Primary sources provide first-hand accounts of an event or topic from people directly connected to them. They can be visual, material, archeological, or written, video or audio. The sections below focus on a selection of the written and visual primary sources. Some of these are available via the library website and can be accessed with your student username and password. Some of these are freely available on the web (no username or password required). Please use the links below to find a wide range of useful sources on the Classical world!
The videos below provide an introduction to searching and annotating Classical literature in the Loeb Classical Library.
The Loeb Classical Library, founded by James Loeb in 1911, continues the historic mission of making all that is important in Greek and Latin literature available to readers and includes accurate, literate, English translations.
The authors in the Loeb Classical Library span fourteen centuries and every genre. Each work is classified by language, form, genre, subject, and date for ease of browsing and navigation
Historical sources from A.D. 300–800 translated into English. This collection contains 66 volumes that bring together a wealth of important early medieval texts in translation, with scholarship from leading academics.
Access millions of pages of primary source collections across the entire portfolio of Adam Matthew Digital, spanning content from the 15th-21st centuries.
The Patrologia Latina and Acta Sanctorum contain a wide range of texts in Latin.
The Acta Sanctorum Database is an electronic version of the complete printed text of Acta Sanctorum, from the edition published in sixty-eight volumes by the Société des Bollandistes in Antwerp and Brussels. It is a collection of documents examining the lives of saints, organised according to each saint's feast day, and runs from the two January volumes published in 1643 to the Propylaeum to December published in 1940.
Electronic version of the first edition of Jacques-Paul Migne’s Patrologia Latina, published between 1844 and 1855. It comprises the works of the Church Fathers from Tertullian in 200 AD to the death of Pope Innocent III in 1216.
