Great Readings
This collection gathers transformative primary masterworks, field-defining monographs, seminal scholarly papers, and foundational philological handbooks in Latin studies. These works represent landmark shifts in how scholars interpret Roman literature, reconstruct linguistic history, analyze textual transmission, and understand post-classical Latinity.
- Latin Poetry, Poetics, and Drama
- Latin Prose, Rhetoric, and Historiography
- Historical Linguistics and Sociolinguistics
- Palaeography, Textual Criticism, and Manuscript Transmission
- Late Antique, Medieval, and Post-Classical Latinity
Latin Poetry, Poetics, and Drama
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| The Aeneid | Vergil |
| On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura) | Lucretius |
| The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets | Gian Biagio Conte |
| The Epic Successors of Virgil: A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition | Philip Hardie |
| Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry | Stephen Hinds |
| The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition | Denis Feeney |
| Plautine Elements in Plautus | Eduard Fraenkel (trans. Tomas Drevikovsky & Frances Muecke) |
| "The Two Voices of Virgil's 'Aeneid'" (unlinked) | Adam Parry |
| "Callimachus and Latin Poetry" (unlinked) | Wendell Clausen |
| "Doctus Vir: The Roman Poet's Conception of His Work" (unlinked) | E. J. Kenney |
Latin Prose, Rhetoric, and Historiography
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| The Annals | Tacitus |
| On the Ideal Orator (De Oratore) | Cicero (trans. James M. May & Jakob Wisse) |
| The Roman Revolution | Ronald Syme |
Historical Linguistics and Sociolinguistics
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin | Michael Weiss |
| Bilingualism and the Latin Language | J. N. Adams |
| Social Variation and the Latin Language | J. N. Adams |
| The Latin Language | L. R. Palmer |
Palaeography, Textual Criticism, and Manuscript Transmission
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature | L. D. Reynolds & N. G. Wilson |
| Textual Criticism | Paul Maas |
| Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics | L. D. Reynolds (ed.) |
| Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages | Bernhard Bischoff (trans. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín & David Ganz) |
Late Antique, Medieval, and Post-Classical Latinity
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| The Confessions | Augustine of Hippo |
| Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD | Peter Brown |
| European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages | Ernst Robert Curtius (trans. Willard R. Trask) |
| Reading Medieval Latin | Keith Sidwell |