Ptolemy’s Geography
Facsimile of the original manuscript of the earliest Latin translation of the second century Greek-Egyptian geographer, astronomer, and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography from 1472. It contains Ptolemy’s calculations of longitude and latitude coordinates of the known world of the second century along with 44 maps. Ptolemy’s descriptions led Christopher Columbus on his travels, and his geocentric system was the accepted world view for more than 1,000 years until Copernicus. The manuscript is housed in the Vatican Library.
The Ambrosian Iliad
Facsimile of the original manuscript from the 5th century housed in the Ambrosian Library in Milan. It is the oldest preserved full illustration of Homer’s Iliad, possibly by the artist of the illuminated Vergilius Vaticanus, a similarly illustrated manuscript in the Vatican Library from the 5th century of Vergil’s Aeneid and Georgics.
The Vienna Dioscorides
Facsimile of the original manuscript from ca. 512 Constantinople. The manuscript is housed in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. It contains illustrations and descriptions of some 600 curative plants, the oldest dedication portrait (of Anicia Juliana), the oldest ornithological treatise, and the oldest gold leaf background which came to characterize Byzantine large and small scale paintings and mosaics. The text influenced Galen and others and was used by hospitals and medical schools for more than 1,500 years.
Athenian Democracy
An exhibit in connection with the Greek Independence Day celebration of CHS and the Greek Embassy on March 25, 2025 featuring books on Athens’ democratic system from the sixth to the fourth centuries BCE, the heyday of Greece’s political and economic power, its greatest temples, sculpture, vase paintings, theater, prose, science and philosophy.
Ancient Greek Language
An exhibit in connection with the International Greek Language Day, February 9, 2025 marking the beginnings of Greek reflected in a modern rendering of Linear B to grammars from the nineteenth century and the work which has introduced numerous students to ancient Greek, Homer’s Iliad, represented by a facsimile of Venetus A, Villoison’s discovery of the manuscript, Wolf’s Prolegomena and the modern debate around the Homeric Question.
Herodotus and the Year 480 B.C.E.
An exhibit in connection with this year’s Distinguished Lecture by Suzanne Marchand on February 5, 2025, discussing the year 480 BCE and its elevation in the course of the historiographical developments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing especially on how the post-classical readings of Herodotus changed over time, in the exhibit represented by various editions of Herodotus’ text from 1618 (Jungermann) until today.
Medieval Manuscript Leaves of Books of Hours, ca. 1440-1460
Catholic prayer books, containing also hymns and psalms, to follow the canonical hours of prayers and feast days. They usually begin with a calendar (calends) of saints’ days marked in red, hence the expression “red letter days,” often featuring illustrated vignettes of the agricultural activity of the month on the recto (seen here is “pruning” in the month of March) and the sign of the zodiac of the month on the verso (seen here is Aries, the sign of March following the Julian calendar). The CHS Books of Hours leaves have elaborate floral borders and initials in purple, blue, red, and gold.
Werner Jaeger, Professor of Classics at Harvard University, 1939-1961
The first book collection received by CHS, and the beginning of its library in 1961, was that of Professor Jaeger. This included apart from his own books, many signed copies of books and off-prints given to Jaeger. Werner Jaeger received his doctorate at Humboldt University in Berlin where he was subsequently professor until he left Germany in 1936. The exhibit displays a copy of his dissertation, Emendationum Aristotelearum specimen, from 1911. Also exhibited is a large number of translations of Jaeger’s chef d’oeuvre Paideia: Die Formung des griechischen Menschen into English, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Czech, etc. The various translations of Paideia, building on Tesseract, have most recently been used to develop local OCR capabilities in multiple languages, especially ancient Greek. Also exhibited is a commemoration, Gedenkrede auf Werner Jaeger, 1888-1961, by Wolfgang Schadewaldt, one of Jaeger’s former students in Berlin, and a number of Jaeger’s works on Aristotle, Demosthenes, and early Christianity.
AthEnian Coin 450-400 B.C.E.
Silver Tetradrachm from Athens, ca. 454-404 BCE. Obverse: Goddess Athena, the Patron of Athens; Reverse: Her owl, one of Athena’s animal attributes and a symbol of the Athenian polis. This type of coin was first minted in 510 BCE, two years before Cleisthenes’ democratic reforms, and coincides with Athenian democracy, especially during the Periclean era.
Homer Translations in a Golden Age
In connection with a CHS conference on November 7, 2025, the library curated an exhibition of Homer scholia and translations. Included were classic translations as those of George Chapman, Alexander Pope, Samuel Butler, T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), Richmond Lattimore, and Robert Fagles, and more contemporary ones by Caroline Alexander, Daniel Mendelsohn, Richard Whitaker (South African translation), and Emily Wilson in addition to translations into other languages such as those of Madame Dacier (1647-1720) whose translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey introduced a French audience to Homer. Also included was John Flaxman’s (1755-1826) illustrations of scenes from the Iliad and the Odyssey.
