A Treat For Students of Greek Lit

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Hey there, Greeklings (and everybody else too)!  Guess what I just found?  A guide to free Loeb ebooks: DownLOEBables.  All the books are in the public domain; these are the first editions from 1911 and thereabouts.*  Now you too can have a Loeb library!

As I've mentioned before, I've always coveted the Loeb editions because of their inherent coolness, but they are quite expensive and I really have no excuse for buying books that are half Greek when I can't even hold the whole alphabet in my head. (I've never had any trouble retaining Russian letters--I remember very very little Russian, but can still sound it out just fine.  I don't know why I can't retain the Greek alphabet properly, though I have improved, so maybe there's still hope.)   Then there are the Latin Loeb books--also very cool, but my Latin is pretty much at a kindergarten level.

But now I can have some Loeb books on my tablet, and that is better than not having any at all!  I do not love ebooks more than print copies, and I practically never buy ebooks, but there is one thing that I just think is wonderful, and that's the amazing access to old texts that I cannot get hold of in print. 


If you are even more of a student of Greek, here is a blog post devoted to ebooks for learning the language!


*Since these are the old translations, keep in mind that they are...polite.  Expurgated.  Bowdlerized!  The rude bits are usually dealt with in footnotes, preferably in Greek or Italian or something, to soften the blow and make sure no one can read one unexpectedly.

Comments

  1. Brian JosephJune 23, 2012 at 6:11 PM

    Thanks for the tip. I love the Greeks Classics that I have read so far. Sometimes when I reread something that I have tried before I like to try a different translation. This should be a helpful source!

    ReplyDelete

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