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Nearly 2,300 years ago, a reader in provincial Egypt owned a copy of one of history's greatest works. This fragile papyrus preserves part of Thucydides' account of the Battle of Sphacteria — where a force of Spartan soldiers did the unthinkable and surrendered. Among the oldest manuscripts of Thucydides anywhere in the world, it bridges the ancient and modern transmission of a text that has never stopped being read. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book IV.36–41 · el-Hibeh, Egypt · Penn Museum, E 2747.

History of the Peloponnesian War

Reading companion for Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War — the foundational text of Western historiography.

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus XVII 2102 (P.Oxy. XVII 2102), held at Oxford, is a Greek papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, dating to the late second century AD — likely its second half — and one of three Oxyrhynchus witnesses to Plato's Phaedrus. This recto image shows nine consecutive columns (the last three very fragmentary) from a roll measuring 25.4 cm in height, written in a round, upright literary hand of medium size with short lines of approximately 5 cm set in columns 15 cm tall, slightly inclined to the right. A second hand is frequently in evidence, introducing corrections and variant readings from a different exemplar, inserting accents, breathings, marks of elision and quantity, and marginal signs; punctuation by high and medial dots, paragraphi, and colons marking changes of speaker is also largely secondary. A coronis at column v, line 21 marks the end of a section. The original scribe was careless and made numerous errors, most of which the corrector caught; despite this, the text is a reasonably good one, collated against Burnet's edition. It was discovered during the excavations of Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt at Oxyrhynchus and published in volume XVII of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri.

Phaedo

Reading companion and full text of Plato's Phaedo, a Socratic dialogue set on the day of Socrates' death, in which he and his companions explore four arguments for the immortality of the soul and the philosopher's relationship to death, recollection, and the eternal Forms.

The Codex Clarkianus (Bodleian Library MS. E. D. Clarke 39), or Clarke Plato, is a crucial 9th-century Greek manuscript written in 895 AD in Constantinople for Arethas of Patrae by John the Calligrapher. As the oldest, most comprehensive witness for 24 of Plato's dialogues, it is central to reconstructing the text of Meno and other key works. This is the exact page where Plato's Meno begins. The top third of the page contains the conclusion of the Gorgias. You can see a decorative horizontal divider (a coronis) and a series of dots marking the end of that dialogue. Just below the divider, the title is written in red uncials: ΜΕΝΩΝ Η ΠΕΡΙ ΑΡΕΤΗΣ ΠΕΙΡΑΣΤΙΚΟΣ (Meno, or On Virtue, Tentative).

Meno

Reading companion and full text of Plato's Meno, a Socratic dialogue exploring whether virtue can be taught, and introducing the theory of recollection as a model of knowledge.

Histories

Reading companion for the Histories of Polybius, covering Rome's rise to Mediterranean dominance from the First Punic War to the destruction of Carthage.

Fol. 1r of BSB Cod.graec. 639: the opening page of Josephus's Bellum Judaicum. The parchment is heavily worn and damaged, but the text is identifiable as the Proem (Preface) of the work.

The Jewish War

Reading companion for Bellum Judaicum — Josephus's eyewitness account of the Jewish revolt against Rome and the destruction of the Second Temple.

Annals

Reading companion for the Annals of Tacitus, covering the Julio-Claudian dynasty from the death of Augustus to the reign of Nero.

Gold Solidus of Julian (361–363), Byzantine, 361–363, Gold, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — Gallery 301. Struck during the brief but consequential reign of Julian the Apostate, this gold solidus reflects the enduring power of Roman imperial coinage at a pivotal moment of transition. The emperor's portrait — rendered with classical precision on the obverse — evokes Julian's deliberate effort to revive pre-Christian Roman traditions, positioning himself as a philosopher-emperor in the mold of Marcus Aurelius. The solidus, introduced by Constantine I, had by this period become the backbone of Mediterranean commerce, its consistent gold purity a guarantee of imperial authority across vast distances. This coin stands as both a monetary instrument and a miniature monument — a gilded testament to a reign that lasted little more than two years, yet left an indelible mark on the history of the late Roman world.

Against the Galileans

Reading companion and full text of Contra Galilaeos — Emperor Julian's philosophical polemic against Christianity, preserved in fragments through Cyril of Alexandria's rebuttal.

The Moore Bede, opening page of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Cambridge University Library MS Kk.5.16, fol. 1r, Northumbria, c. 737.

Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum: Book I

Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum — Bede's monumental ecclesiastical history of the English people, tracing the Christianisation of Britain from the Roman mission of Augustine of Canterbury to the early eighth century.