Library Resources in the Classics Department

The Holloway Classics Library is a resource of the classics department at Amherst College and is being developed with the generous help of our alumni/ae. We have a complete collection of the Oxford Classical Texts, various commentaries, dictionaries, lexica, histories, grammatical aids, atlases, and other books of valuable assistance to students and faculty alike. Suggestions and contributions are always welcome. Our library database is available online.

  • In 1997, Ralph L. Ward, professor of classics at Hunter College, generously gave his large
    and valuable classics library to the department. In addition to a wealth of Greek and
    Latin texts and commentaries, it includes a select group of modern Greek texts and
    grammars and numerous linguistic reference books.
  • R. Ross Holloway '56, Elisha Benjamin Andrews professor emeritus of archaeology at Brown University, donated a considerable portion of his archaeological library to the Holloway Classics Library in March 2009.
  • In 2009, we also received many books from the personal library of Professor Elizabeth Lyding Will, with a particular focus on ancient sea trade. 
  • Nobina Pal '84 donated her Classics library in 1994.
  book delivery Arrival of books from R. Ross Holloway's personal library and delivery to Grosvenor. books
 
Grosvenor 11 A temporary home, Grosvenor 11.
 
reading room temporary home

 

Grosvenor House 12 is the Permanent Home of the Classics Reading Room

John Andrew Moore
John Andrew Moore
looking out of the bay window in Grosvenor House 12
ca. late 1960s
Dedication 2010
Grosvenor 12 Classics Reading Room

The permanent home of the Classics Reading Room is Grosvenor House 12, dedicated to R. Ross Holloway ’56. Many of the 2,200+ books in our Holloway Classics Library are available in this room to our classics, Greek and Latin majors. GROS-12 is also used as a classroom for Greek and Latin courses. John Andrew Moore, Professor of Classics until 1972, had his office in this room as did Professor of Classics Peter K. Marshall, 1959-2001.

Frost Library

Additional Library References online

Oxford English Dictionary
Britannica Online
Merriam-Webster
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
American Journal of Philology
American Journal of Archaeology
SCHOLIA: Studies in Classical Antiquity
The Tech Classics Archive (MIT)

Classical Organizations

Museums

  • Mead Art Museum at Amherst College has a Greek and Roman earthenware collection, a Hoplite helmet, Greek and Roman coins, a Cycladic figure, and a funerary Stele worthy of note.
Mead Museum Object
 
Mead Museum Image
Mead Museum Object
 
Mead Museum Object
Mead Museum Image
Mead Museum Image
Mead Museum Image
 
Mead Museum Image

Publishing Houses

Subject References

Latin

Greek

Archaeology

Antiracism

General

Five College Classics Departments

Miscellanea

  • Garry Wills, NYT, 11/03/2010: "Learning classical Greek is the most economical intellectual investment one can make. On many things that might interest one—law and politics, philosophy, oratory, history, lyric poetry, epic poetry, drama—there will be constant reference back to the founders of those forms in our civilization."
  • Links to classics podcasts
  • Latin AliveLatin Alive
  • "Miss Welty learned to read before starting public school and began turning out stories as a child. 'It took Latin to thrust me into a bona fide alliance with words in their true meaning, she wrote. 'Learning Latin (once I was free of Caesar) fed my love for words upon words, words in continuation and modification, and the beautiful, sober accretion of a sentence. I could see the achieved sentence finally standing there, as real, intact and built to stay as the Mississippi State Capitol at the top of my street, where I could walk through it on my way to school and hear underfoot the echo of its marble floor and over me the bell of its rotunda.'"
             ~From "In Praise of Latin" (NYTimes, 7/24/2001, on the death of Eudora Welty)

  • "I would make them all learn English: then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat."
             ~Sir Winston Churchill, A Roving Commission: My Early Life

  • "To read the Latin and Greek authors in their original is a sublime luxury . . . . I thank on my knees him who directed my early education for having in my possession this rich source of delight."
              ~Thomas Jefferson 

  • "Thucydides wrote about the war with Sparta that, yes, raw Spartan militarism in the short-term could conquer Athens. But that beauty, art, knowledge, philosophy, would long outlive Sparta and Spartan militarism. And he consoled himself with that."
             ~Susan Sontag

  • "I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity."
              ~Marcus Tullius Cicero 

  • "The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance."
              ~Herodotus

     

Tags: 
classics