CLASSICS 322: The Romans (Spring 2025) : Writing & Citing

Citing ancient texts is a little bit different from citing modern texts.

Works Cited Page

When including an ancient text on your works cited page, you should follow the standards for whatever style guide you are using (such as Chicago, APA, or MLA). For example:

Hesiod. Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia. Edited and translated by Glenn W. Most. Loeb Classical Library 57. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2018.

This is a citation for the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hesiod's Theogony (the volume also contains Works and Days and Testemonia). This citation is written in the MLA style.

In-Line Citations

When writing in-line citations (also called parenthetical citations) for ancient authors, you will not be citing by page number the way you normally would. Instead, for ancient authors, you typically cite by line number. For example:

Homer, Iliad 12.382

In this example, I am citing line 382 of book 12 of the Iliad. Note the period between the book number and the line number. 

Aeschylus, Agamemnon 260-263

In this example, I am citing lines 260-263 of the tragedy Agamemnon by Aeschylus. You can use a dash in this way to indicate that you are quoting or paraphrasing multiple lines.

Plato, Gorgias 448b

Plato's works are almost always cited using a special number and letter combination, called "Stephanus numbers." These numbers are generally given in the margins of Plato's texts the same way line numbers would be, although they don't refer to "lines" the way the above examples do. They actually refer to the pages and columns of an authoritative edition of Plato's works that was printed in 1578. You can learn more about Stephanus numbers here.

Abbreviations

Many classical works and authors have standard abbreviations that you may want to employ. You can find a list of these abbreviations in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (links to online resource; you may need to use your NetID to access) in the section titled "Abbreviations used in the Present Work." If I were using abbreviations in the above parenthetical citations, they might look like this:

Hom. Il. 12.382

Aesch. Ag. 260-263

Pl. Grg. 448b

Note that the title of the work is still italicized even when it has been abbreviated. If you choose to abbreviate an author's name or the name of a work, you should only use the standard abbreviations described in the Oxford Classical Dictionary; you should never make up your own abbreviations. You should also use abbreviations consistently throughout your paper.

If you are unsure how to cite modern sources, you may wish to refer to the Citing Sources Guide. It will walk you through the best ways to cite your sources and avoid plagiarism.

Citation Managers such as  EndNote, EndNote Basic, Mendeley, or Zotero are software tools for managing your citations.  Citation Managers will help you:

• Create and organize a personal research database
• Download citations from online databases
• Format bibliographies and citations in papers
• Share your citations with others