Skidmore College Department of Classics

Citations of your sources are vital in providing your reader a guide to where you found your information and they help you avoid even the appearance of plagiarism. Footnotes, endnotes, and parenthetical citations tell your readers that you have based your writing on other sources, and distinguish your arguments, ideas, and analyses from those of other writers. Citations also lead readers to sources that might interest them or help them in their own work.

You should cite your sources

• when you quote directly from a source. Words that you find in another writer's work, even one or two words, need to be placed within quotation marks and cited in your essay.
  
• when you summarize or paraphrase someone else's ideas. Even though you put those ideas in your own words, when you incorporate someone's analysis or interpretation in your essay, you need to cite the source. Don't place the summary or paraphrase in quotation marks, but provide the source just the same.
  
• when you refer to factual information that is not likely to be found in other sources. If your source gives you data or information that has resulted from specific research, experiments, or investigations, the source should be cited.

You need not cite sources

• when you are referring to information that is "common knowledge" in your field. Dates, definitions, and theories, for example, might fall under the category of common knowledge. Information from reference sources usually is considered common knowledge. If you are a beginner in a field and you do not know what is considered common knowledge, it is better to cite than not cite.
  
• when the source is evident from your own essay. For example, if you are writing about a particular poem by Homer, you will need to list the work in the first citation, but henceforth you need only provide in a footnote, endnote, or parenthetical citation the book and line numbers of the quoted passages as you analyze the poem. When in doubt, check with your professor.
  
• when you are making your own assertions, even though you are reflecting what you have learned from lectures, readings, and conversations with classmates and friends.

Citing Sources: Footnotes, Endnotes and In-Line Citations

When you assign credit to a source you place that credit either within the text (an "in-line" citation), or in a note, either at the bottom of a page or on separate sheets at the end of the paper.

Primary Sources:

Citations from ancient sources almost NEVER cite pages from a translation but instead provide a reference to the original source. Poetry receives line numbers and prose receives book and chapter. With authors who only have one work (e.g., Herodotus and Thucydides in Greek, Livy in prose), only the name of the author is necessary.

Herodotus 6.35.2 or Hdt. 6.35.2.

• Herodotus composed only one work which he probably did not title; since antiquity we refer to it as the Histories. In a citation, since there is no potential for confusion with any other work by Herodotus, one need only cite the book ("6"), the chapter ("35"), and, if your text separates the chapters into sections, then the section ("2"). A text in the original Greek provides such a separation; English translations usually do not, so 6.35 would be sufficient. Note that Herodotus' name is usually abbreviated as Hdt.

Livy 1.3 or Liv. 1.3.

• The same rules apply for Livy as for Herodotus. His work was usually referred to as ab urbe condita, or "(A History of Rome) from the foundation of the city." One work means no title need be used, just the book and chapter, etc.

Sophocles Antigone 675-705 or Soph. Ant. 675-705.
Vergil Aeneid 4.1-10 or Ver. Aen. 4.1-10.

• Sophocles, the Greek tragedian, and Vergil (or Virgil), the Roman epic poet, each wrote multiple works of poetry. So, the citation should include the author's name (abbreviations are customary), the title (again, abbreviations are customary) and the line numbers. In the reference to Sophocles' Antigone, the passage cited are lines 675-705; the play is a single entity and is not divided into books or chapters. In the reference to Vergil's Aeneid, however, the line numbers ("1-10") are distinguished as coming from the fourth book of the Aeneid ("4"), rather than any of the other 11 books of the epic poem.

For appropriate abbreviations consult the Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. by S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1996 repr.), pp.ix-xxii, or the list provided by the Interactive Ancient Mediterranean website (last updated in 2004).

If a primary source appears in a sourcebook, both the source and the sourcebook should be cited:

Aristophanes Acharnians 692-701 in M. Dillon and L. Garland, Ancient Greece: Social and Historical Documents from Archaic Times to the Death of Socrates (c. 800-399 BC) (London and New York, 2nd ed., 2000), 7.17.

Cicero Laws 3.3-4 in N. Lewis and M. Reinhold (eds.), Roman Civilization. Selected Readings, Volume I: The Republic and the Augustan Age (New York, 3rd ed., 1990), 148.

NOTE: in both citations, the volume uses a numbering system for each text, and so you should cite them by the numbering system rather than the page number(s).

Secondary Sources:

A quotation from a work of scholarship by M.I. Finley would be cited like this:

M.I. Finley, The Ancient Greeks (New York and London, 1971 repr.), pp. 9-11.

If Finley's work is cited subsequently, the proper method is as follows:

Finley 1971, p. 169.

Articles in a collection are cited like this:

R. Seaford, "The Structural Problems of Marriage in Euripides," in Euripides, Women and Sexuality, ed. A. Powell (London and New York, 1990), pp. 151-176.

J. March, "Euripides the Misogynist?" in Euripides, Women and Sexuality, ed. A. Powell (London and New York, 1990), pp. 32-75.

Articles in journals and periodicals are somewhat similar yet many times have abbreviated titles. For a list of journal abbreviations consult the Oxford Classical Dictionary, pp. xxix-liv in the Scribner Library.

B.M.W. Knox, "The Hippolytus of Euripides," Yale Classical Studies 13 (1952), pp. 3-31.

More frequently cited with the journal abbreviated as:

B.M.W. Knox, "The Hippolytus of Euripides," YCS 13 (1952), pp. 3-31.

Subsequent citation:

Knox 1952, 7-9.

An electronic resource citation should have cited the author, title of the webpage, the URL, and the month and year you accessed the page. In an electronic document the URL itself should be a link to the webpage. Here is how the bibliographic entry should look:

G. Crane, ed., The Perseus Project, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/atlas?sites=Sesklo (November, 2000).

To see how all of these citations work in a bibliography go to the bibliography webpage. Note the differences: a bibliographic entry is a sequence of small sections, each separated by a period, while a notation is a sequence of small sections, each separated by a comma.