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About This Guide
"I am now come to the ships of the Achaeans to ransom his body from you with a great ransom. Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable, for I have steeled myself as no man yet has ever steeled himself before me, and have raised to my lips the hand of him who slew my son." Iliad 24.500. Illustration: Ransom of the Body of Hector
The Classical Studies Research Guide highlights resources primarily selected from the online and print collections of the Boston University Libraries. I hope students and scholars of classical antiquity and its enduring tradition will find the Guide useful and convenient.
Getting Started: The Fabulous Four
- Loeb Classical Library This link opens in a new window This database contains 520 volumes of Greek and Latin texts with English translations representing all the ancient authors from Homer 700 B.C.E. to Bede 700 C.E. Mugar Library also has the volumes in print. To find their call numbers, search the BULS catalog for "Loeb AND Antigone," leaving out the quotation marks. Choose a "Find in Library" result, click on "More Information" and check for Series: Loeb Classical Library.
- L'Année Philologique This link opens in a new window Search this database to find journal articles and books that discuss, interpret, and analyze the texts of the ancient authors found in the Loeb Classical Library as well as all topics relating to the classical world, its tradition and reception.
- Brill's New Pauly This link opens in a new window Search this online encyclopedia to find background information on all aspects of classical antiquity. It is a revised version of Paulys Real-encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (1893-1978) often referred to as Pauly-Wissowa after its authors and cited in footnotes as RE or RealEnc. Its call number is Mugar Memorial Library Stacks DE 5 E94.
- Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC) Search the LIMC text and corresponding image volumes of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan mythology to discover how ancient authors and artists represented figures from the works of Homer to those of the Romans in literature, vase-paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts.Location: Mugar Reference X N7760 .L49 1981Publication Date: 1981-
- Iconiclimc The iconiclimc database is an image-enhanced spin-off of the original text-only LIMC database.
New Books -- Recent Acquisitions
Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity by
How should articulations of blackness from the fifth century BCE to the twenty-first century be properly read and interpreted? This important and timely new book is the first concerted treatment of black skin color in the Greek literature and visual culture of antiquity. In charting representations in the Hellenic world of black Egyptians, Aithiopians, Indians, and Greeks, Sarah Derbew dexterously disentangles the complex and varied ways in which blackness has been co-produced by ancient authors and artists; their readers, audiences, and viewers; and contemporary scholars. Exploring the precarious hold that race has on skin coloration, the author uncovers the many silences, suppressions, and misappropriations of blackness within modern studies of Greek antiquity. Shaped by performance studies and critical race theory alike, her book maps out an authoritative archaeology of blackness that reappraises its significance. It offers a committedly anti-racist approach to depictions of black people while rejecting simplistic conflations or explanations.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2022
Cicero and the Early Latin Poets by
The writings of Cicero contain hundreds of quotations of Latin poetry. This book examines his citations of Latin poets writing in diverse poetic genres and demonstrates the importance of poetry as an ethical, historical, and linguistic resource in the late Roman Republic. Hannah Čulík-Baird studies Cicero's use of poetry in his letters, speeches, and philosophical works, contextualizing his practice within the broader intellectual trends of contemporary Rome. Cicero's quotations of the 'classic' Latin poets, such as Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, and Lucilius, are responsible for preserving the most significant fragments of verse from the second century BCE. The book also therefore examines the process of fragmentation in classical antiquity, with particular attention to the relationship between quotation and fragmentation. The Appendices collect perceptible instances of poetic citation (Greek as well as Latin) in the Ciceronian corpus.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2022
Juno's Aeneid: A Battle for Heroic Identity by
A major new interpretation of Vergil's epic poem as a struggle between two incompatible versions of the Homeric hero This compelling book offers an entirely new way of understanding the Aeneid. Many scholars regard Vergil's poem as an attempt to combine Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into a single epic. Joseph Farrell challenges this view, revealing how the Aeneid stages an epic contest to determine which kind of story it will tell--and what kind of hero Aeneas will be. Farrell shows how this contest is provoked by the transgressive goddess Juno, who challenges Vergil for the soul of his hero and poem. Her goal is to transform the poem into an Iliad of continuous Trojan persecution instead of an Odyssey of successful homecoming. Farrell discusses how ancient critics considered the flexible Odysseus the model of a good leader but censured the hero of the Iliad, the intransigent Achilles, as a bad one. He describes how the battle over which kind of leader Aeneas will prove to be continues throughout the poem, and explores how this struggle reflects in very different ways on the ethical legitimacy of Rome's emperor, Caesar Augustus. By reframing the Aeneid in this way, Farrell demonstrates how the purpose of the poem is to confront the reader with an urgent decision between incompatible possibilities and provoke uncertainty about whether the poem is a celebration of Augustus or a melancholy reflection on the discontents of a troubled age.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2021
Travel, Geography, and Empire in Latin Poetry by
This volume considers representations of space and movement in sources ranging from Roman comedy to late antique verse, exploring how poetry in the Roman world is fundamentally shaped by its relationship to travel within the geography of Rome's far-reaching empire. The volume surveys Roman poetics of travel and geography in sources ranging from Plautus to Augustan poetry, from the Flavians to Ausonius. The chapters offer a range of approaches to: the complex relationship between Latin poetry, Roman identity, imperialism, and travel and geospatial narratives; and the diachronic and generic evolutions of poetic descriptions of space and mobility. In addition, two chapters, including the concluding one, contextualize and respond to the volume's discussion of poetry by looking at ways in which Romans not only write and read poems about travel and geography, but also make writing and reading part of the experience of traveling, as demonstrated in their epigraphic practices. The collection as a whole offers important insights into Roman poetics and into ancient notions of movement and geographical space. Travel, Geography, and Empire in Latin Poetry will be of interest to specialists in Latin poetry, ancient travel, and Latin epigraphy as well as to those studying travel writing, geography, imperialism, and mobility in other periods. The chapters are written to be accessible to researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2021
