Classics Ranked...At Last

OCLC has posted a list of the top 1000 books owned by member institutions--basically, showing which books are owned by more libraries than any others...Greek and Roman classics account for 13 of the top 200; I don't know if that's good or bad, but there it is...

What's a little interesting is the ranking:  of course Homer leads the Classics pack, but can you guess how things play out after that?  I've tabulated them here.  I'm surprised at the #14, I suppose, but also at the rankings of Lucretius and Sophocles...

[Thanks to Eszter at Crooked Timber]

#5:  Homer, Odyssey
#6:  Homer, Iliad
#14:  Aesop's Fables
#39:  Virgil, Aeneid
#47:  Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
#48:  Plutarch, Lives
#54:  Plato, Republic
#56:  Ovid, Metamorphoses
#114:  Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
#116:  Herodotus, History
#160:  Aristotle, Poetics
#174:  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
#192:  Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

By the way, Gibbon's Decline and Fall doesn't quite make the top 100, (#110); Augustine's Confessions is #145; The Golden Bough squeaks into the top 200, at #197--just ahead of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe...And there are, of course, classically-themed plays of Shakespeare up there too...

[NB:  The US Census trumps the Bible...not sure what that means]

[UPDATE:  Because I'm...er...thorough...here's the rest, from 200 to 1000:]
#209:  Aristotle, Politics
#258:  Aeschylus, Oresteia  (cf. Harry Potter at #285)
#305:  Caesar, Commentaries on the Gallic War
#342:  Martial, Epigrams
#355:  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
#386:  Sophocles, Antigone
#444:  Plato, Symposium
#453:  Apuleius, The Golden Ass
#492:  Aristotle, Rhetoric
#501:  Petronius, Satyricon
#512:  Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars
#521:  Plotinus, Enneads (cf. How to Win Friends and Influence People at #531)
#559:  Euclid, Elements
#571:  Aristotle, Metaphysics (cf. Ayn Rand, Fountainhead at #576)
#593:  Cicero, On Duties
#604:  Livy, History of Rome
#662:  Virgil, Eclogues
#667:  Aristophanes, Lysistrata
#695:  Euripides, Medea
#712:  Propertius, Elegies
#732:  Euripides, Bacchae
#792:  Tacitus, Annals
#943:  Plato, Phaedo
#998:  Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound

Also of interest (or not!):

#257--US Constitution

#319--Bulfinch's Mythology
#370--Bulfinch, Age of Fable
#496--Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way
#617--Edith Hamilton, Mythology

#776:  Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy
#312--Augustine, City of God
#970--Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History

After that, all I can say is...Poor Cicero!

Comments

[rogueclassicist]

How the heck did Lucretius beat out Herodotus and Thucydides???