Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Guides/Primary sources

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The primary sources in classical studies are mainly the literary and inscriptional evidence from the ancient world. The works of ancient authors, even if they cite earlier known or lost writings, are primary sources (this includes, for example, Plutarch). Inscriptions are also primary sources. Archaeological evidence is also a primary source, but these are usually collated in modern journals which have their own generally-accepted citation styles.

The primary sources should be used in accordance with Wikipedia policy on them: WP:PRIMARY. Editors should be aware that they can be at many times contradictory or unreliable. Classicists have many times read against the sources or otherwise questioned the claims therein. See, for example, the First Catilinarian conspiracy.

Literary sources

Citation

Classicists basically universally cite the literary sources by book and chapter number. This is because they have been published, edited, and reissued in a tremendous number of different editions and publications. It is extremely rare for two editions to have the same page numbers for the same text; citing a specific edition would require acquiring it, which is not always feasible.

Consider, for example, this passage:

After this the agrarian law was passed, and three men were chosen for the survey and distribution of the public land, Tiberius himself, Appius Claudius his father-in‑law, and Caius Gracchus his brother, who was not at Rome, but was serving under Scipio in the expedition against Numantia.

It shows up in Plutarch's biography of Tiberius Gracchus; the quoted translation is located in the 1921 Loeb by Bernadotte Perin on page 175. The passage, however, is almost universally cited as section 13.1. For example: Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus, 13.1.

Format variations

Plutarch's biography of Tiberius Gracchus is also part of a larger work called Parallel Lives. Editors' views on whether that should be included, eg Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Tiberius Gracchus, 13.1, are not clear. Most of the abbreviated citation schemes – discussed below – would omit mention of Parallel Lives.

Moreover, many works have different names. For example, Gellius' Attic Nights is known in Latin as Noctes Atticae; Sallust's description of the Catilinarian conspiracy is known as Catiline's war, War of Catiline, Conspiracy of Catiline, bellum Catilinae, and de coniuratione Catilinae. Editors seem to have different preferences as to whether English or Latin titles should be preferred, which of the various titles to use, and whether or not abbreviation schemes should be employed.

Most of the abbreviated citation schemes base their abbreviated titles on the original language title; most translations however, such as those in the Loeb Classical Library or Oxford World's Classics, are found with the titles translated into English. The plethora of names for the same sources are also reduced to a single one in the abbreviated schemes: the Oxford Classical Dictionary citation for Sallust's aforementioned work, for example, is always Sall. Cat..

Many older publications also provided citations in Roman numerals, rendering 13.1 as xiii.1. Some publications, especially those from the Continent, also use commas instead of full stops and sometimes insert spaces when separating figures (eg 13, 1). The divide between commas and full stops is probably driven by decimal separators. Regardless, most modern English publications use Arabic numerals separated by full stops without spaces and without symbols such as § and ¶.

Abbreviations

Concordance of selected abbreviations

Loeb title	OCD	LSL or OLD
Caesar, The Gallic War	Caes. BGall.	Caes. Gal.
Cicero, On the agrarian law	Cic. Leg. agr.	Cic. Agr.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities	Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom.	D.H.
Gellius, Attic Nights	Gell. NA	Gel.
Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus	Plut. Ti. Gracch.	Plu. TG
Polybius, The Histories	Polyb.	Plb.
Sallust, The War with Catiline	Sall. Cat.	Sal. Cat.

It is extremely common to encounter abbreviations for classical authors and texts when reading classical scholarship. (See eg pages of the first edition of the Cambridge Ancient History.) There are a number of major schemes for this:

• The Oxford Classical Dictionary abbreviations would for the passage of Life of Tiberius Gracchus above, produce Plut. Ti. Gracch. 13.1.
• The Lidell-Scott Lexicon abbreviations are for Greek authors (Plutarch is one) and would produce Plu. TG, 13.1.
• If it were a Latin text, alternative abbreviations could be found in the Oxford Latin Dictionary or the older Lewis and Short dictionary.

Editors should be aware when reading scholarly literature that there exist classical studies abbreviation schemes for journals in the field (the Oxford Classical Dictionary has a list as does L'Année philologique). These journal abbreviations are, however, largely unused on Wikipedia articles.

Online sources

There are a number of different sources available to both the general public and Wikipedians. The sources available to the general public are largely in the public domain and thus largely date to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among those available to the general public are:

• LacusCurtius – nb this is a private website which is hosted on UChicago's Penelope platform; it is not an official UChicago site – offers (as of 26 June 2023) some 61 Greek and Latin texts which are largely typed up from old Loeb Classical Library editions that are now in the public domain.

• The Perseus Digital Library is a project run by Tufts University and provides access to a large number of primary sources though many of the translations available are rather aged. It also includes some older dictionaries of Latin and ancient Greek as well as some tertiary sources.
• Attalus.org includes:
  • a list of authors and translations with relevant links,
  • chronological tables for the fourth, third, second, and first centuries BC, and
  • an index of names, and more.

• The English Wikisource has a collection of English translations of various Latin and Greek texts. The relevant Latin and Greek Wikisources contain the originals, though they are not always entirely complete or easily compared.

Through the Wikipedia Library, we now also have access to the Loeb Classical Library Online. Contained therein are authoritative and modern translations based on updated critical version of the texts for most of the ancient corpus over more than 500 print volumes. The introductions to the Loeb volumes are also extremely valuable, since they give context to the texts and provide substantial background information. Loeb volumes are generally presented side-by-side with the Latin or Greek on the left and English on the right. Book and chapter numbers are available for the text, though sections such as the Introduction are normally cited by page.

Shortened footnotes

Further information: Help:Shortened footnotes

Use of shortened footnotes is not a requirement. If you are using shortened footnotes, consider installing a user script to detect errors such as dangling footnotes (an anchor without corresponding bibliographic entry) and unused references.

A short footnote works by parsing the bibliographic entry and generating a unique anchor. The templates {{sfn}} or {{harvnb}} take their inputs to generate the same anchor. The anchor of a Harvard-style is defined usually in the relevant citation template. A number of templates exist for these purposes: eg {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite thesis}}, and {{cite web}} (collectively these are known as Citation Style 1 templates).

{{sfn}} takes three relevant parameters. The first is the author, followed by the year, and then the |p= for page or |loc= for location of the pinpoint citation. For primary sources cited by book and chapter, use |loc=. {{sfn}} automatically handles duplicate citations; repeated citations are de-duplicated into a single footnote with "^{a b}" markings.

CS1 templates generate, by default, anchors which take the form Last YEAR as below.

Markup	Renders as
Plutarch claims that Tiberius Gracchus was one of the first to scale the walls of Carthage during the [[Third Punic War]].{{sfn|Plutarch|1921|loc=4.5}} One Fannius also claimed to be the first.{{sfn|Plutarch|1921|loc=4.5}} ... Bad auspices are alleged in Plutarch on the day Tiberius sought re-election.<ref>Bad auspices reported at {{harvnb|Plutarch|1921|loc=17.1}}: "At break of day there came to the house the man who brought the birds with which auspices are taken, and threw food before them. But the birds would not come out of the cage."</ref> == References == === Citations === {{reflist|20em}} === Sources === {{refbegin}} * {{Cite book |author=Plutarch |chapter=Life of Tiberius Gracchus |title=Parallel Lives |series=Loeb Classical Library |year=1921 |orig-year=2nd century AD |volume=10 |translator-first=Bernadotte |translator-last=Perrin }} {{refend}}	Plutarch claims that Tiberius Gracchus was one of the first to scale the walls of Carthage during the Third Punic War. One Fannius also claimed to be the first. ... Bad auspices are alleged in Plutarch on the day Tiberius sought re-election. References Citations Sources Plutarch (1921) [2nd century AD]. "Life of Tiberius Gracchus". Parallel Lives. Loeb Classical Library. Vol. 10. Translated by Perrin, Bernadotte.

This Plutarch 1921 tag, however, is often inappropriate for ancient primary sources (Plutarch had by this point been dead for at least 1700 years and was unable to write anything in 1921), but the |ref= allows us to put whatever tag we would like as the anchor. Below is an example where that tag is based on the Oxford Classical Dictionary abbreviation for the relevant source and passed via {{harvid}}: |ref={{harvid|Plut. ''Ti. Gracch.''}}.

Markup	Renders as
Plutarch claims that Tiberius Gracchus was one of the first to scale the walls of Carthage during the [[Third Punic War]].{{sfn|Plut. ''Ti. Gracch.''|loc=4.5}} One Fannius also claimed to be the first.{{sfn|Plut. ''Ti. Gracch.''|loc=4.5}} ... Bad auspices are alleged in Plutarch on the day Tiberius sought re-election.<ref>Bad auspices reported at {{harvnb|Plut. ''Ti. Gracch.''|loc=17.1}}: "At break of day there came to the house the man who brought the birds with which auspices are taken, and threw food before them. But the birds would not come out of the cage."</ref> == References == === Citations === {{reflist|20em}} === Sources === {{refbegin}} * {{Cite book |author=Plutarch |chapter=Life of Tiberius Gracchus |title=Parallel Lives |series=Loeb Classical Library |year=1921 |orig-year=2nd century AD |volume=10 |translator-first=Bernadotte |translator-last=Perrin |ref={{harvid|Plut. ''Ti. Gracch.''}} }} {{refend}}	Plutarch claims that Tiberius Gracchus was one of the first to scale the walls of Carthage during the Third Punic War. One Fannius also claimed to be the first. ... Bad auspices are alleged in Plutarch on the day Tiberius sought re-election. References Citations Sources Plutarch (1921) [2nd century AD]. "Life of Tiberius Gracchus". Parallel Lives. Loeb Classical Library. Vol. 10. Translated by Perrin, Bernadotte.

{{harvnb}} is generally invoked inside a <ref></ref> block because alone it merely creates text with the link. This however allows it to be rather flexible, allowing explanatory notes around the citation. An example is above: leading is an introductory phrase with a trailing quotation. Note that although {{sfn}} can support suffixed notes using its |ps= parameter, invoking {{sfn}} with the same page or location but with different |ps= values (empty or otherwise) triggers a silent error which can suppress the note.

Fragments

Passages in texts which convey information (through quotations or paraphrases) attributed to lost writings of earlier authors are referred to as "fragments". Works such as the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and numerous plays by Euripides are known to us through fragments, as are the writings of authors with no extant output (sometimes referred to as "fragmentary" authors), such as Pherecydes of Athens or Hellanicus of Lesbos. In works by modern scholars, and on Wikipedia, the abbreviation "fr." is often used when citing fragments; for example, Epimenides, fr. 10 Diels (or similar) is often written in place of Epimenides, fragment 10 Diels. Citations to fragments should almost always contain the name of the author to whom they are attributed. When a fragment comes from a specific work, it is often useful to include it in the citation; for example: Hesiod, Catalogue of Women fr. 9 Most.

The suffixed words "Diels" or "Most" in the examples above refer to collections of fragments by modern scholars. Such editions may cover the fragments of a certain author, or fragments from a particular literary genre, such as historical writings, epic poetry, lyric poetry, mythography, tragedy, or comedy, among others. In these collections, each fragment is assigned a number, which allows it to be cited. Because these numberings often vary between editions, when fragments are cited on Wikipedia, it should be made clear which edition (and hence which numbering) is being used, even if one edition is best known for a certain author or work. For example, Musaeus, fr. 3 leaves the reader at a loss for where to locate the fragment in question, whereas Musaeus, fr. 3 Diels (or similar) clearly indicates the numbering being used, and where to find the fragment (assuming there is a corresponding entry in the article's references section).

Try to use standard editions of fragments: as a general rule, use those that are most frequently cited by reliable sources. Outdated editions from the 18th or 19th centuries should be avoided where possible. Also take into consideration whether or not a collection has English translations of the fragments it contains.

Testimonia (sg. testimonium) are passages from texts which provide information about a fragmentary author or work (whereas fragments record what those authors or works say), and are often listed separately to fragments in editions. When cited by scholars, they are sometimes marked with the letter "T" to distinguish them from fragments; similarly, when cited on Wikipedia, they should usually be distinguished in some way from fragments.

The same passage can often be cited in multiple ways. For example, the 17th fragment of Stesichorus in David Campbell's Loeb edition of Greek lyric fragments comes from Athenaeus' Deipnosophists, and the same passage is collected in Denys Page's Poetae Melici Graeci as fragment 185. In such cases, an equality sign is sometimes used to indicate that the citations each refer to the same passage; for example, Stesichorus, fr. 17 Campbell = Poetae Melici Graeci 185 = Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 11.469e. Use of an equals sign in a template may require {{=}} for proper parsing.

Modern collections

Some ancient sources, such as Asconius' Commentaries on Cicero, are normally referenced not by book, chapter, or section, but rather as part of a standard collection. In this instance, for example, the normal referent is A C Clark's 1907 collection: Asconius (1907). Clark, Albert Curtis (ed.). Orationum Ciceronis quinque enarratio (in Latin). Oxford: Clarendon Press – via HathiTrust. References then follow a form such as Asc. 30C, referring to the author (Asconius) followed by page 30 of Clark's collection thereof.

Inscriptions

A major source of evidence of the ancient world are the extant inscriptions in stone, metal, and other materials. These too are primary sources. Scholars warn – repeated for example by Alison Cooley in the Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy – that inscriptions should not be seen as objective: what was inscribed was highly selective and, due to expense, was part of a strategy of self-representation.

Ancient inscriptions are usually referred to by their catalogue number in a standard catalogue, such as the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum for Latin inscriptions, and Inscriptiones Graecae for inscriptions from ancient Greece. Citations generally use an abbreviation to identify the catalogue being referred to, and a catalogue number for the specific inscription. For instance, CIL 4.5296 refers to an inscription in Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum volume 4, with the catalogue number 5296. The volume of the catalogue is sometimes written in Roman numerals (so CIL IV.5296 refers to the same inscription).

Superscripts are commonly used to indicate a particular edition (thus IG I³ refers to the third edition of Inscriptiones Graecae vol. I).

Online sources

• Epigraphik-Datenbank

Templates

A number of templates can assist in linking and citing volumes like CIL:

• {{AE}} allows for similar citations to L'Année épigraphique: {{AE|Number of the volume|Number of the inscription}} generating something like: AE 1983, 0827.
• {{CIL}} takes parameters such as {{CIL|Number of the volume|Number of the inscription}} or {{CIL|vol no.|insc. no.|part=part no.|fasc=fasc. no.}} to generate relevant links to online databases like CIL III, 00751 and CIL XVII⁴ 01, 00182.
• {{ILS inscription}} (not to be confused with {{ILS}} relating to Israeli shekels) generates links – eg ILS 6044 – to the same database.

Coins

The famous Ides of March coin, for example, is noted as RRC 508/3. It depicts a pileus between two daggers and is meant to celebrate the assassination of Julius Caesar on the ides of March 44 BC.

Like with inscriptions, coins are generally known by their catalogue numbers. Coins can be difficult to parse due to their highly abbreviated and rather symbolic features. They are, however, useful sources for images for ancient Greece and Rome due to the ability for many small pieces of metal to survive the intervening centuries.

Catalogues

The major catalogues for ancient Rome are:

• Roman Republican Coinage (RRC), a book published by Michael Crawford in 1974.
• Roman Imperial Coinage (RIC), a collective work started in 1923 and still ongoing.
• Roman Provincial Coinage (RPC), a collective work started in 1992 and still ongoing.

Online databases

There are a number of major online databases for numismatics. This is not an exhaustive list.

• MANTIS to search the American Numismatics Society collections database
• Coin Hoards of the Roman Republic
• Coinage of the Roman Republic Online, based on Roman Republican Coinage
• Hellenistic Royal Coinages
• Online Coins of the Roman Empire, based on Roman Imperial Coinage
• PELLA, describing coins of the Macedonian Argead kings
• Ptolemaic Coins Online

The images for many coins are already available on Wikimedia Commons, though they are not very easy to search. Images for coins can be found through other sources. Some coins were traced in the 19th century and therefore can appear as illustrations in some older (public domain) sources.

Papyri

Papyri are usually referred to by a catalogue number in a series, named after either their place of discovery (e.g. Oxyrhynchus), a modern collection (e.g. University of Michigan Papyrology Collection), or an individual (e.g. Lord Amherst). These are typically abbreviated: e.g. P.Oxy., P.Mich., and P.Amh for the Oxyrhynchus, Michigan, and Amherst papyri respectively. Some series can be referred to by multiple abbreviations: P.Köln or P.Colon. for the Cologne papyri; P.Mil. or P.Med. for the Milan papyri. Where a papyrus has not yet been published in the standard series, it might be referred to by an inventory number (P.Köln inv. 21351 + 21376); it may then get a number within the standard series (P.Köln inv. 21351 + 21376 was assigned P.Köln 11.429).

In most cases with literary papyri you will want to refer to the standard edition of the literary work, rather than the papyrus: thus Sappho fr.5 rather than P. Oxy. 7. However, if you want to specifically reference a text as preserved on a particular papyrus, then referencing the papyrus rather than the author may be necessary.

A list of abbreviations and the corresponding editions is maintained at https://papyri.info/docs/checklist.