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 |