Primary Texts Help Topics

• Primary Texts Overview
• Primary Text Index
• Primary Texts Features
• Morphological Analysis
• Notes
• Primary Text Display
• Author, Translator and Notes Information

Primary Texts Overview

The Primary Texts are works by 31 authors in Ancient Greek with accompanying English translation. To reach the Primary Texts quickly, click Primary Texts on the Perseus Gateway. Click on an author in the list, left, then click on a work in the list, right. For the various Philological Tools associated with the Primary Texts, see Philological Tools Help.

The Primary Texts resource contains works by these ancient Greek authors:

• Aeschines
• Aeschylus
• Andocides
• Antiphon
• Apollodorus
• Aristophanes
• Aristotle
• Bacchylides
• Demades
• Demosthenes
• Dinarchus
• Diodorus Siculus
• Euripides
• Herodotus
• Hesiod
• Homer
• Homeric Hymns
• Hyperides
• Isaeus
• Isocrates
• Lycurgus
• Lysias
• Old Oligarch
• Pausanias
• Pindar
• Plato
• Plutarch
• Sophocles
• Strabo
• Thucydides
• Xenophon

Corpora of the authors in Platform Independent Perseus are complete, except for those of Aristotle, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Plutarch, whose works are selected. Fragmentary texts are not included in this version, except in the cases of Bacchylides, the Homeric Hymns and Hyperides.

Each Primary Text has an English translation. In many cases, the texts are accompanied by notes. Notes from the Loeb editions are given for Aeschines, Aeschylus, Andocides, Antiphon, Demades, Demosthenes, Dinarchus, Diodorus, Herodotus, Hesiod, Hyperides, Isaeus, Isocrates, Lycurgus, Lysias, Old Oligarch, Pausanias, Plato, Plutarch, Pseudo-Xenophon, and Xenophon. Aristophanes' Clouds, Lysistrata and Acharnians have English translations and accompanying notes by Jeffrey Henderson. Several plays by Euripides were translated and annotated by David Kovacs: Andromache, Cyclops, Heraclides, Hippolytus and Medea. The Pindar and Bacchylides translations, both by Diane Svarlien, include her notes. Other notes are those prepared for the Loeb series by J. G. Frazer (Apollodorus), W. H. Fyfe (Aristotle, Poetics), J. H. Freese (Aristotle, Rhetoric), H. Tredennick (Aristotle, Metaphysics), Oldfather, Sherman and Welles (Diodorus Siculus), and H. L. Jones (Strabo).

The Primary Text Index lists all Greek texts and English translations within Perseus. It may be reached in two ways: from the Gateway by clicking the button Primary Texts, and from the Links menu by choosing Primary Texts. A text may be accessed directly by typing a lookup string into the Lookup tool.

Primary Text Index Types

Primary Texts are indexed in the following four ways: alphabetically by author (the default setting), by form (dactylic hexameter, drama, lyric and prose), by genre (Biography, Comedy, etc.) and chronologically by date of the work. Use the pop-up menu Index Type to choose an index setting.

This utility allows you to go to a specific reference in the current text or in another text within the Perseus database. The location is identified by chapter and section, by book and line, or by Bekker or Stephanus number, depending on the canonical reference system for that work, called the "look-up string." A list of canonical references is given here.

Go to another line in the first Olympian.

Type Pind. O. 1.110 into the Go To box and press Return.

N. B. 1 The look-up string is not case sensitive, but you need to distinguish between the number zero and the letter O.

N. B. 2 You can also page through the texts by clicking the left and right arrows on the Perseus Navigator.

N. B. 3 You cannot use Go To to navigate to other sections of the database, e.g., Site Plans. Use the Lookup tool in the Links menu to go directly to another section of Perseus.

The Analyze button provides access to the Morphological Analysis tool, which parses Greek words to their dictionary form. The example will continue to draw from Pindar's First Olympian.

Task: Analyze the form of a Greek verb.

Select ἔλδεαι from line 4 of the First Olympian. Click Analyze. Perseus analyzes ἔλδεαι in a Morphological Analysis window, showing the dictionary form of the word and its parse. The results of the analysis can be used with several other tools in Perseus. These tools are available in the pop-up menu in the upper right corner of the Morphological Analysis box.

To find the meaning of the word from the Greek lexicon, highlight the word and choose Greek-English Lexicon from the pop-up menu.

To look for all instances of this word in the Perseus Primary Texts, highlight the word and choose Greek Word Search from the pop-up menu.

To search for instances of this word near another word, highlight the word and choose the Greek Words in Proximity tool.

To see how often this word appears in the Perseus Primary texts, highlight the word and choose the Greek Word Frequencies tool. To see how often this word appears in Pindar or any other Perseus author, choose Greek Word Freqs by Author.

Most of the texts are accompanied by notes on the English translation. (See below for notes based on the Greek text.) The notes vary in their scope and length, and are indicated by superscript numbers in the text.

Notes appear by default in a window at the bottom. To hide the notes for a given text, click Hide Notes, upper right. The button now toggles to read Show Notes. If there is a note on a page, the label of the Show/Hide Notes button will change from gray to black.

Some notes have references to other ancient texts. When these works are part of Perseus, the citation is underlined. Double-click a reference to link with it. The passage will appear in a new window.

Change the Greek and Roman font size and face by choosing Preferences from the Edit menu. Choose Fonts from the Configure pop-up menu, and click Commit Changes to make the change. For further info, follow the link.