Information Services

Classics

Some useful resources for Classics are listed below.

Academic Search Complete

Access information: Available on and off campus.
Description: The Academic Search Complete multi-disciplinary database provides full text for more than 8,500 journals, including full text for more than  7,300 peer-reviewed titles. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,400 journals.
Coverage: 1887-present.

 

L'Annee philologique

Access Information: Access on and off-campus.
Description: L’Année philologique is a specialised bibliographic database of scholarly works relating to all aspects of Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. It covers a wide array of subjects, including Greek and Latin literature and linguistics—which includes early Christian texts and patristics—Greek and Roman history, art, archaeology, philosophy, religion, mythology, music, science, and scholarly subspecialties such as numismatics, papyrology, and epigraphy. Abstracts of journal articles are provided in English, German, Spanish, French, or Italian. Book entries may include tables of contents and book review information. Published by the Société Internationale de Bibliographie Classique this online database includes all volumes of the annual index, beginning with Volume I published in 1928.
 
Access Information: Access on and off campus
Description: E-books in archaeology. Around 10-15 new books are added each month. Subscribed e-books will be listed on DiscoverEd. Open access e-books are also available.
Note: A title list can be found at https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Digital-Subscriptions/Metadata

 

 

Archive of Celtic-Latin Literature (Brepols)

Access information:

Access on and off-campus

Description:

In the early Middle Ages, literate individuals in and from the Celtic periphery of Europe (Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, Scotland and the Isle of Man) wrote many and varied Latin works constituting what can arguably be seen as a distinctive literature, whose unusual vocabulary, grammar and phrasing (to say nothing of subject-matter) made it into what has been called “one of the most curious and interesting phenomena of medieval philology”. This database contains more than five hundred Latin works by over a hundred known and unknown authors, spanning the fields of theology, liturgy, computistics, grammar, hagiography, poetry and historiography, and including legal texts, charters, inscriptions, etc

 

Access information: Access on and off-campus. Not working? Try clearing your cookies. Alternatively, use the Alternative login (with the VPN service if off campus) and choose Web of Science Core Collection from "All Databases" drop down menu.
Description: Part of Web of Science Core Collection. A multidisciplinary index containing details of every substantive item in 1,200 arts and humanities journals, as well as references to books included in book reviews, and live performances, films, records, and television and radio broadcasts. Contains over 2 million references.
Coverage: 1906 - present.

 

BAS Library

Access information:

Access on and off campus.

Description:

BAS Library is the Biblical Archaeology Society’s online archive and includes access to the journals Biblical Archaeology Review (1975 to present), Bible Review (1985-2005) and Archaeology Odyssey (1998-2006). It also includes the 5th volume of the New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations published by BAS and the Israel Exploration Society, as well as books published in collaboration with the Smithsonian. A selection of videos by noted scholars is also included. While BAS Library is fully searchable they have put together some Collections that allow you to browse a selection of relevant articles on popular topics in one place.

 

Berg Fashion Library

Access information: Available on and off campus
Description: Berg Fashion Library from Bloomsbury Publishing: “the authority on world dress”: an extensive online portal which offers fully cross-searchable access to a large and growing range of Berg content collections – including the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion online, 100+ e-books, reference works, and over 13,000 images.
Coverage: Content in the collection dates back to before 500 BCE via the taxonomy search and back to 1600 via the timeline search through to the present day and covers all continents of the World.

 

Bibliographia Franciscana

Access information: Available free on and off campus.
Description: This is the digitised version of the Bibliographia Franciscana. The Bibliographia Franciscana is the annual supplement of the international peer-reviewed journal Collectanea Franciscana published by the Historical Institute of Capuchins. The Bibliographia Franciscana is a systematically ordered collection of bibliographic references to the principal works (books, pamphlets, articles, etc.) of every language in the area of Franciscan studies, from 1929 to the present day. This is a guest Open Access database currently being hosted by Brepolis.

 

Bibliographia Internationalis Spiritualitatis

Access information: Available free on and off campus.
Description:

The BIS (Bibliographia Internationalis Spiritualitatis) offers an academic bibliography in spiritual theology, Carmelite studies and theological anthropology and is proposed by the Pontifical Theological Faculty Teresianum in cooperation with the Institutum Carmelitanum, both located in Rome. The current version (December 2020) includes the bibliography since 2007 and counts with about 16,000 entries and 200 reviews. This is a guest Open Access database currently being hosted by Brepolis.

 

 

Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina (BTL)

Access information: Available on and off campus.
Description: The BTL Online database provides electronic access to all editions of Latin texts published in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana, ranging from antiquity and late antiquity to medieval and neo-Latin texts. The two databases of Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina (BTL) and Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL) are linked by a common user interface, so that the Thesaurus and the Latin texts of the Bibliotheca Teubneriana can be accessed through one panel, which allows various and differentiated searches.

 

Brill's Companions in Classical Studies Online I

Access information: Available on and off campus.
Description: This first online collection of Brill's acclaimed series of Companions in Classical Studies presents the best in current scholarship in a variety of subjects. These 25 volumes, ranging from Homer to Ovid and from Aegean Greece in the Fourth Century BC to Flavian Rome, will be of use to scholars and students alike as excellent starting points for teaching as well as research.

 

Brill's Jacoby Online

Access information: Access on and off-campus. Choose Jacoby Online to access this database
Description: ‘Jacoby’ is short for die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker (FGrHist, or FGrH), a collection of ancient Greek historic texts that were lost, except for fragments (citations, extracts and summaries) found in other sources. Most of these fragments are attributed to a particular author and/or work in the source text, but some remain anonymous and can only be categorized by their subject matter. Jacoby Online contains both Brill’s New Jacoby and Brill’s New Jacoby, Second Edition and is updated twice a year with new content. Most entries in Jacoby Online focus on a lost author, but some entries contain anonymous fragments on a particular era or region, or even a single fragmentary text from a papyrus or manuscript.

 

Brill's New Pauly

Access information: Access on and off-campus. Choose New Pauly Online to access this database. 
Description: Recognized standard reference work for students and scholars of the ancient world. Brill's New Pauly is the English edition of the authoritative Der Neue Pauly, published by Verlag J.B. Metzler since 1996, and both versions of the text are available online, fully searchable and cross referenced.
Coverage:

Fifteen volumes (Antiquity, 1-15) are devoted to Greco-Roman antiquity and cover more than two thousand years of history, from the second millennium BC to early medieval Europe.

Five volumes (Classical Tradition, I-V) are uniquely concerned with the long and influential aftermath of antiquity and the process of continuous reinterpretation and revaluation of the ancient heritage, including the history of classical scholarship.

 

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: A unique historical reference compendium which provides access to the full text of the Cambridge Histories series. Contains over 300 volumes.
  Subjects covered include American, British and Economic history, Language and Linguistics, Literary Studies, Philosophy, Music and Political Social theory.
  Books can be browsed by, title, chapter or author or search across volumes.
Note: Access is to all titles published to 2014, then individual purchases. All available titles are listed in DiscoverEd.

 

Clavis Clavium

Access information: Available free on and off campus.
Description: Clavis Clavium is an integrated reference database and collaborative update platform to open up Patristic, Medieval and Byzantine texts. The aim of the project is to unite the leading claves into one database. This is an ongoing effort to update and extend the knowledge of texts, authors and saints. Note that the University of Edinburgh only has access to the Open Access Consultation part of this resource.

 

Dyabola

Access information: Access on and off campus. Check the IP access box then enter the 8 digit access key - find the 8 digit access key here.
Description: The Subject Catalogue of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) in Rome.
Coverage: 1956 - present

 

Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics Online

Access Information: Access on and off campus
Description: The Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics (EAGLL) is 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.

 

Ethnologue : Languages of the World

Access Access on campus. For off-campus access, please use the University VPN - Access to the University network via the VPN.
Description An authoritative resource that brings together more data than any other resource of its kind, Ethnologue contains the profiles of the current 7,099 living languages of the world.  Regularly updated, Ethnologue provides in depth information covering the number of speakers of languages, location, dialects, usage statistics, linguistic affiliations and autonyms. In addition to living languages, Ethnologue also contains data on languages which have gone out of use since the first appearance of the publication 66 years ago.

 

Access information. Access on and off campus.
Description:

The Library of Latin Texts - Series A (formerly known as the Cetedoc Library of Christian Latin Texts) contains texts taken from the Corpus Christianorum series. These include the Vulgate and the Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, the complete corpus of decrees from the ecumenical Church councils from Nicaea to Vatican II and many Latin versions (ancient, medieval or modern) of works by Aristotle, Averroes, Avicenna, Dionysius the Areopagite, Flavius Josephus, Irenaeus of Lyon, Maximus the Confessor, Origen, Plato and Porphyrus. Each text draws on additional intensive research work undertaken by the Centre 'Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium'.

The complementary Library of Latin Texts - Series B database gathers other Latin texts of all genres and all periods including chronicles, medieval saints' lives and travel narratives, legal texts, and theological, philosophical and scientific treatises from the early modern period, drawn from existing scholarly editions.

 

Access Information: Access on and off campus.
Description: The Digital Loeb Classical Library contains more than 520 volumes of Latin, Greek and English texts aiming to be a virtual library of all that is important in Greek and Latin Literature, epic and lyric poetry, history, travel, philosophy and oratory, medical writers and mathematicians, and the Church Fathers who make particular use of pagan culture. Readers can browse, search, bookmark, annotate and use a Greek keyboard.

 

Monumenta Germaniae Historica (eMGH) (Brepols)

Access information:

Access on and off-campus

Description:

The Monumenta Germaniae Historica was founded in 1819 by the Gesellschaft für Deutschlands ältere Geschichtskunde. It is without doubt one of the most prestigious editorial undertakings for the critical publication of medieval historical texts. In more than 300 volumes, covering the widest possible range of historical documents, divided into five major Series (Scriptores, Leges, Diplomata, Epistolae and Antiquitates) and into 33 Subseries, the Monumenta not only continues its editorial programme but it has established for all Western scholarship a standard for critical editions.

 

Online Egyptological Bibliography

Access information:

Access on or off campus.

Description: The Online Egyptological Bibliography (OEB) holds the largest available collection of references in Egyptological literature. It includes the volumes of the Annual Egyptological Bibliography (AEB) for 1947 to 2001 with abstracts, combined with Bibliographie Altägypten (BA) for 1822 to 1946, the Aigyptos database with keywords, and many thousands of more recently added records. It provides coverage of Egyptological literature from 1822 to the present and is updated nearly every day. OEB is a living site: improvements and extensions to functionality and to coverage are being developed and will be announced as they are introduced.

 

Access information: Available on and off campus
Description:

Developed cooperatively with scholars worldwide, Oxford Bibliographies offers exclusive, authoritative research guides. Combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia, this cutting-edge resource guides researchers to the best available scholarship across a wide variety of subjects.

Each subject area has an Editor in Chief, Editorial Board, and team of peer reviewers overseeing the development and updating of articles ensuring balanced perspective with scholarly accuracy and a robust updating program to keep researchers informed of advances in their field.

At the time of launch, each subject area includes approximately 50 articles; with an additional 50 to 75 articles added each year. New article topics are selected to ensure each subject area offers full and balanced coverage as determined by the Editor in Chief and Editorial Board, scholarly feedback, and research demand.

Coverage: The following modules are available to the University of Edinburgh - African American Studies, African Studies, American Literature, Anthropology, Biblical Studies, British and Irish Literature, Buddhism, Chinese Studies, Cinema & Media Studies, Classics, Criminology, Education, Hindu Studies, International Law, International Relations, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Latin American, Linguistics, Literary and Critical Theory, Medieval Studies,  Music, Philosophy, Psychology, Renaissance & Reformation, Social Work, Sociology, Victorian Literature.  See http://oxfordbibliographiesonline.com/obo/page/subject-list for individual module title lists.

 

Access information: Access on and off-campus
Description: OHO brings together the world’s leading scholars to discuss research and the latest thinking on a range of major topics. Each Handbook offers thorough introductions to topics and a critical survey of the current state of scholarship in a particular field of study, creating an original conception of the field and setting the agenda for new research. The articles review the key issues and major debates, and provide an original argument for how those debates might evolve.
Coverage:

The following subject collections are available to the University of Edinburgh - Archaeology, Business & Management, Classical Studies, Criminology & Criminal Justice, Economics & Finance (up to 2020), History, Law, Linguistics, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Religion and Sociology up to the end of 2021 copyright year.  If the chapters in these books have 2022 onwards updates, these will not be accessible. 

 

Oxford Language Dictionaries

Access information: Access on and off campus.

 

 

Coverage: The following dictionaries are available: Arabic/English, English/Arabic, Chinese/English, English/Chinese, French/English, English/French; German/English, English/German; Portuguese/English, English/Portuguese; Spanish/English, English/Spanish; Italian/English, English/Italian, Russian/English, English/Russian.

 

Oxford Reference Online

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: The Oxford Reference Online Collection is a vast collection of dictionaries and reference books offering over 1.8 million facts and definitions, many of them illustrated. Updated monthly with new titles, editions, factual corrections, features and functionality, the content ranges from concise definitions to in-depth articles on topics from Art to Zoology.  A title list can be found here https://www-oxfordreference-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/browse?submittedFilterId=by-availability&isQuickSearch=true&btog=book&pageSize=20&sort=titlesort&avail_4=unlocked&avail_5=free

 

Access Information: Access on and off campus
Description: OSE provides full-text access to several hundred authoritative Oxford editions of major English works from the humanities written between 1485 and 1830. The subject coverage ranges from philosophy, literature, and theology, to economics, linguistics, and medicine, with a particularly rich collection in poetry, prose and drama including all of Shakespeare’s plays, the complete works of Jane Austen, the poetry of John Donne, and works by Adam Smith, David Hume and Jeremy Bentham.
Note: We do not have access to all OSE content, individual e-book records have been added to DiscoverEd. If you use the link above, please select the 'Only view full text results provided by University of Edinburgh' checkbox. This option is located in the left hand menu of the search results or browse results page.

 

Access information: Access on and off campus
Description: Complete text of scholarly books published by Oxford University Press in the subject areas below.
Coverage: Archaeology, Biology, Business & Management, Chemistry, Classical Studies, Clinical Medicine and Allied Health, Computer and Information Science, Earth Sciences and Geography, Economics and Finance, Education, Environmental Science, History, Law, Linguistics, Literature, Mathematics, Music, Neuroscience, Palliative Care, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Public Health and Epidemiology, Religion, Social Work and Sociology. We have access to over 20,700 e-books.

 

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: Electronic version of Migne's Patrologiae Graecae contains more than 160 volumes of Greek material (with Latin translations) relevant to the study of the history of the Christian Church from its beginnings through the Council of Florence in 1439.
  The electronic version has been created using the first edition of Patrologiae Graecae.

 

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: Electronic version of the first edition of Jacques-Paul Migne's Patrologia Latina, published between 1844 and 1855, and the four volumes of indexes published between 1862 and 1865. Comprising the original Latin texts of the works of the Church Fathers from Tertullian in 200 AD to the death of Pope Innocent III in 1216, the database also includes the prefatory material, critical apparatus, and Migne's column numbers.

 

Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit

Access Information: Access on and off campus
Description: The Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit Online/Prosopography of the Middle Byzantine Period Online (PMBZ Online) is a comprehensive biographical dictionary for the Byzantine Empire in the early Medieval Period (641-1025 AD) documenting more than 21,000 persons. PMBZ Online is based on the print edition of the Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit which appeared in two parts 1998 and 2013. PMBZ Online documents all persons mentioned either by name or anonymously in the relevant Byzantine and non-Byzantine sources, and secondly all persons mentioned in the Byzantine sources both from Western Europe and from the Arabic and Slavonic areas, together with those from the Christian East.

 

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: The Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 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; it summarizes new readings, interpretations, and studies of known inscriptions, and occasionally presents the Greek text of these documents. The online edition includes all SEG volumes, and will incorporate all future volumes in the series. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum Online is automatically updated upon publication of the annual volume.

 

Access information:

On or off campus via library link and user created login. 

Description: The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) is based at the University of California, Irvine. Founded in 1972 the TLG has already collected and digitized most literary texts written in Greek from Homer to the fall of Byzantium in AD 1453. Its goal is to create a comprehensive digital library of Greek literature from antiquity to the present.
Note: Users may not under any circumstances download, print, make copies of and/or distribute TLG materials.
Note: First time users will be asked to register. Subsequent access requires both the University network access and the login you created. The register/login link is located at the top right corner of the TLG website.
Note: If you are using a PC which has SPIonic, choose this font from the drop down list in section B and click on 'Enter'. (The SPIonic font has been installed on all computing service PCs in open access computing labs).

 

Access information: Available on and off campus.
Description: The Thesaurus linguae Latinae is not only the largest Latin dictionary in the world, but also the first to cover all the Latin texts from the classical period up to about 600 A.D. 31 academies, and scholarly societies from 23 countries support the work of the Bayerische Akademie (Thesaurusburo Munchen). The two databases of Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina (BTL) and Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL) are linked by a common user interface, so that the Thesaurus and the Latin texts of the Bibliotheca Teubneriana can be accessed through one panel, which allows various and differentiated searches.

 

Access information: Access on and off campus
Description: Translated Texts for Historians book series makes available historical sources from 300-800 AD translated into English, in many cases for the first time.
  The geographic range covers Syria, Arabia, Armenia, Georgia and Egypt in the East; North Africa; major cities of the Roman Empire (Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople); and Spain, Gaul, Italy, Britain and Ireland in the West.
  Types of writing include histories, chronicles, letters, annals, formularies, compendia, political speeches, military and theological handbooks, poems, documentary sources, records of church councils, biblical and theological commentaries, sermons, church histories, Christian treatises, Christian and pagan panegyric and polemic, Neoplatonic texts, Lives of saints, bishops and popes.

 

Trismegistos

Access information:

Access on or off campus

Description:

Trismegistos is a conglomerate of databases, with Texts, Collections, Archives, People, Places, and Authors as main sections. This resource deals with texts from the ancient western world, dated between roughly 800 BC and AD 800. The eventual goal of this resource is to provide information about all texts for which there is physical evidence dated to that period but there is still a long way to go and the resource is still growing. Trismegistos was once limited to Egypt only and for some sections that is still its current limitation, for other sections the ancient western world in general is covered, or at least that expansion is underway. This resource is the result of collaboration between the universities of Leuven and Cologne, along with the support of other individual projects.

Additional information: More information about what you can expect to find in the various sections in Trismegistos can be found at https://www.trismegistos.org/guide.php

 

Vetus Latina Database

Access information:

Access on and off campus.

Description:

The Vetus Latina Database is an electronic index to all Greek and Latin patristic citations or allusions to the pre-Vulgate editions of the Bible, collected by the Vetus Latina Institut in Beuron, Germany.

 

Related Links

Subject guide: Classics