Loebolus

November 26, 2012 8:13 AM

All the 245 pdf-format, public domain Loebs conveniently arranged in one place, ready to be downloaded for your classics reading pleasure. (via time's flow stemmed)
posted by Marauding Ennui (47 comments total)

Um...Perhaps some background?
posted by Thorzdad at 8:17 AM on November 26, 2012 [4 favorites]

Loebs=Loeb Classics Library
posted by vacapinta at 8:22 AM on November 26, 2012 [3 favorites]

This is awesome! Thanks very much for posting it. Best thing on the web today for sure.
posted by metsauce at 8:24 AM on November 26, 2012

This is... amazing.
posted by boo_radley at 8:24 AM on November 26, 2012

MML: Downloadable editions of the books from the Loeb Classical Library that have become public domain.

The Loeb Classical Library is a series of books, today published by Harvard University Press, which presents important works of ancient Greek and Latin Literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience, by presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each left-hand leaf, and a fairly literal translation on the facing page.

posted by zamboni at 8:24 AM on November 26, 2012

Went to the link, found out what these were, and blacked out. When I woke up, I discovered I had emailed four former college professors asking for extensions on essays.
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 8:26 AM on November 26, 2012 [15 favorites]

The zip file is 3GB so only if you got a decent connection and or willing to have something in the background.
posted by jadepearl at 8:27 AM on November 26, 2012

And honestly, this is a prime example of a "good use" of torrenting. Or it should be, I guess is what I'm saying.
posted by boo_radley at 8:30 AM on November 26, 2012 [2 favorites]

Wow. I've got some friends who picked up the whole collection in print, which is an accomplishment I respect but also a commitment I don't want. Now I can have most of the awesome without most of the hassle!
posted by asperity at 8:31 AM on November 26, 2012

Holy early Christmas!
posted by gwint at 8:34 AM on November 26, 2012

Exciting. Makes me glad I finally sold all those used classics anthologies back to the college book store 7-8 moves ago. Sure I may have missed out on the opportunity to consult a handy copy of Herodotus on those countless times he's come up in conversation (never) but not lugging those books around has saved me an epic amount of back strain. And now I have digital copies for free.

Hooray Technology.
Hooray Internet.
posted by midmarch snowman at 8:34 AM on November 26, 2012 [2 favorites]

This after the "reading as personality disorder / book fetish" thread earlier.

/shakes fist whilst downloading
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:35 AM on November 26, 2012

... Wait a minute. Who the fuck did the scansion in pen in a library book?
posted by asperity at 8:36 AM on November 26, 2012

That's a whole lotta loeb.
posted by scruss at 8:38 AM on November 26, 2012 [3 favorites]

So, so, so awesome. Thank you!
posted by koeselitz at 8:39 AM on November 26, 2012

scruss: "That's a whole lotta loeb."

You've been learning, baby. I've been learning.
All them good tomes, baby baby, I've been yearning.
posted by boo_radley at 8:40 AM on November 26, 2012 [4 favorites]

This is amazing. Thank you.
posted by gauche at 8:47 AM on November 26, 2012

Um...Perhaps some background?

It's all Greek to me.
posted by Kabanos at 8:48 AM on November 26, 2012 [3 favorites]

Um...Perhaps some background?

Heh. A guy I was just talking to over Thanksgiving just referred to "the green and the red" instead of coming right out and saying "the Loebs". (Greek books are in a green cover, Latin in red.) But we were pretty obviously doing some alpha nerd sparring.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:05 AM on November 26, 2012 [4 favorites]

Marauding Ennui, you magnificent bastard!
posted by Think_Long at 9:07 AM on November 26, 2012

I'll have these all on archive.org within the day.
posted by jscott at 9:08 AM on November 26, 2012 [15 favorites]

My one criticism so far: I am downloading the 3.2 GB full zipfile, and I have a feeling this should really be a torrent instead of a direct download. But I'm so jazzed about this that I don't care too much.
posted by koeselitz at 9:20 AM on November 26, 2012

Wow, this is great! Thanks so much for posting this.
posted by OmieWise at 9:21 AM on November 26, 2012

Marauding Ennui, you magnificent bastard!

"Rommel...you magnificent bastard, I read your book!" - General Patton in Patton.
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:26 AM on November 26, 2012 [2 favorites]

I Loeb this.
posted by TwelveTwo at 9:32 AM on November 26, 2012

Needs a Latin tag.

How about: Sciant quae optima sunt esse communia.
posted by chavenet at 9:36 AM on November 26, 2012

Is there some easy way of getting these to display with the Latin on the left side and the translation on the right? I know I could find some kind of script to stitch the pages together, but there's got to be an easier way than that, right?
posted by roll truck roll at 9:42 AM on November 26, 2012

Is there some easy way of getting these to display with the Latin on the left side and the translation on the right?

That depends on your PDF reader. They're just single pages but, for example, on Preview on OS X, I can set it to show 2 pages side by side.
posted by vacapinta at 9:48 AM on November 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

Heh. A guy I was just talking to over Thanksgiving just referred to "the green and the red" instead of coming right out and saying "the Loebs"

"Drop your reds, drop your greens and blues."
posted by BWA at 9:53 AM on November 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

Ah, unfortunately the I Tattis are not even close to being in the public domain...
posted by Marauding Ennui at 10:00 AM on November 26, 2012

I just spent a little more time with this collection.

Frankly, it's already on archive.org, just split out into a bunch of discrete items, with no particular collection over it. A bunch of these are Google Books scans with the "Google Scanned This" page cut off, and a couple are Internet Archive scans.

So, not much for me to do here, frankly. Nice that someone tried to arrange them.
posted by jscott at 10:14 AM on November 26, 2012 [3 favorites]

posted by jscott

Oh, wow - you're that Jason Scott? While avoiding fanboyism, thanks for all your work, which I adore!
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:38 AM on November 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

A guy I was just talking to over Thanksgiving just referred to "the green and the red" instead of coming right out and saying "the Loebs"

Is this like saying you went to school in Boston?
posted by octobersurprise at 10:49 AM on November 26, 2012 [2 favorites]

Is this like saying you went to school in Boston?

It is not comme il faut to come out and explicitly state that one attended Fisher College.
posted by benito.strauss at 11:06 AM on November 26, 2012 [3 favorites]

Thanks so much for posting this!

A few personal recommendations for anyone looking to dip in ... Herodotus is wonderful and completely absorbing, a torrent of history, semi-history, weird anecdotes and tales that suggest an encompassing curiosity. Ovid is beautiful and strange -- a relic of life in a cosmos where much more fluid transitions were possible between genders, species, and orders of being, a history of the universe linked by love and flux. The Satyricon of Petronius is still shockingly, delightfully swift, camp, funny and bitterly snarky, and at times quite moving and haunting -- life in a shipwrecked world, with a thoroughly worldly guide. The ego-monster banquet (which begins to morph into a funeral) of Trimalchio could have been on the Real Housewives last night. (Nietzsche called him "a master of presto ... what do all the swamps of the sick wicked world, even of the 'antique world,' matter when one has, like him, the feet of a wind, the blast and breath, the liberating scorn of a wind that makes everything healthy by making everything run.") The Anabasis of Xenophon is an extraordinary adventure, simply told -- "thálatta, thálatta!" / "the sea, the sea!" -- and the basis for, among many other things, 1970s NYC gang epic The Warriors. And the somewhat less known Pausanias's Description of Greece is a narrative travel guide that captures very vividly what it was like to live in a world saturated with stories, oracular events, sacred trees and groves and a diverse population of divine presence.
posted by finnb at 11:26 AM on November 26, 2012 [15 favorites]

Ah, unfortunately the I Tattis are not even close to being in the public domain...

Nor are the updated Loebs, for that matter. But could I resist the line? Clearly not.
posted by BWA at 11:32 AM on November 26, 2012

Herodotus is wonderful and completely absorbing, a torrent of history, semi-history, weird anecdotes and tales that suggest an encompassing curiosity.

FATHER OF LIES
posted by pxe2000 at 11:56 AM on November 26, 2012 [2 favorites]

This is fantastic! I'm cross-posting this all over the place. Just hope whoever's paying the Amazon bill can handle it.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 11:58 AM on November 26, 2012

updated Loebs

My experience with classical profanity.
posted by benito.strauss at 12:13 PM on November 26, 2012

These are all pre-1923. I believe many of them were subsequently re-issued in the 40s and 50s with updates etc then in the 60s and later some of them were redone entirely. Anyway, invest a little time into research before you invest a lot of time into reading. There are also of course other non-Loeb translations that are more modern. Anyway I have downloaded the collection (50 mins) it's worth having on hand and what's 3 gigs these days of terabyte drives (besides 0.3 percent or about 30-50 cents).
posted by stbalbach at 12:51 PM on November 26, 2012

I'm not by any means an expert, but I just finished reading some of Procopius (books 5 and 6) for a class and it's great. It describes the Byzantine campaign to retake Italy (especially Rome) after the Goths showed up- it's full of descriptions of diplomacy, siege engines, roads, gates, battles, Roman generals, sneaky maneuverings...
posted by BungaDunga at 1:22 PM on November 26, 2012

this is fantastic! thanks.
posted by with hidden noise at 2:59 PM on November 26, 2012

Another website: Loeb Classical Library Books Available Online.
posted by ericb at 3:14 PM on November 26, 2012

jscott: "Frankly, it's already on archive.org, just split out into a bunch of discrete items, with no particular collection over it. "

Is there any way for trusted volunteers to be able to create collections at archive.org to tie things like this together? I remember once wanting to download some Khan Academy stuff that was hosted on archive.org, but none of the materials were linked to courses or associated together at all, and I gave up in frustration. I would love to be able to contribute to archive.org by helping curate collections.

Also, Marauding Ennui - thanks for posting this!
posted by kristi at 7:58 PM on November 26, 2012

WTF? These are all books by white males! I SHALL PLAY YOU THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE
posted by falameufilho at 9:03 PM on November 26, 2012

Anyone have a torrent for the big zip, or other mirror that won't make this philanthropist's bandwidth bill enormous?
posted by dylanjames at 12:02 PM on November 27, 2012

Some of these are available in HTML on Theoi e-texts library.

And instead of a torrent of the zip, why not torrent the individual files in a folder? I'll be downloading all tonight, and setting up a torrent this weekend. What is the best site for broad and long-lasting access? That ocean inlet of villainy is often blocked, though it is resilient.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:32 PM on November 30, 2012