Welcome!
This guide was created to assist members of the Classical Association of New England (CANE) in finding academic resources which may be available to them either for free, or through local library resources.
We hope you find these pages useful. If you have questions about anything on this guide, or have a suggestion for something to add/edit, please contact Jennifer Whelan at jwhelan AT holycross.edu.
CANE Resources - Ancient Texts & Articles
CANE Resources
As part of your membership benefits, CANE members have access to two additional resources which are normally behind a paywall:
- JSTOR Arts & Sciences
Journal articles in almost every subject area, including some historical articles back to the 17th century. - Loeb Classical Library
Complete access to the Loeb Classical Library -- Greek and Latin texts with facing English translations.
To access these resources, log-in to the members-only section of the CANE website.
"Open" (Free) Resources - Books
Books
The availability of a given book in free, online format varies widely based on factors such as when the book was originally published, who published it (and what that publisher's typical practices are), whether anyone has republished it, etc. In general, it is easiest to find books that are out-of-copyright (i.e., as of January 2024, books published before 1928) through open access sites. If you are not able to find what you are looking for here, check the library options available for your state / locale (information on this is listed on the following page).
Academic Works
The options below have been listed in order of the likelihood of obtaining more-current scholarship among their collections. If you are not able to find what you are looking for here, check the library options available for your state / locale (information on this is listed on the following page).
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
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Scanned books from major research libraries. Best for books published before 1928.
- Digital Book IndexLinks to over 165,000 books (140,000 are free.)
- Digital Public Library of AmericaCatalog of public domain and openly licensed images and other digitized materials from archives, libraries, museums, and other U.S. cultural heritage institutions.
- Google BooksThousands of books--many scanned from major libraries in the U.S.
- Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar is a useful resource for finding academic book chapters.
Ancient Texts, Translations & Commentaries
General Resources
- Perseus Digital LibraryA digital library that provides a variety of resources on the ancient world. Provided by Tufts University.
- Scaife ViewerA reading environment for pre-modern text collections in both their original languages and in translation.
- Dickinson College Commentaries"Latin and Greek texts for reading, with explanatory notes, vocabulary, and graphic, video, and audio elements."
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
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Scanned books from major research libraries. Best for books published before 1928.
- Catalog of Scholarly Digital EditionsAn annotated catalog of sources for digital editions of texts online.
- Diotima: Women in the Ancient WorldA resource for studying women in the ancient world, including translations, bibliographies, syllabi and more.
- Google Books: Greek & Latin TextsGoogle Books contains scans of digitized books from a variety of partner libraries and institutions. Many of the digitized books are freely viewable and even downloadable in PDF format. On this page Google Books maintains a page of digitized Greek and Latin texts selected by Professor Gregory Crane and Alison Babeu of Tufts University. There are currently over 500 texts available.
- Internet Ancient History SourcebookThis site maintained by Fordham University collects links to public domain primary texts available on the web. The texts are listed by geographic area; some are available as text documents on the Sourcebook website, while others are hosted at outside sites. It also includes links to relevant secondary texts organized by topic.
- Poetry in TranslationAn open-access archive of translations of ancient poetry.
- Theoi"A site exploring Greek mythology and the gods in classical literature and art. The aim of the project is to provide a comprehensive, free reference guide to the gods (theoi), spirits (daimones), fabulous creatures (theres) and heroes of ancient Greek mythology and religion."
Latin Texts
- PHI Latin TextsAn extensive database containing "essentially all Latin literary texts written before AD 200," maintained by the Packard Humanities Institute. In addition to the texts themselves, the website also includes a word search and searchable concordance.
- Latin LibraryThe Latin Library has several classical texts organized by author for free. These texts are great to use if you like to use a blank sheet (without vocabulary notes or grammar notes) to study Latin.
- Forum Romanum: Corpus Scriptorum LatinorumThis section of the Forum Romanum site serves as a central index of open-access Latin texts available on the web. Entries are listed by author, and provide links to primary texts, translations in various languages, and relevant secondary texts.
Greek Texts
- Abridged Online TLGThe Thesaurus Linguae Graecae or TLG represents the standard corpus of ancient Greek works from Homer to 1453 and beyond. The abridged TLG is an open-access, online resource which allows you to browse select texts in the corpus online. Several different forms of encoding and transliteration are available, but the site works best on computers with a polytonic Greek font installed; TLG has several fonts available for download.
- PHI Greek InscriptionsAn in-progress database of transcribed Greek inscriptions from a range of geographic areas. Inscriptions can be browsed by geographic region and corpora and then searched by number. This database is maintained by the Packard Humanities Institute.
- The Chicago HomerThe Chicago Homer is a database developed at Northwestern University. It contains early Greek epic texts (such as the works of Homer and Hesiod) in the original language as well as in English and sometimes German translation. The texts are accompanied by a parsing tool. You can also access associated scholia and papyrus readings provided through the website Eumaios, by clicking on lines which appear in bold.
Latin & Greek Grammars
Smyth's Greek Grammar
Allen & Greenough's New Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges
Lexica & Dictionaries
A Latin Dictionary by
- A Greek-English Lexicon by
- TLGRequires (free) registration
An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon by
"Open" (Free) Resources - Articles
Articles
Even if you can’t get access to resources through a library, there are many high quality, peer-reviewed articles that you can access for free online. These resources may include journal articles that are free to read by anyone or articles that authors have made available themselves so that others can freely access their work. To find these resources, you can...
- Search databases that collect free resources. A list of selected databases is included in the following tabs.
- Use journals that are "open access" (i.e., without paywalls).
- Install a browser plugin that will help you find free full text as you’re searching online.
Research Databases & 'Databases'
Below is a list of selected databases for searching for free resources. This is only a subset of the many collections that are available online. There are extensive lists of freely available databases maintained by Rutgers University Libraries and Oregon State University Library. You can also consult the Open Access Directory’s list of open access collections by discipline.
Articles
- Google ScholarIn addition to searching law journals, Google Scholar includes options to look specifically for case law or patents.
- JSTOR - Free AccessJSTOR offers free access to content published before 1923, and 100 free articles a month from their current content with a personal login.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) This link opens in a new window
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Articles from high-quality, open access scientific and scholarly journals.
- BASESearch engine for academic research, where 60% of content is free to access
- TOCS-IN"Tables of contents of a selection of Classics, Near Eastern Studies, and Religion journals...Where possible, links are given with articles of which the full text or an abstract is available online (about 15%)."
- COREDatabases like this one collect preprints, or the first drafts of articles. Many of these drafts will not change substantially before they are published, so they’re a good source to use to determine whether the published article will be helpful to you.
Dissertations & Theses
- Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Theses and dissertations on all subjects from around the world.
A Note on Academia.edu and ResearchGate
ResearchGate and Academia.edu are for-profit sites that are popular among researchers for networking and posting PDFs of their articles. You may find that articles that you’re searching for have been posted on these sites. However, two words of caution:
- Many of the articles that are posted on these sites are posted in violation of copyright law. Major publishers have successfully filed a lawsuit against ResearchGate, although the company is appealing.
- In order to download PDFs, you may be prompted to create an account with these sites. Keep in mind that these are for-profit sites that can use your personal data in many ways and change their terms of service at any time.
Browser Plugins
These browser plugins will help you find free full text of articles you’re looking for online. Please note that these plugins are developed and maintained by third-party groups and your use of them is governed by their terms of service.
- Unpaywall
When you’re viewing an article page, the Unpaywall padlock icon appears on the right-hand side of your screen, green if freely available, grey if not. Click on the padlock to download a PDF of the article. Works in Chrome and Firefox. - Open Access Button
When you’re viewing an article page, click on the Open Access Button icon in your toolbar to download a PDF of the article. If unavailable, the OA Button helps you send a request for access to the author. Works in Chrome and Firefox. - Google Scholar Button
When you’re viewing an article page, click on the Google Scholar button in your toolbar. If you can download the article for free, there will be a link to the PDF in a pop-up dialog box. Works in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
Helpful Search Tips
Search Tips
- When searching for a specific phrase, or anytime you're looking for a specific book or article by title, use quotation marks around it, "like this." This will make your search more precise.
- If you are searching for books, articles etc. on a topic instead of a specific item:
- Try searching for a collection of terms/ideas rather than a phrase, sentence or question.
Ex: if you are looking for information about Roman funerary monuments, try: "Ancient Rome," monuments, funerary
- Experiment with different variations of your search. Take into account synonyms, alternate spellings or transliterations, etc. (and use the actual ancient terms where appropriate).
Ex: In addition to funerary, try terms like burial, memorial, funeral, Manes
- Use AND/OR/* to really expand your search. This will work to some extent even in Google:
Ex: "Ancient Rome" AND monuments AND funerary -- sources with all 3 terms
Ex: "Ancient Rome" AND monuments AND (funerary OR burial) -- sources discussing funerary monuments and 'burial monuments'
Ex: "Ancient Rome" AND monuments AND funer* -- sources discussing funerary, funeral, funerals,
- Try searching for a collection of terms/ideas rather than a phrase, sentence or question.