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Classical Philology: Home

Last Updated: Oct 28, 2024 4:52 PM

Rembrandt painting

Rembrandt van Rijn, Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer (1653). Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

Sine quibus non

Two books were indispensable in the creation of this guide, providing most of the individual sources as well as much of the structure: David M. Schaps' Handbook for Classical Research (2011) and Fred W. Jenkins' Classical Studies: A Guide to the Reference Literature (2006). Schaps' book in particular should be required reading for all beginning students in Classics. To the right can be found links to these items in the UB Libraries catalog.

I would also like to thank Bradley Ault and Max Huemer for extending the warm embrace of Buffalo Classics to me, as well as Molly Poremski and Laura Taddeo for their continued friendship and advice.

All questions, criticisms, corrections, and suggestions related to this guide should be addressed to the UB librarian for Classics, Michael Kicey.

Welcome to the UB Research Guide for Classical Philology. These pages serve as a gateway to the best resources for serious scholarly research on the literature and culture of Greek and Roman antiquity, from its beginnings in the Bronze Age civilizations of the Near East and the Mediterranean basin, to its multiple afterlives in the feudal civilization of early medieval Europe, the caliphates of early Islam, the gold-drenched Byzantine Empire, and beyond. The extraordinary, two-millennia-long outpouring of ideas, images, narratives, arguments, and unbridled eloquence, stretching from Homer to St. Augustine, from the bull-jumpers of Knossos to the lexicographers of Constantinople, laid the foundations of a continental civilization by which, for better and for worse, no culture on the terrestrial globe can claim to have remained untouched. Without this literature - including its precursors, its imitators, its interpreters, and its detractors - the modern world in which we live is scarcely conceivable.

On the individual pages of this site, beginning scholars as well as seasoned researchers can find gateways to the most comprehensive databases and digital resources for classical studies available to UB users, as well as information on the full array of authoritative standard works in the major fields and subfields of classical philology, where these are available either in the collections of UB Libraries - chiefly, Lockwood Memorial Library (Lockwood library info, catalog) and the Libraries Annex (Annex library info, catalog) - or in the collection of the Philip Becker Goetz Library (Goetz library info, Goetz catalog), which is housed in the Department of Classics. Links to online editions of these works in the HathiTrust repository (UB only), the collections of the Internet Archive, or UB Libraries' own holdings of electronic books have also been provided where possible, in order to make this site a truly multivalent and far-reaching resource for philologists regardless of their physical access to libraries. In addition, UB users can always request copies of books - either print or electronic - listed on this guide that are not currently held by UB Libraries using our free Delivery+ service.