The mission of the Loeb Classical Library, founded by James Loeb in 1911, has always been to make Greek and Latin literature accessible to the broadest range of readers. The digital Loeb Classical Library extends this mission into the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press is honored to renew James Loeb's vision of accessibility and presents an interconnected, fully searchable, perpetually growing, virtual library of all that is important in Greek and Latin literature. Epic and lyric poetry; tragedy and comedy; history, travel, philosophy, and oratory; the great medical writers and mathematicians; those Church Fathers who made particular use of pagan culture — in short, our entire Greek and Latin Classical heritage is represented here with up-to-date texts and accurate English translations. More than 520 volumes of Latin, Greek, and English texts are available in a modern and elegant interface, allowing readers to browse, search, bookmark, annotate, and share content with ease.

Now over a century old, the Loeb Classical Library is a venerable institution. But the series was a revolution when it was founded. Virginia Woolf was among those who first recognized and cheered that revolution:

“The Loeb Library, with its Greek or Latin on one side of the page and its English on the other, came as a gift of freedom… The existence of the amateur was recognised by the publication of this Library, and to a great extent made respectable… The difficulty of Greek is not sufficiently dwelt upon, chiefly perhaps because the sirens who lure us to these perilous waters are generally scholars [who] have forgotten…what those difficulties are. But for the ordinary amateur they are very real and very great; and we shall do well to recognise the fact and to make up our minds that we shall never be independent of our Loeb.”

—Virginia Woolf, The Times Literary Supplement, 1917