Understanding citations to Classical texts

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Emery Shriver
Classics Librarian

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About Classical Citations

Citations to classical works are slightly different than those you may encounter when doing research in other disciplines.  Here are some examples of what you may encounter:


1) Citations that contain:

  • the author's name (sometimes abbreviated)
  • a short or abbreviated title, usually in italics
  • a sequence of numbers and/or letters, which refer to subdivisions within the work. How texts are subdivided varies, so you may see book, chapter, section and/or line numbers. 

Example:

"As for the Greeks’ long-term cultural debt to the Minoans, it is notable that even in much later generations (the epics of Homer, for example) the Cretans – now ‘Greeks’ – were famed for their dance-floors and musical performances (e.g. Homer Iliad 16.617, 18.590–2, etc.)"¹

The citation in bold refers to line 617 of book 16 and lines 590-592 of book 18 in Homer's Iliad.


2) Citations that reference authoritative and/or well-known editions. These editions may use similar subdivisions as the aforementioned example, but may cite the author of the edition, rather than the original author of the text.

Example:

"Companionship and pleasure are implicitly on the agenda again when Theognis of Megara comments that it is only under compulsion that one mingles at the symposion hosted by a chatterbox, hated for talking unstintingly (295-8 W)."²

The citation in bold refers to lines 295-298 of the Theognidea, found in West, M. L. (1989–92) Iambi et Elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum Cantati, 2nd edition, Oxford.


Examples taken from:

     ¹Mark Griffith, "'Telling the tale’: a performing tradition from Homer to pantomime," in The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre, ed. Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 14.

     ²Fiona Hobden, The Symposion in Ancient Greek Society and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 7-8.