Latin literature up to about 1600 when the manuscript is replaced by the printed text. In Principio thus covers ancient, patristic, medieval, and humanist Latin literature.
  • Loeb Classical Library The digital Loeb Classical Library is a fully searchable, perpetually growing virtual library of all that is important in Greek and Latin literature and includes single and dual-language reading modes.
  • Patrologia Latina Database Comprises the works of the Church Fathers from Tertullian (c. 200 A.D.) to the death of Pope Innocent III in 1216.
  • Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (de Gruyter) The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae is an ongoing attempt to create the first comprehensive scholarly dictionary of ancient Latin from the earliest times down to AD 600. Each year the contents of the newly printed fascicles are added to the database.
  • Trismegistos Texts Database 
  • Vetus Latina The Vetus Latina Database is a compilation of Latin biblical texts that pre-date the Vulgate. The texts are collected by the Vetus Latina Institut in Beuron, Germany and also printed in the Vetus Latina series. The database is updated as new citations are added to the collection.

Open access databases:

Other websites:

One of the easiest ways to discover information of academic value on the Internet is to use one of the many subject-related hubs or gateways.

  • Classical Association Useful for its links to other classical bodies
  • Electronic Resources for classicists The second generation – from the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae team. [NB Updated a bit sporadically]
  • KIRKE (Katalog der Internetressourcen für die Klassische Philologie) In German but gives access to information on mailing lists and newsgroups, for example, in English. [NB Updated sporadically]
  • Textkit Giving access to over 180 Greek and Latin textbooks, including downloadable versions of old favourites such as North & Hillard’s Greek prose composition and Allen & Greenough’s New Latin grammar
  • Voice of the shuttle This humanities research website includes very comprehensive sections on classical studies and archaeology.

 

Help within college

Library staff can provide support and assistance. You can book an appointment with us or ask a question via library@girton.cam.ac.uk.

Library Guides

We have wide range of guides for College members to use

Find out more