30 works · 1251 passages · 11,399 notes

The library

Every work on the site, the translation it is served from, and whether that translation is safely out of copyright. The titles link to the reading pages; the translation column is the one that belongs in a bibliography.

Work	Author	Translation	Rights	Collections	Passages	Notes	Text
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea Mid-first century CE; the range argued runs from the 40s to the 70s.	Anonymous, formerly ascribed to Arrian	Schoff 1912	Public domain	Economics · Travel and the Road	22	206	Read →
Clouds — the play Socrates was still answering at his trial Produced at the City Dionysia in 423 BCE, where the judges put it third of three — last. The text that survives is not quite that play. Aristophanes revised it some years afterwards, usually placed between 420 and 417, and the revision was on the usual view never staged: the parabasis at 518–562 steps out of the action to tell the audience this was the cleverest of his comedies and that they failed it. So a reader is holding a rewrite pitched at people who had already rejected the first version, with the seams visible — the agon between the two Arguments is widely thought to be new, and the ending was left unreconciled with it.	Aristophanes	Hickie 1853	Public domain	Economics · Religion in Practice · The Greeks	68	645	Read →
Indica 18–43 — the voyage of Nearchus Written in the 130s CE, about a voyage of 325 BCE. Arrian is copying out a log kept by a man who was there four and a half centuries earlier.	Arrian, reporting Nearchus	McCrindle 1879	Public domain	Travel and the Road	13	156	Read →
De Officiis 1 - what a decent man may do for money Written in late 44 BCE, in the months after Caesar's murder, while Cicero was out of the politics he had helped make.	Cicero	Miller 1913	Public domain	Economics	54	488	Read →
For Marcus Caelius — the trial that became a character assassination Delivered in April 56 BCE, at the Ludi Megalenses, before a court sitting through a public holiday.	Cicero	Yonge 1891	Public domain	Daily Life · Women's Lives · Law	27	292	Read →
Annals 6 — the last years of Tiberius, and the credit crisis of 33 Written about 115–120 CE, covering 32 to March 37 CE.	Cornelius Tacitus	Church & Brodribb 1869	Public domain	Economics	26	358	Read →
The Life of Epicurus — the slanders, the will, and a letter written while dying Epicurus was born in 341 BCE and died at Athens in 270. Diogenes Laertius, who assembled this life, wrote roughly five hundred years later; the usual placing is the first half of the third century CE and it rests on the latest authors he cites, because almost nothing else about him is known — not his city, not his dates, not his own allegiance. A tenth of Greek philosophy survives because of him, and nothing survives about him.	Diogenes Laertius	Hicks 1925	Public domain	Slavery and Manumission · Death and Memory · The Garden and Its Critics	10	142	Read →
Letter to Herodotus — the physics, compressed for memorising Written by Epicurus at Athens, so between about 306 and 270 BCE; it cannot be dated closer. It survives only because Diogenes Laertius copied it whole into book 10 of the Lives some five centuries later, which is why the citations here are his section numbers rather than the letter's own.	Epicurus	Hicks 1925	Public domain	The Garden and Its Critics	17	107	Read →
Letter to Menoeceus — death is nothing to us, and pleasure is not what you think Athens, between about 306 and 270 BCE, and no closer. Transmitted entire inside Diogenes Laertius book 10, and cited here by his sections.	Epicurus	Hicks 1925	Public domain	Death and Memory · The Garden and Its Critics	6	40	Read →
The Principal Doctrines — forty sentences meant to be known by heart Compiled from Epicurus's writings, probably within the school and possibly by him; in circulation by the generation after his death in 270 BCE. Diogenes Laertius copied the set entire at the end of book 10, and it is cited here by his sections rather than by doctrine number, so a single unit will usually carry two or three of the forty.	Epicurus	Hicks 1925	Public domain	Law · The Garden and Its Critics	8	49	Read →
The Life — the Galilee command c. 95-100 CE, appended to the Jewish Antiquities.	Flavius Josephus	Whiston	Public domain	Travel and the Road	38	336	Read →
Histories, Book 2 — the Egyptian inquiry Composed c. 430 BCE; the Egyptian visit it reports is usually placed in the 450s-440s.	Herodotus	Godley 1920-25	Public domain	Food and Drink · Medicine and the Body · Death and Memory · Technology and Infrastructure · Travel and the Road · Religion in Practice	205	1571	Read →
Airs, Waters, Places — how where you live decides what kills you Fifth century BCE, in the generation of the historians. The author is not Hippocrates himself in any provable sense; the name covers a school.	Hippocrates	Adams 1886	Public domain	Medicine and the Body · Travel and the Road	12	94	Read →
The Odyssey — ten years to get home, and a house full of men eating the estate Composed in the eighth or seventh century BCE, at the end of a long oral tradition and probably with the help of writing; the dating is argued about and no manuscript is anywhere near that old. The story is set a decade after a war conventionally placed in the twelfth century BCE, so the poem is already looking back several hundred years at a world it half-remembers and half-invents.	Homer	Murray 1919	Public domain	Food and Drink · Women's Lives · Slavery and Manumission · Death and Memory · Travel and the Road · The Greeks	288	3351	Read →
Ab Urbe Condita 34 - repealing the Oppian Law Written under Augustus, about 27-25 BCE; the events are of 195 BCE.	Livy	Edmonds, Bohn 1850	Public domain	Women's Lives · Law · Economics	31	382	Read →
Alexander the False Prophet — a new god with a puppet snake, and the Epicureans who called it Written after 180 CE, in Lucian's later years. The events are recent and in some cases witnessed: Alexander founded his oracle at Abonoteichus on the Black Sea coast in the 150s and it outlived him.	Lucian of Samosata	Harmon 1925	Public domain	Religion in Practice · The Garden and Its Critics	31	329	Read →
On Funerals — the business of mourning Second century CE, probably around 170.	Lucian of Samosata	Fowler 1905	Public domain	Death and Memory · Religion in Practice	8	70	Read →
The Ship, or The Wishes Second century CE, probably after 160.	Lucian of Samosata	Fowler 1905	Public domain	Economics · Travel and the Road	46	229	Read →
A True Story Later second century CE; no secure date.	Lucian of Samosata	Fowler 1905	Public domain	Travel and the Road	30	186	Read →
The Apology of Socrates — a defence that refuses to plead The trial was in 399 BCE, a few years after the democracy was restored. Plato wrote this some time afterwards — the decade is argued over, the 380s are the usual guess — and he says at 34a and 38b that he was in the courtroom.	Plato	Fowler 1914	Public domain	Death and Memory · Law · Religion in Practice · The Greeks	26	252	Read →
That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible Plutarch lived from about 45 to about 120 CE, so this is written some three and a half centuries after Epicurus died, into a world where Epicureanism was a living and successful school with a reputation to be attacked.	Plutarch	Goodwin 1874	Public domain	The Garden and Its Critics	31	313	Read →
Solon — the man who cancelled the debts Plutarch wrote around 100 CE about events of the 590s BCE, nearly seven centuries earlier.	Plutarch	Perrin 1914	Public domain	Slavery and Manumission · Law · Economics	20	194	Read →
Satires 1.5 — the journey to Brundisium c. 37 BCE; published with the first book of Satires c. 35 BCE.	Q. Horatius Flaccus	Smart 1862	Public domain	Daily Life · Food and Drink · Travel and the Road	3	61	Read →
Geography, Book 17 — Egypt and North Africa Composed in the reign of Augustus and revised under Tiberius; c. 7 BCE - 23 CE.	Strabo	Hamilton & Falconer 1854-57	Public domain	Technology and Infrastructure · Travel and the Road	28	232	Read →
The Plague at Athens — Thucydides 2.47-54 The plague struck in 430 BCE and returned in 427. Thucydides wrote after the war ended in 404.	Thucydides	Crawley 1874	Public domain	Medicine and the Body · Death and Memory	12	73	Read →
On Architecture, Book 10 — machines, and how they multiply a man Written in the 20s BCE and dedicated to Augustus, by a man who had served as a military engineer under Caesar.	Vitruvius	Morgan 1914	Public domain	Technology and Infrastructure	37	280	Read →
Anabasis, Book 4 — the march to the sea The march is of 401–400 BCE; Xenophon wrote perhaps forty years later, c. 370.	Xenophon	Brownson	Public domain	Food and Drink · Travel and the Road	77	414	Read →
The training of a wife — Oeconomicus 7-10 Written in the 360s or 350s BCE, set in an Athens Xenophon had long left.	Xenophon	Marchant 1923	Public domain	Daily Life · Women's Lives · Slavery and Manumission	33	227	Read →
Poroi — ways and means to raise Athens' revenue About 355 BCE, in the wreckage of the Social War. Xenophon was near eighty and died within a year or two of writing it.	Xenophon	Marchant 1925	Public domain	Slavery and Manumission · Economics	33	246	Read →
Acts 27 — the voyage to Rome and the shipwreck Commonly placed c. 80-90 CE; the range argued in scholarship runs from the 60s to the early second century.	the author of Acts (traditionally Luke)	World English Bible	Public domain	Travel and the Road · Religion in Practice	11	76	Read →

The 1929 cliff

Most Loeb translations published after 1929 are still in copyright. Where the standard version fails the check, the site falls back to an older public-domain one and names it in the row above rather than quietly substituting.

Rights are checked, not assumed

Every translation is verified against Wikidata for publication date and translator death date before a work is published. Two works turned out to have no evidence at all behind them, only an inference from a date. The evidence is on the Sources page.