A Church Father’s theological citadel.

Aurelius Augustine (AD 354–430), one of the most important figures in the development of western Christianity and philosophy, was the son of a pagan, Patricius of Tagaste, and his Christian wife, Monnica. While studying to become a rhetorician, he plunged into a turmoil of philosophical and psychological doubts, leading him to Manichaeism. In 383 he moved to Rome and then Milan to teach rhetoric. Despite exploring classical philosophical systems, especially skepticism and Neoplatonism, his studies of Paul’s letters with his friend Alypius, and the preaching of Bishop Ambrose, led in 386 to his momentous conversion from mixed beliefs to Christianity. He soon returned to Tagaste and founded a religious community, and in 395 or 396 became bishop of Hippo.

From Augustine’s large output the Loeb Classical Library offers that great autobiography the Confessions (in two volumes); On the City of God (seven volumes), which unfolds God’s action in the progress of the world’s history, and propounds the superiority of Christian beliefs over pagan in adversity; and a selection of Letters which are important for the study of ecclesiastical theologians.

Athenaeus (ca. 170–ca. 230 CE), a Greek of Naucratis in Egypt, lived in Rome and wrote a historical work now lost. Of the fifteen books of his surviving Deipnosophists ('Sophists at Dinner'), the first two and parts of the third, eleventh, and fifteenth exist only in summary, the rest apparently complete. In it he pretends to tell a friend about a banquet at a scholar's house whither the learned guests brought extracts from poetry for recitation and discussion. Much of the matter however concerns the food provided and accessories. One learns about cooks, strange dishes, wines, menu cards, and countless other matters. Athenaeus was an antiquarian. The whole work, which mentions nearly eight hundred writers and two thousand five hundred writings, is a large treasury of information not only about table matters but also music, dances, games, and all sorts of literary subjects. And it abounds in quotations, mostly made direct by Athenaeus himself, from authors whose writings have not survived.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of The Deipnosophists is in seven volumes. There is a comprehensive index in the final volume.

A major new edition of the so-called Presocratics.

The fragments and testimonia of the early Greek philosophers (often labeled the ‘Presocratics’) have always been not only a fundamental source for understanding archaic Greek culture and ancient philosophy but also a perennially fresh resource that has stimulated Western thought until the present day. This new systematic conception and presentation of the evidence differs in three ways from Hermann Diels’s groundbreaking work, as well as from later editions: it renders explicit the material’s thematic organization; it includes a selection from such related bodies of evidence as archaic poetry, classical drama, and the Hippocratic corpus; and it presents an overview of the reception of these thinkers until the end of antiquity.

Volume I contains introductory and reference materials essential for using all other parts of the edition.
Volume II presents preliminary chapters on ancient doxography, the cosmological and moral background, and includes the early Ionian thinkers Pherecydes, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.
Volume III includes the early Ionian thinkers Xenophanes and Heraclitus.
Volume IV presents Pythagoras and the Pythagorean School, including Hippasus, Philolaus, Eurytus, Archytas, Hicetas, and Ecphantus, along with chapters on doctrines not attributed by name and reception.
Volume V includes the western Greek thinkers Parmenides, Zeno, Melissus, Empedocles, Alcmaeon, and Hippo.
Volume Vi includes the later Ionian and Athenian thinkers Anaxagoras, Archelaus, and Diogenes of Apollonia, along with chapters on early Greek medicine and the Derveni Papyrus.
Volume VII includes the atomists Leucippus and Democritus.
Volume VIII includes the so-called sophists Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Thrasymachus, and Hippias, along with testimonia relating to the life, views, and argumentative style of Socrates.
Volume IX includes the so-called sophists Antiphon, Lycophron, and Xeniades, along with the Anonymous of Iamblichus, the Dissoi Logoi, a chapter on characterizations of the ‘sophists’ as a group, and an appendix on philosophy and philosophers in Greek drama.

The ecumene in prose.

Strabo (ca. 64 BC to ca. AD 25), an Asiatic Greek of Amasia in Pontus, studied at Nysa and after 44 BC at Rome. He became a keen traveler who saw a large part of Italy, various near eastern regions including the Black Sea, various parts of Asia Minor, Egypt as far as Ethiopia, and parts of Greece. He was a long time in Alexandria where he no doubt studied mathematics, astronomy, and history.

Strabo’s historical work is lost, but his most important Geography in seventeen books has survived. After two introductory books, numbers 3 and 4 deal with Spain and Gaul, 5 and 6 with Italy and Sicily, 7 with north and east Europe, 8–10 with Greek lands, 11–14 with the main regions of Asia and with Asia Minor, 15 with India and Iran, 16 with Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, and Arabia, 17 with Egypt and Africa. In outline he follows the great mathematical geographer Eratosthenes, but adds general descriptions of separate countries including physical, political, and historical details. A sequel to his historical memoirs, Geography is planned apparently for public servants rather than students—hence the accounts of physical features and of natural products. On the mathematical side it is an invaluable source of information about Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Strabo is in eight volumes.

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

The medical treatises collected under Hippocrates’ name are essential sources of information about the practice of medicine in antiquity and about Greek theories concerning the human body. In this seventh volume of the ongoing Loeb edition of the Hippocratic Collection, Wesley Smith presents the first modern English translation of Books 2 and 4–7 of the Epidemics (the other two books are available in the first volume).

In the casebooks and notes that make up the seven books called Epidemics—the title originally meant ‘visits’—we can watch ancient physicians observing patients, noting and pondering symptoms, evaluating treatments, and developing theories about the body. They appear to be physicians’ notebooks from several areas of the Aegean basin. Smith supplements his clear translation with explanatory notes.

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

Rome, from the beginning.

Livy (Titus Livius), the great Roman historian, was born at Patavium (Padua) in 64 or 59 BC, where after years in Rome he died in AD 12 or 17. Livy’s history, composed as the imperial autocracy of Augustus was replacing the republican system that had stood for over five hundred years, presents in splendid style a vivid narrative of Rome’s rise from the traditional foundation of the city in 753 or 751 BC to 9 BC and illustrates the collective and individual virtues necessary to achieve and maintain such greatness.

Of its 142 books, conventionally divided into pentads and decades, we have 1–10 and 21–45 complete, and short summaries (periochae) of all the rest except 41 and 43–45; 11–20 are lost, and of the rest only fragments and the summaries remain.

The third decade constitutes our fullest surviving account of the momentous Second Punic (or Hannibalic) War, featuring a famous gallery of leaders Roman, Carthaginian, and Greek, all memorably drawn. It comprises two recognizable pentads: Books 21–25 narrate the run-up to conflict and Rome’s struggles in its first phase, with Hannibal dominant; Books 26–30 relate Rome’s revival and final victory, as the focus shifts to Scipio Africanus.

This edition of the third decade, which replaces the original Loeb editions by B. O. Foster (Books 21–22) and Frank Gardner Moore (Books 23–30), offers a text based on the critical editions by John Briscoe (Books 21–25) and P. G. Walsh (Books 26–30), a fresh translation, and ample annotation fully current with modern scholarship.

Livy (Titus Livius), the great Roman historian, was born at or near Patavium (Padua) in 64 or 59 BCE; he may have lived mostly in Rome but died at Patavium, in 12 or 17 CE.

Livy's only extant work is part of his history of Rome from the foundation of the city to 9 BCE. Of its 142 books, we have just 35, and short summaries of all the rest except two. The whole work was, long after his death, divided into Decades or series of ten. Books 1–10 we have entire; books 11–20 are lost; books 21–45 are entire, except parts of 41 and 43–45. Of the rest only fragments and the summaries remain. In splendid style Livy, a man of wide sympathies and proud of Rome's past, presented an uncritical but clear and living narrative of the rise of Rome to greatness.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Livy is in fourteen volumes. The last volume includes a comprehensive index.

Greco-Roman antiquity’s premier Jewish historian.

Josephus, soldier, statesman, historian, was a Jew born at Jerusalem about AD 37. A man of high descent, he early became learned in Jewish law and Greek literature and was a Pharisee. After pleading in Rome the cause of some Jewish priests he returned to Jerusalem and in 66 tried to prevent revolt against Rome, managing for the Jews the affairs of Galilee. In the troubles that followed he made his peace with Vespasian. Present at the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, he received favors from these two as emperors and from Domitian, and assumed their family name Flavius. He died after 97.

As a historical source Josephus is invaluable. His major works are: History of the Jewish War, in seven books, from 170 BC to his own time, first written in Aramaic but translated by himself into the Greek we now have; and Jewish Antiquities, in twenty books, from the creation of the world to AD 66. The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Josephus, which is in thirteen volumes, also includes the autobiographical Life and his treatise Against Apion.

Scholars at dinner.

In The Learned Banqueters, Athenaeus describes a series of dinner parties at which the guests quote extensively from Greek literature. The work (which dates to the very end of the second century AD) is amusing reading and of extraordinary value as a treasury of quotations from works now lost. Athenaeus also preserves a wide range of information about different cuisines and foodstuffs; the music and entertainments that ornamented banquets; and the intellectual talk that was the heart of Greek conviviality. S. Douglas Olson has undertaken to produce a complete new edition of the work, replacing the previous seven-volume Loeb Athenaeus (published under the title Deipnosophists).

Remains of a universal chronicle.

Diodorus Siculus, Greek historian of Agyrium in Sicily (ca. 80–20 BC), wrote forty books of world history, called Library of History, in three parts: mythical history of peoples, non-Greek and Greek, to the Trojan War; history to Alexander's death (323 BC); history to 54 BC. Of this we have complete Books 1–5 (Egyptians, Assyrians, Ethiopians, Greeks) and Books 11–20 (Greek history 480–302 BC); and fragments of the rest. He was an uncritical compiler, but used good sources and reproduced them faithfully. He is valuable for details unrecorded elsewhere, and as evidence for works now lost, especially writings of Ephorus, Apollodorus, Agatharchides, Philistus, and Timaeus.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Diodorus Siculus is in twelve volumes.

Comparative biographies of distinguished Greeks and Romans.

Plutarch (Plutarchus), ca. AD 45–120, was born at Chaeronea in Boeotia in central Greece, studied philosophy at Athens, and, after coming to Rome as a teacher in philosophy, was given consular rank by the emperor Trajan and a procuratorship in Greece by Hadrian. He was married and the father of one daughter and four sons. He appears as a man of kindly character and independent thought, studious and learned.

Plutarch wrote on many subjects. Most popular have always been the forty-six Parallel Lives, biographies planned to be ethical examples in pairs (in each pair, one Greek figure and one similar Roman), though the last four lives are single. All are invaluable sources of our knowledge of the lives and characters of Greek and Roman statesmen, soldiers, and orators. Plutarch's many other varied extant works, about sixty in number, are known as Moralia or Moral Essays. They are of high literary value, besides being of great use to people interested in philosophy, ethics, and religion.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Lives is in eleven volumes.

Antiquity’s satirist supreme.

Lucian (ca. AD 120–190), the satirist from Samosata on the Euphrates, started as an apprentice sculptor, turned to rhetoric and visited Italy and Gaul as a successful traveling lecturer before settling in Athens and developing his original brand of satire. Late in life he fell on hard times and accepted an official post in Egypt.

Although notable for the Attic purity and elegance of his Greek and his literary versatility, Lucian is chiefly famed for the lively, cynical wit of the humorous dialogues in which he satirizes human folly, superstition, and hypocrisy. His aim was to amuse rather than to instruct. Among his best works are A True Story (the tallest of tall tales about a voyage to the moon), Dialogues of the Gods (a “reductio ad absurdum” of traditional mythology), Dialogues of the Dead (on the vanity of human wishes), Philosophies for Sale (great philosophers of the past are auctioned off as slaves), The Fisherman (the degeneracy of modern philosophers), The Carousal or Symposium (philosophers misbehave at a party), Timon (the problems of being rich), Twice Accused (Lucian’s defense of his literary career) and (if by Lucian) The Ass (the amusing adventures of a man who is turned into an ass).

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Lucian is in eight volumes.

Eclectic essays on ethics, education, and much else besides.

Plutarch (Plutarchus), ca. AD 45–120, was born at Chaeronea in Boeotia in central Greece, studied philosophy at Athens, and, after coming to Rome as a teacher in philosophy, was given consular rank by the emperor Trajan and a procuratorship in Greece by Hadrian. He was married and the father of one daughter and four sons. He appears as a man of kindly character and independent thought, studious and learned.

Plutarch wrote on many subjects. Most popular have always been the forty-six Parallel Lives, biographies planned to be ethical examples in pairs (in each pair, one Greek figure and one similar Roman), though the last four lives are single. All are invaluable sources of our knowledge of the lives and characters of Greek and Roman statesmen, soldiers and orators. Plutarch’s many other varied extant works, about sixty in number, are known as Moralia or Moral Essays. They are of high literary value, besides being of great use to people interested in philosophy, ethics, and religion.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Moralia is in fifteen volumes, volume XIII having two parts. Volume XVI is a comprehensive Index.

An unrivaled compendium of ancient Roman knowledge.

Pliny the Elder, Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23–79), a Roman of equestrian rank of Transpadane Gaul (N. Italy), was uncle of Pliny the letter writer. He pursued a career partly military in Germany, partly administrative in Gaul and Spain under the emperor Vespasian, and became prefect of the fleet at Misenum. He died in the eruption of Vesuvius when he went to get a closer view and to rescue friends. Tireless worker, reader, and writer, he was author of works now lost; but his great Natural History in thirty-seven books with its vast collection of facts (and alleged facts) survives—a mine of information despite its uncritical character.

The contents of the books are as follows. Book 1: table of contents of the others and of authorities; 2: mathematical and metrological survey of the universe; 3–6: geography and ethnography of the known world; 7: anthropology and the physiology of man; 8–11: zoology; 12–19: botany, agriculture, and horticulture; 20–27: plant products as used in medicine; 28–32: medical zoology; 33–37: minerals (and medicine), the fine arts, and gemstones.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Natural History is in ten volumes.

The preeminent orator of ancient Athens.

Demosthenes (384–322 BC), orator at Athens, was a pleader in law courts who later became also a statesman, champion of the past greatness of his city and the present resistance of Greece to Philip of Macedon’s rise to supremacy. We possess by him political speeches and law-court speeches composed for parties in private cases and political cases. His early reputation as the best of Greek orators rests on his steadfastness of purpose, his sincerity, his clear and pungent argument, and his severe control of language. In his law cases he is the advocate, in his political speeches a castigator not of his opponents but of their politics. Demosthenes gives us vivid pictures of public and private life of his time.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Demosthenes is in seven volumes.

Syncretistic exegesis.

The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BC to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish learning. In attempting to reconcile biblical teachings with Greek philosophy he developed ideas that had wide influence on Christian and Jewish religious thought.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Philo is in ten volumes and two supplements, distributed as follows. Volume I: Creation; Interpretation of Genesis II and III. II: On the Cherubim; The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain; The Worse Attacks the Better; The Posterity and Exile of Cain; On the Giants. III: The Unchangeableness of God; On Husbandry; Noah's Work as a Planter; On Drunkenness; On Sobriety. IV: The Confusion of Tongues; The Migration of Abraham; The Heir of Divine Things; On the Preliminary Studies. V: On Flight and Finding; Change of Names; On Dreams. VI: Abraham; Joseph; Moses. VII: The Decalogue; On Special Laws Books I–III. VIII: On Special Laws Book IV; On the Virtues; Rewards and Punishments. IX: Every Good Man Is Free; The Contemplative Life; The Eternity of the World; Against Flaccus; Apology for the Jews; On Providence. X: On the Embassy to Gaius; indexes. Supplement I: Questions on Genesis. II: Questions on Exodus; index to supplements.

Roman history for a Greek audience.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus was born before 53 BC and went to Italy before 29 BC. He taught rhetoric in Rome while studying the Latin language, collecting material for a history of Rome, and writing. His Roman Antiquities began to appear in 7 BC.

Dionysius states that his objects in writing history were to please lovers of noble deeds and to repay the benefits he had enjoyed in Rome. But he wrote also to reconcile Greeks to Roman rule. Of the twenty books of Roman Antiquities (from the earliest times to 264 BC) we have the first nine complete; most of Books 10 and 11; and later extracts and an epitome of the whole. Dionysius studied the best available literary sources (mainly annalistic and other historians) and possibly some public documents. His work and that of Livy are our only continuous and detailed independent narratives of early Roman history.

Dionysius was author also of essays on literature covering rhetoric, Greek oratory, Thucydides, and how to imitate the best models in literature.

The Loeb Classical Library publishes a two-volume edition of the critical essays; the edition of Roman Antiquities is in seven volumes.

A sweeping chronicle from Aeneas to Alexander Severus.

Dio Cassius (Cassius Dio), circa AD 150–235, was born at Nicaea in Bithynia in Asia Minor. On the death of his father (Roman governor of Cilicia) he went in 180 to Rome, entered the Senate, and under the emperor Commodus was an advocate. He held high offices, becoming a close friend of several emperors; he was made governor of Pergamum and Smyrna; consul in 220; proconsul of Africa; governor of Dalmatia and then of Pannonia; and consul again in 229.

Of the eighty books of Dio's great work Roman History, covering the era from the legendary landing of Aeneas in Italy to the reign of Alexander Severus (AD 222–235), we possess Books 36–60 (36 and 55–60 have gaps), which cover the years 68 BC–AD 47. The missing portions are partly supplied, for the earlier gaps by Zonaras, who relies closely on Dio, and for some later gaps (Book 35 onwards) by John Xiphilinus (of the eleventh century). There are also many excerpts. The facilities for research afforded by Dio's official duties and his own industry make him a very vital source for Roman history of the last years of the republic and the first four emperors.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Dio Cassius is in nine volumes.