The Classical Studies guide to referencing

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This guide is to be used by certain Classical Studies modules. Please check your module’s Assessment guide to ensure whether you are required to use it.

Please note that this guide covers in-text citations only. Full references, i.e. at the end of your assignment, should follow the advice provided in Cite Them Right.

The purpose of this guide is to help you to correctly cite ancient primary sources. There is an approved system across the discipline of Classical Studies, which you will also see used in academic literature, and this guide lays out those conventions for different types of primary sources you may encounter. Please note that all primary sources (coins, inscriptions etc.) need a full reference, not just ancient texts. 

Table of contents

1. Ancient Texts
2. Artefacts and ancient artworks
3. Coins and inscriptions
4. Papyri

Ancient Texts

Citations of ancient works should include the author, the name of the work and the location of the work, as shown below.

You will see in the following examples that when referring to ancient sources, we don't use page numbers from modern translations. Only in special cases (as shown below) is it appropriate to mention page numbers from a modern translation when citing an ancient source. This is done to ensure that people can easily find the exact part of the source, whether they're using a different translation or the original text in its original language.

The citation should be placed in brackets in the text.

A note on titles and abbreviations

Often in secondary literature you will find abbreviations of ancient texts, usually in the Latin form, for example:

• Tac., Ann. (Tacitus, Annales)
• Ar., Eccl. (Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae)
• App., Mac. (Appian, Macedonica)

If you would like to use such abbreviations, make sure you use the widely recognised ones listed in the front of the Oxford Classical Dictionary and that you follow them consistently.

All abbreviations used below can be found in the front of the Oxford Classical Dictionary.

Examples from poetry and drama

For any form of poetry or drama, make sure you give the line number or line span.

Epic poems are divided into books, so you should also give the book number.

Poems may be included in collections where individual poems have their own number. The collection may or may not have a title: if it does, include it in your citation. One thing to note, though, is that titles are often not given where only one work has survived from an author, such as in the case of Catullus (first example below). The poetry of Horace, however, is arranged into different collections each with their own title (e.g. Odes), and each poem within has a number (second example below).

Examples from prose works

Prose texts such as historical works, novels, speeches and essays are usually divided into books, chapters and sometimes sections (depending on how long the chapters are).

Biographies are a little different. When citing a biographical work, we use the title of the specific biography in question, such as in the third example below. Another example would be Plutarch’s Lives.

In the case of collections of letters, the letters themselves are usually numbered, but they may also be divided into sections, such as in the fourth example below.

Examples from legal works

Ancient legal works usually take the form of catalogues of laws written down as reference works in antiquity by juristic scholars. When there was one jurist who collated the laws in writing (e.g. Gaius), that person carries the authorship. When several authors put together a collection, the name of the author of the (sub)section cited goes after the citation in brackets. In the case of anonymous collections of laws, such as in the third example, no author is given.

Examples from medical texts (Hippocrates/Galen)

In the case of ancient medical texts, there is no standard edition and some versions number the chapters of the treatises differently. For this reason, give information on the edition used, such as with the first example, where the nineteenth-century edition of Emile Littré, commonly abbreviated as ‘L’, was used.

For Galen, a smaller proportion of the total work is available in English translation. The convention is to include the volume and page number from the edition by Karl Gottlob Kühn, commonly abbreviated as ‘K’, such as with the third example.

You may sometimes come across Hippocrates’s name given in square brackets, e.g. [Hippocrates]. Some scholars do this because there is no certainty that any work in the Hippocratic Corpus is by the historical Hippocrates. You may put his name in square brackets to indicate this, but it is not necessary.

Examples from fragments

Very rarely you will be dealing with a text that is fragmentary, and this will be clear from the scholarship you read. If you cite such texts, you need to include the abbreviation fr. (or frr. if you are referring to more than one fragment) in the citation.

Because fragmentary texts have sometimes been arranged in different ways, it is conventional to give the name of the editor or a standard abbreviation for the edition to which you are referring. This helps the reader find the passage you mean, as different editions may number fragments differently.

Examples of how to use citations within a text:

(Please note that the ciations here do not, in reality, correspond to what is written. The text is purely to show you the format of citations and how you can use them in an assignment text.)

“We can see that in some Roman texts (e.g. Virgil, Aeneid 3.466; Tacitus, Annals 4.31), women were regarded as belonging to the domestic sphere, whilst Galen (On the Affected Parts 6.5 (K 8, p.417)) suggests that some women did work outside the home. In law it is certainly laid down that women should be protected when outside the house (Codex Theodosianus 9.42.9; Gaius, Institutes 4.1), but poets like Horace (Odes 3.30.2-4) and Catullus (50.2) make it clear that… .”

Or:

“We can see that in some Roman texts, women were regarded as belonging to the domestic sphere (e.g. Virgil, Aeneid 3.466; Tacitus, Annals 4.31), whilst Galen suggests that some women did work outside the home (Galen, On the Affected Parts 6.5 (K 8, p.417)). In law it is certainly laid down that women should be protected when outside the house (Codex Theodosianus 9.42.9; Gaius, Institutes 4.1), but poets like Horace and Catullus make it clear that… (Horace, Odes 3.30.2-4; Catullus 50.2).”

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Artefacts and ancient artworks

You may find ancient artefacts or artworks within catalogues of objects and artworks, corpora of artworks, online catalogues of images, museums and books. Artefacts and ancient artworks are cited according to the modern collection they have been published in. Below are some representative examples.

A catalogue of objects and artwork is the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), which arranges images by topic.

A common corpus of Roman provincial artwork is the Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani, of which there are many volumes, arranged geographically.

There are also online catalogues of images such as Artstor collections on JSTOR.

If you found the object in a museum and do not know where it was published, you may cite as follows:

Examples of how to use citations within in a text:

(Please note that the citations here do not, in reality, correspond to what is written – the text is purely to show you the format of citations and how you can use them in an assignment text.)

“One image of Dike from Athens (LIMC s.v. ‘Dike’ 2) shows her holding the scales level, whilst on the side of a gravestone in Hungary (CSIR Hungary 2, 56) they are portrayed unbalanced. A statue of Hercules now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (CE 68-98, Inv. No. 7475, Artstor collections on JSTOR, https://www-jstor-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/site/artstor (accessed August 2024)), shows the lionskin resting on the ground.”

Or:

“One image of Dike from Athens shows her holding the scales level (LIMC s.v. ‘Dike’ 2), whilst on the side of a gravestone in Hungary they are portrayed unbalanced (CSIR Hungary 2, 56). A statue of Hercules now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shows the lionskin resting on the ground (CE 68-98, Inv. No. 7475, Artstor collections on JSTOR, https://www-jstor-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/site/artstor (accessed August 2024).”

“Fig. 6. Bronze statuette of Aphrodite from Athens, 150-100 BCE, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Inv. No. 1981.238. H: 134cm.”

you may then refer to your images within your text by their figure number rather than giving the full citation again, for example:

“… as is the case with the bronze Aphrodite statuette from Athens (Fig. 6), the exact findspots of many of these artefacts are no longer known"

Otherwise, you would use the citation as follows:

“...as is the case with the bronze Aphrodite statuette from Athens (150-100 BCE, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Inv. No. 1981.238. H: 134cm), the exact findspots of many of these artefacts are no longer known.”

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Coins and inscriptions

Coins and inscriptions are almost always collated in corpora or catalogues and, within them, each coin or inscription has a particular number you should use in your citations. The same applies even when you are using online databases such as the Heidelberg Epigraphic Database, as these will give the conventional corpus numbers as well.

Coins and inscriptions are always being discovered and sometimes it takes a while for them to find their way into supplementary volumes of the corpora mentioned above. In these cases, cite them in the publication in which they were first published. For example, for inscriptions there is L’Année Épigraphique, a journal specialising in publishing newly-found inscriptions.

Examples of how to use citations within a text:

(Please note that the citations here do not, in reality, correspond to what is written – the text is purely to show you the format of citations and how you can use them in an assignment text.)

“An inscription from Rome (CIL 6.930) lists all of Caesar’s honorary titles, whereas a coin from the same period (RRC 231) does not. A new inscription from Pompeii (AE 1982, 43), however, has helped to clarify the matter. It shows... .”

Or:

“An inscription from Rome lists all of Caesar’s honorary titles (CIL 6.930), whereas a coin from the same period does not (RRC 231). A new inscription from Pompeii, however, has helped to clarify the matter (AE 1982, 43). It shows... .”

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Papyri

Papyri are usually collated going by the place in which they were found. When citing papyri, the convention is to refer to the place they were found and the papyrus number.

Examples of how to use citations within a text:

(Please note that the citations here do not, in reality, correspond to what is written – the text is purely to show you the format of citations and how you can use them in an assignment text.)

“We have evidence of this in an apprenticeship certificate from Egypt (POxy. 984), which says that... .”

Or:

“We have evidence of this in an apprenticeship certificate from Egypt, which says that... (POxy. 984).”

Comments or feedback

If you have any comments or feedback about this guide, please email Classical Studies at FASS-ArtsHum-Classical-Studies@open.ac.uk. For any questions about referencing in general, please get in touch with the Library helpdesk.