Here’s a breakdown of the original languages or styles in which the books of my Top-75 list (at What would you choose for your personal library?) were written.
| Title | Language |
|---|---|
| The Spring and Autumn Annals | Old Chinese |
| The Iliad, The Odyssey | Homeric Greek |
| Works and Days | Archaic Greek |
| The Histories | Ionic Greek |
| The History of the Peloponnesian War, Anabasis | Classical Greek |
| Argonautica, The Histories, The Aesop Romance, Meditations, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, The Alexander Romance | Hellenistic Greek |
| The Suda | Medieval Greek |
| De Agri Cultura | Old Latin |
| The Gallic Wars, The Civil War, The Conspiracy of Catiline | Golden Age Latin |
| Rerum Rusticarum, De Lingua Latina, De Architectura, Aeneid, De Brevitate Vitae, Histories of Alexander the Great, De Re Rustica, Satyricon, Epigrams, Natural History, Germania, Tacitus’ Histories and Annals, Apicius / De Re Coquinaria, The Twelve Caesars, Metamorphoses / The Golden Ass | (Long) Silver Age Latin |
| Historia Augusta | Late Latin |
| Historia Regum Britanniae, Ysengrimus | Medieval Latin |
| Principia, Systema Naturae | New Latin |
| Milinda Pahna | Pali |
| Manyoshu | Old Japanese |
| Taketori Monegatari | Early Middle Japanese |
| Hojoki | Late Middle Japanese |
| Beowulf | Old English |
| Winchester Chronicle | Old / Middle English |
| The Canterbury Tales | Middle English |
| Richard II | Early Modern English |
| Roman de Renart | Old French or “French” dialect |
| Van den vos Reynaerde | Middle Dutch |
| Prose Edda | Old Norse |
| The Travels of Marco Polo | Franco-Venetian |
| Kalevala | Finnish |
| The Ring Cycle | German |