Online annotated Latin and Greek Reading Texts from Dickinson College

Dickinson College Commentaries:

Latin and Greek texts for reading, with explanatory notes, vocabulary, and graphic, video, and audio elements.

Right now they have available:

• Selections from Caesar's Gallic War
• Ovid's Amores, Book 1
• Cornelius Nepos, Life of Hannibal
• Sulpicius Severus, The Life of Saint Martin of Tours

Coming soon:

• Lucian, True History
• Callimachus, Aetia

Tufts also has some texts in Latin and Greek, at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/

On the "Dickinson", I donʻt know how good the commentaries are, but the selection of authors (1) sounds very good. Thereʻs even one, presumably medieval, that (with an M.A. in Classics!) Iʻve never heard of: Sulpicius* Severus.
Any Greek edition of Lucian is rarely seen outside of large libraries, and Callimachus still less. Nepos was brushed over rather fast in the currilculum I got. He apparently was most famous for having poems of Catullus
dedicated to him: "...Corneli, tibi, namque tu solebas / meas esse aliquid putare nugas" / ..."(Dedicated) to you,
Cornelius, for you used to think my facetiae really were something."

*A Sulpicius of the early Empire is mentioned in the fragments of his daughterʻs poetry; she was known as Sulpicia, and complains that her ex-lover preferred: "scortum quam Servi filia Sulpicii!" / "a whore, rather than the daughter of
Servius Sulpicius!".

>2 NLytle: The Dickinson College project seems to actually be a reaction against Perseus, i.e. quoting from their About page:

In contrast to other digital projects that conceive of classical texts as a database, or foreground hypertext—focusing on chunking or linking the text—DCC aims at a readerly approach, and one responsive to the needs of readers, teachers, and students. Texts are presented in a clean, readable format, with custom-authored notes, specially selected images and maps, and original audio and video content.

Perseus is great at providing access to the texts, but it's next-to-useless for the student who doesn't have access to additional commentary / annotations to help them through the rough spots (such as are usually printed in, e.g. the Cambridge green-and-yellows or the Bristol Classical Texts blue-and-whites).

For ancient Greek the annotated editions by Geoffrey Steadman are very useful. And freely available as pdf.
http://geoffreysteadman.com/

>3 rolandperkins: I read through a little of the Nepos last night. During school, I recall him appearing on my unseens, but never outright taught--I do admire those tanto... quanto correlative clauses in the first paragraph.

>3 rolandperkins: I remember in a Latin composition class Glen Bowersock stating that we would pass over Nepos as being "justifiably obscure." His main value is being easy. Makes me feel like maybe I do know some Latin. Sulpicius Severus wrote, in late antiquity, the standard life of St. Martin that became a paradigm of hagiography during the middle ages. Not great writing, but a culturally fundamental text.

"pass over Nepos as beiing ʻjustifiably obscureʻ " (7)

Yes, I think he was just beginning to attain that "obscure" status about when I was high school age. By the time they were laying "college" authors on us, he was just a vague memory from the back pages of a
Caesar of Cicero text book
and the university Classics Dept. didnʻt exactly re-introduce him.
I think, in what was left of h.s. Latin educational theory, there was some support for replacing the
traditional Bellum Gallicum with Nepos, I donʻt remember with which work. Some support, too (but not much)
for replacing Caesar with
(a no doubt cleaned up) version of Plautus.
I did, b t w, know Glen Bowersock, but not well. I
was in a Latin language Roman Comedy production with him. I dont remember what our roles were, or even which play (I was in 4 altogether, from junior year to one year out of graduate school.)

>7 anthonywillard: and >8 rolandperkins: I'm envious of the associations with Bowersock.

If my college-level Latin students decide to continue with a second year of Latin next year, after I finish up the grammar instruction of the year 2 textbook I'm using (Jenny's Second Year Latin), I'm going to skip the second half of the book (Caesar) and instead head them into medieval Latin (my specialty).

Given this newly discovered resource, I may indeed start with Sulpicius Severus, then do some Vulgate, then continue with Sidwell's Reading Medieval Latin and Harrington's Medieval Latin.

>8 rolandperkins:, >9 nathanielcampbell: - I didn't know Bowersock well either. He was senior tutor in the Classics Department and I was an undergraduate busily laying the foundations of not becoming a professional classicist. He was a flat-out brilliant teacher. He is now professor emeritus at The Institute of Advanced Studies, a signal academic honor. The Plautus productions sound great - we didn't do that in my day. They indeed should be teaching Plautus or Terence to high school students, and my guess is that these days the students wouldn't brook much bowdlerization.