Classics and Greco-Roman Archaeology

A useful work, though the entries vary greatly in quality and candor. With bibliographies.

5-10 pages on distinguished classical scholars with bibliographies. Germans predominate.

"The dictionary contains over 700 entries, covering not only major classical scholars, but also minor and neglected figures (such as schoolteachers and publishers) who helped sustain British Classics."

More than 700 scholars, mostly European, are covered in brief articles.

Chapter-length biographies of Mabillon, Muratori, Gibbon, Delisle, Pirenne, the Brothers Grimm, Bédier, Auerbach, and others.

Useful for lesser-known scholars. In German.

Calder: "Invaluable collection of small biographies alphabetically arranged. Much in need of revision. This is where one looks for the second-rate and the deservedly forgotten."

Covers women classical scholars from the Renaissance until Jacqueline de Romilly. Germans and Italians get short shrift.

"Presenting a range of Neo-Latin poems written by distinguished classical scholars across Europe from c. 1490 to c. 1900, this anthology includes a selection of celebrated names in the history of scholarship. Individual chapters present the Neo-Latin poems alongside new English translations (usually the first) and accompanying introductions and commentaries that annotate these verses for a modern readership, and contextualize them within the careers of their authors and the history of classical scholarship in the Renaissance and early modern period."

"Modern disciplinary silos tend to separate the fields of classical philology and theology. This collection of essays, however, explores for the first time the deep and significant interactions between them. It demonstrates how from antiquity to the present they have marched hand in hand, informing each other with method, views of the past and structures of argument. The volume rewrites the history of discipline formation, and reveals how close the seminar is to the seminary."

An interesting look at how competing groups claim "Classics" for themselves, how the discipline has been marginalized, and what can be done about it.

Calder: "A medley of useful articulations of the subjective in scholarship with unintelligible essays composed in an impenetrable jargon. Of especial value are Hallet on the American standpoint and C.R. Beye's autobiographical response."

"Explores expurgation in both Greek and Latin authors in ancient and modern times. The major focus is on the period from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, with chapters ranging from early Greek lyric and Aristophanes through Lucretius, Horace, Martial and Catullus to the expurgation of schoolboy texts, the Loeb Classical Library and the Penguin Classics. The contributors draw on evidence from the papers of editors, and on material in publishing archives. The introduction discusses both the different types of expurgation, and how it differs from related phenomena such as censorship."

A brief, colorless account of the most prestigious annual lecture series in American classical studies. Includes portrait gallery of all Sather Professors up to 1965.

A broad overview of philology (not just classical) by a historian.

Case studies in how philology has been understood, and practiced, over the centuries.

Calder: "A brilliant no-holds-barred attack on the excesses of obscurantist theory and careerism in classics in America and a plea to return to basics. Most notable is a call to return to more teaching and less pedantry."

Calder: "The best memoir of an American classical scholar of the pre-World War I generation, especially valuable for his German reminiscences."

"The first full life and work of arguably the most influential classical scholar of the twentieth century, who overturned long-entrenched notions of ancient epic poetry and enlarged the very idea of literature. In this literary detective story, Robert Kanigel gives us a long overdue portrait of an Oakland druggist's son who became known as the 'Darwin of Homeric studies.'"

"Britain's best known classicist speaks her mind on the ancient, and modern, worlds."

Calder: "The autobiography of a decent stupid man, important because it reveals the abysmal niveau of a Wesleyan professor (1861-1953), who at best was a Methodist schoolmaster. One wonders what Wilamowitz thought on meeting him (68-69); for Harrington the consumption of a jelly omelette with an American friend that followed was more memorable."

Calder: "A super fun memoir that tells all from the sexual difficulties of his parents through the problems of his senile impotence to the corruption of the British Academy and his thoroughly commendable homicidal designs on an incompetent colleague at Corpus Christi with every now and then a bit on Greek word order, the fragments of Aristophanes, the chronology of Lysias and so on. All sorts of people appear (Gilbert Murray, E.R. Dodds, Paul Maas, Anthony Blunt, and many others). He only says what he thinks of the dead."

"This memoir by the late distinguished classicist tells of Dodds' travels from China to San Francisco, his encounters with literary figures including Yeats, Eliot, Auden, and MacNeice, and his conflicting educations in Belfast, Dublin, and Oxford."

A fascinating and candid memoir by Germany's greatest Hellenist. Major and minor figures from the great flowering of German Altertumswissenschaft are on nearly every page.

Interesting account of American classical studies in the mid-19th century. North was a professor at Hamilton College. German-trained American professors (North's successor was Wilamowitz' only American student) replaced men like North and their kind of classical instruction.

Still the most useful bibliography for studying the history of classical scholarship. Calder's brief annotations are often caustic and funny.
"This bibliography is only a beginning. It is limited to items in my personal library. I see little merit in listing titles I have never seen and I only read books I own."