About the project

This project began in December 2023 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich, Germany). It is an ongoing project that aims to provide freely available references to editions, translations and commentaries of ancient literature for the various academic subjects in the study of antiquity. The database is named after Gaius Asinius Pollio who is considered to be the founder of the first public library in Rome. In addition to the critical editions of the ancient texts, translations and commentaries in the most common modern languages (English, German, Italian, Spanish, etc.) are listed. This database is intended to be a point of reference for both researchers and students to access editions, translations and commentaries on ancient literature. The database collects both printed publications and those available online, guiding the user as quickly as possible to the printed publication on the library shelf via WorldCat or to the online medium.
So far, over 500 authors and 2500 ancient works have been catalogued. The scope of the database is continually being expanded and the services it provides improved. At present, the collection is limited to Greek and Latin literature, but will be expanded to include ancient Christian literature in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, etc. The collection of references to editions, translations and commentaries is an own compilation, using bibliographic data from k10plus and the Hellenic and Roman Library London as well as the GND (Integrated Authority File Germany) and Wikidata. As we are dealing with a lot of bibliographic data from various library catalogues, the data is not entirely checked by hand.

The aim of this project is to create a comprehensive, easy-to-use and interoperable resource to support research in Ancient history, Classics, Archaeology and Patristics in their daily work with ancient sources (see under Prospects). This project is being carried out under the direction of Marco Besl and his team in collaboration with several partners (see Team). Initially, the project is financially supported by the Münchener Universitätsgesellschaft and the Pfarrer-Elz-Stiftung.

We welcome all suggestions and ideas for further improvement. For contact information take a look here or use the contact formula on the right side of the start page.