How can an amateur research Greek and European history?
A bibliography and guide to the transmission of ancient Greek texts
Edit (Dec 2023): Since originally publishing this post, I continually update it and add select sources for research conducted behind all my articles published on Substack which don’t otherwise have their sources in the original post.
At the start of 2023, I worked on a series of four articles to try and understand how we have access to what the Ancient Greeks said. How did their words get put into writing and passed through thousands of years of tumultuous history? This post is a bibliography for the sources I consulted to research for that series [Edit: and subsequent essays]. More than that, I hope it can serve as a general resource and discussion about how amateur historians can approach their own textual research.
Although I conduct historical research at a museum (not about ancient Greece, but primarily early 20th century Canada), my academic training is in anthropology and its in-person qualitative research methods. I spent six months in India researching pilgrims on a Himalayan route for my thesis and assessed post-earthquake disaster reconstruction in urban and rural Nepal. Therefore, in the field of classics and European history in general, I am an amateur. However, the anthropologist on my shoulder is always whispering in my ear urging me to be transparent about my research methods, to identify my sources, and to engage in reflexivity; that is, to identify myself and my context in a field of study.
Most of the texts I consulted are available to anyone with open internet. They can be found through free and open resources online, in limited capacity at academic publishing repositories, or as previews which — through multiple instances of access — can complete a fuller picture of the work. Some of the less technical books were accessed at my local city library.
Beyond those resources, as an alumnus of a university (University of British Columbia) I retain access to some digital materials from its library. I am also fortunate to live within reach of a different university (Simon Fraser University), which I visit to access its library. Most major universities in Canada are public universities and any member of the public can visit the libraries’ physical collections. More useful for me was the digital access I could obtain as a visitor to the library. All I needed to receive full access to digital materials was request a temporary visitor’s password for log-in details at the library computers. This lasts for a full day and there is no limit. I would strongly urge any alumni to check what access they retain to their alma mater’s library, and to see what kind of visitor access can be obtained at a local university.
Identifying and Accessing Sources
These are resources from where you can access bibliographies, books, journals, maps, and primary texts on a wide range of topics.
Oxford Bibliographies (“Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature”)
This is a great place to start orienting yourself while getting a hefty number of sources on different aspects of this history. Many of the books and journals it identifies are not easily accessible, however. Oxford Bibliographies has a huge number of bibliographies for almost any research topic imaginable.
JSTOR
JSTOR is one of the largest digital libraries in the world that encompasses journals, books, primary sources, and other materials. Some of the materials are in the public domain or open access, but most materials are locked behind subscriptions — which most universities have access to. However, recently JSTOR increased the number of articles that anyone can view for free to 100 per month. You just need to create a free account.
ToposText
This is the type of resource that used to only exist in a dream. ToposText features indexed places, texts, and historical people related to Ancient Greece in fully searchable lists and maps. Want to know what texts reference a particular geographic location? Want to have fully searchable libraries of classical texts in English? Look no further than ToposText.
Podcasts and Video Resources
These are general resources that are useful for understanding the transmission of Greek texts and the broader contexts of the societies through which that process took place. I used these sources to identify research paths and to help generally inform the discussion.
Byzantium & Friends
A fantastic podcast by Anthony Kaldellis, a specialist in Greek history and the Byzantine Empire. In each episode he interviews an expert in their field, usually the Byzantine Empire from roughly the 4th to 15th centuries AD. This podcast is a gateway to many rabbit holes. As I noted in my transmission series, the Byzantine period is extremely important for the preservation of Greek texts, but particularly relevant episodes are: #26, #38, #68.
In Our Time
In Our Time is a growing BBC series of around 1000 podcast interviews between the host Melvyn Bragg and 2-4 experts in their field per episode. The episodes can cover just about any topic in culture, history, philosophy, religion, and science so I recommend digging around and searching for whatever topic may interest you. A couple episodes I used for my series are: “The Medieval University” and “Maths in the Early Islamic World”.
Ryan Reeves
Ryan Reeves is a Christian theologian with a PhD from Cambridge University. His videos cover a range of topics related to Christianity, including history, theology, and politics. Many of his early church history lectures cover ancient Greek philosophy and history, but most of his videos are useful for the transmission of Greek texts insofar as they speak to the overwhelmingly Christian contexts within which many of the texts were transmitted.
Told In Stone
Garrett Ryan (‘Toldinstone’) has a PhD in Greek and Roman history and creates bite-sized videos on interesting questions about ancient Greek and Roman society that you never realized to even ask. He has recently started making long-form podcasts with experts on antiquity. Recommended videos for textual transmission are: “Byzantine Knowledge of Roman History” and “We know more about the Romans than you think”. Recommended podcast: “The Byzantines and the Classical Past (with Anthony Kaldellis)”.
Secondary Sources (Greek Transmission Series)
These books are my primary and most trustworthy sources for specific information and interpretation on the transmission of Greek texts. The materials listed here pertain to my series on the overview of ancient Greek transmission through time and are in order starting from the most useful for my series.
Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (2013), by L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson
This book, originally published in 1968 and now in its fourth edition, is the best general overview of the transmission of Greek texts from antiquity to today. If I were to recommend a single text that most encompasses this story, this is the book. It is equally as concerned with Latin texts, which can be a benefit for those also interested in those texts, but you need to be careful if you are interested in just one or the other so that you don’t think you’re reading about transmission of Greek texts when you’re actually reading about Latin texts.
Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the Internet (2008), by Ian McNeely and Lisa Wolverton
This book discusses the history of transmission and preservation of knowledge in general, with Greek texts as a major part of some sections, and the institutions that carried them forward in others. It takes Europe as its centre but each section of the book includes a comparative analysis to a civilization or institution outside of Europe. It is organized into institutions, which influenced my decision to organize my own series into innovations. The book has sections on libraries, monasteries, and universities, in a similar vein as the innovations 2, 4, and 7 in my series.
Ancient Greek Scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises (2007), by Eleanor Dickey
Ancient Greek texts don’t come to the modern day as cleanly as we generally understand a text. The process of transmission is complicated, confusing, and fragmented. This book helps students of ancient Greek texts understand this process and the terms used to describe the ways Greek texts can be found and understood in the extant manuscripts and textual materials.
This book was also useful for research on the Iliad/Venetus A Series (see below)
Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium (2017), edited by Anthony Kaldellis and Niketas Siniossoglou
As Byzantium was a key conduit for the transmission of Greek texts from antiquity until today, this book provides a wealth of information on the intellectual developments and technology through which many Greek texts passed through and took shape.
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), by Thomas Cahill
This easy-to-read book discusses the achievements of the ancient Greeks and their numerous legacies across the world today.
These next materials were used for a particular part of research for the series. The annotation I provide is specifically for my use of the books (hence the past-tense use below), not for the whole text which usually covers much more ground. Materials are listed in historical chronological order (following the thrust of my series’ “Innovations”).
Cambridge History of Classical Literature Volume 1: Greek Literature (1985), edited by P.E. Easterling and Bernard Knox
Chapters in this collection helped me understand the oral and epic traditions of Homeric literature and the origins of writing in Greece.
Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature (2021), edited by Stratis Papaioannou
This collection provided information on the translation of Greek texts through Syriac, Latin, Arabic, and other languages, as well as a chapter on manuscript transmission.
Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (1971), by Charles Haskins
This book provided information on the emergence of universities and the initial recovery of Greek science and philosophy on western Europe.
“The coherence of the Arabic-Latin Translation Program in Toledo in the Twelfth Century” (2001) in Science in Context, by Charles Burnett
This article informed my discussion on the school of translation in Toledo, Spain in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (1996), edited by Jill Kraye
This collection of articles provided information on how humanism in the Renaissance played a key role in recovering, utilizing, and ultimately transmitting ancient Greek texts.
Greek Papyri: An Introduction (1968), by Eric Gardner Turner
This somewhat outdated book provided a lot of information for the discussion of the recovery of Greek texts on papyrus.
Secondary Sources (The Iliad and Venetus A Series)
These materials were used for higher-level contextual research for the articles on the Venetus A in particular. They are also useful to help understand specific content of the Venetus A, the history of its scholia, its ancient contributors and scholarship. In order from roughly larger works to more specific resources.
Recapturing a Homeric Legacy: Images and Insights From the Venetus A Manuscript of the Iliad (2009), edited by Casey Dué
This fantastic book contains a collection of chapters from scholars who are part of the Homer Multitext project (see below). They each describe different types of information encoded in the Venetus A manuscript and how to read from it (its material, scripts, scholia, illustrations, etc). Venetus A is one of the most important manuscripts in the world as it contains the oldest complete text of the Iliad. Highly accessible and illuminating for understanding nitty gritty of textual transmission. The PDF is freely accessible from the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University.
Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad (2001), by Martin L. West
This book outlines much of the historic transmission of the Iliad and discusses more esoteric scholarly aspects of this kind of research.
Aristotle’s Lost Homeric Problems (2019), by Robert Mayhew
This book goes into greater detail about Aristotle’s lost book compared to Verhasselt’s article.
Classics@ Journal, by the Center for Hellenic Studies
These free publications are a little tricky to find, but if you search on google for various topics with the journal and center name you may find some great articles and chapters on a range of classical topics including Homer and the Venetus A.
The Homer Multitext blog
This blog is written by members of the Homer Multitext team and discusses various topics about the Venetus A. It hasn’t been updated since 2018.
Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey (2007), by Alberto Manguel
An accessible and entertaining read on the influence and reception of Homer’s works from ancient Greece through to modern times.
“Aristarchus’ Work in Progress: What did Aristonicus and Didymus read of Aristarchus?” (2015) in The Classical Quarterly 65.2, by Francesca Schironi
The title is quite self-explanatory! The article discusses an Alexandrian librarians scholarship and post-Alexandrian receptions of his work.
“Did Homer Nod Off? Aristotle and Homeric Problem-Solving” (2020) in Revisiting Aristotle’s Fragments, by Gertjan Verhasselt
This article outlines Aristotle’s solutions to the Homeric Problems and has an index of scholia in various Iliadic manuscripts which possess fragments from Aristotle.
“The Venetus A Project” (2007), by Amy Hackney Blackwell
This short article describes the process of imaging the Venetus A. See also the documentary “Imaging the Iliad: A Digital Renaissance”.
Secondary Sources (On Delphi and for the Classical Futurist guest post)
I was invited to write a guest post for The Classical Futurist in September 2023. My essay there is built on many of the sources throughout this bibliography, other sources identified through some of the databases listed here, texts of Plutarch’s Moralia, plus some additional research on Plutarch, Delphi, and digital technologies, such as:
Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World (2014), by Michael Scott
An overview of the long history of Delphi. This book helped me identify and compare Plutarch’s attestations of the oracles prophecies alongside other authors.
Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plutarch (2019), edited by Sophia Xenophontos and Katerina Oikonomopoulou
Information on how Plutarch’s texts were received, transmitted, and understood in the centuries since his life.
The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations (1978), by Joseph Fontenrose
This book contains a catalogue of responses given by the Delphic oracle, which I used to sort through exactly what Plutarch had writen compared to other authors’ reports on the oracle’s prophecies.
The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation (2018), by Trevor Owens
My primary source for sorting out the physical life and decay of digital and other archival materials and formats.
Primary Sources
These resources are databases which allow you to view digitized versions of manuscripts, translations of Greek texts, and digital or printed editions of ancient Greek manuscripts or scholia.
Manuscript Databases
Princeton University Library’s Digitized Greek Manuscripts
David Jenkins, librarian for Classics, Hellenic Studies, and Linguistics at Princeton created this fantastic database which provides systematized access to digitized ancient Greek manuscripts from across the world’s collections. You can search by century, script, city, subject name, collection, theme, and more. The database provides a list of all the libraries which contain manuscripts, since they are currently spread around the world. It is an invaluable resource.
Pinakes
This French resource contains a database of ancient Greek manuscripts without necessarily providing access to them as the Princeton Library does. However, it indexes more manuscripts since Pinakes lists all manuscripts, even those which are not freely and digitally accessible.
Homer Multitext Project
This is not just a database but a project that is working on presenting the multiplicity of texts in the Homeric tradition together in a place. It also has digitized scans of major manuscripts that contain Homeric texts, as well as related essays. Particularly useful is that you can search for specific lines within the Venetus A manuscript (the oldest complete text of the Iliad) and it will highlight the hand-written line where it occurs.
Ancient Greek Texts in translation
These are just a couple resources to find Greek texts translated into modern languages. There are also the massive collections of the Loeb Classics and the Oxford Classical Texts.
Princeton University Library’s Modern Language Translations of Byzantine Sources
The same librarian who put together the Digitized Greek Manuscripts database also created this database which indexes translations of Byzantine texts in modern languages like English and German. You still need to find the book or text yourself, but it’s useful to find what translations of a particular text are available.
Ancient Greek Books in Translation: Sourcebook (2017), by Gregory Nagy
This is a book of major sections of the most important ancient Greek books in English translation. This is used for a course by Harvard University professor Gregory Nagy’s course called “The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours”. If you sign up to audit his free course on EdX you can access this 1000+ page PDF for free.
Editions of Ancient Greek manuscripts, texts, and scholia
This is getting into esoteric and difficult to comprehend territory. If you are new to this study, I suggest starting with the secondary sources first. These texts are essentially repositories of un-translated text directly from different manuscripts, and interpretation of that text is sometimes in Latin or German on top of a slew of acronyms and symbols. In my series on the Venetus A I didn’t delve into one scholarly classification for scholia which for The Iliad is sorted into “A”, “D”, and “bT” scholia, but that is one way these books are organized.
Scholia Graeca In Homeri Iliadem (Scholia Vetera) (1969-1988), edited by Hermut Erbse
A massive effort to record the scholia of the Iliad across different manuscripts. Erbse focuses mainly on the “A” scholia. The Venetus A takes centre stage but there are scholia from other manuscripts, too. There is also scholia in the Venetus A which Erbse didn’t record here.
Scholia D in Iliadem (2014), edited by Helmut van Thiel
This book covers much of the “D” scholia which Erbse left out of his edition.
Porphyry’s Homeric Questions on the Iliad (2011), edited by John A. MacPhail Jr.
This book dives into the text of Porphyry’s fragmented text called the Homeric Questions, which preserves some fragments from Aristotle. The Venetus A is a relatively minor source of this text but is included along with other sources of Porphyry’s work.
Resources worth mentioning
Some extra resources that you may find useful.
The Shortest History of Europe (2009), by John Hirst
This book isn’t only about ancient Greece, but I want to mention it as a great book if you are extremely short on time and want to learn broadly about the history of Europe. In order to understand Ancient Greece you really need to understand at least the basics of how they were transmitted through European societies and their political systems, geography, languages, nations, etc.
British Library articles
The British Library posts on a wide range of articles. They have a huge collection of Greek manuscripts, so you can read about them in articles on Classical Greek Authors or Ancient Books, or you can read about the influence of ancient Greece on future periods such as this article on the Romantics and Classical Greece.
Chill Music Lab
This one has nothing to do with the topic, but provides the music I listened to most often while researching and writing for this project. I find the music uplifting without being distracting, and at adequate lengths to either work for hours and hours or as a good tool to put music on for one to three hours and track my time working.
I hope this annotated bibliography gives you some great resources to work with and ideas about how to search out resources for your own project. If you have any great resources that I should check out, please let me know in the comments!
As I discover and utilize more texts in future articles I will come back to update this bibliography with new sources. If you enjoy what I’m doing, please consider subscribing to receive my free articles directly to your mailbox.