Bibliotheca Teubneriana

The only comparable publishing ventures producing authoritative scholarly reference editions of numerous ancient authors, are the Oxford Classical Texts and the Collection Budé (whose volumes also include facing-page French translations with notes; the Loeb Classical Library, with facing-page English translations and notes, aims at a more general audience).

In 1811, Benedictus Gotthelf Teubner (1784–1856) refounded in his own name a printing operation he had directed since 1806, the Weinedelsche Buchdruckerei, giving rise to the Leipzig publishing house of B.G.

Prior to the introduction of the Teubner series, accurate editions of antique authors could only be purchased by libraries and rich private scholars because of their expense.

Eventually, editiones minores were dropped from the series and Teubner began to offer only scholarly reference editions of ancient authors.

While the typography of the Greek Teubners has been subject to innovations over the years, an overview of the whole series shows a great deal of consistency.

The old-fashioned, cursive font used (with small variations) in most of the existing volumes is instantly recognized by classicists and strongly associated with Teubner.

In older (e.g., nineteenth-century) Teubners, several old-fashioned features of the type (almost crabbed by the Porsonian standard more familiar in the English-speaking world) are still found which would later be smoothed away, for example, omega with bent-in ends, medial sigma that is not completely closed, and phi with a bent stem.

E. J. Kenney considered this twentieth-century experiment to be a refreshing break from the Porsonian norm, and emblematic of the best kind of modernist simplicity and directness: More recently there has been a welcome and long overdue return to the older and purer models.

Pinder's "Griechische Antiqua" used by Teubner in some of their editions represents a lost opportunity, having been regrettably abandoned in favour of the "dull and lumpish" fount (Victor Scholderer's words) that is still the uniform of the series.

The covers of Bibliotheca Teubneriana Greek texts through the years: Philodemi De ira liber , ed. C. Wilke (1914); Bacchylidis carmina cum fragmentis , post B. Snell ed. H. Maehler (1970); Poetae epici graeci , Pars II, Fasc. 1, ed. A. Bernabé (2004)
Examples of the original Teubner Greek type, in its older (left: Aeschines, ed. F. Blass, Leipzig, 1895) and newer (Pindari carmina cum fragmentis, post B. Snell ed. H. Maehler, Leipzig, 1969) forms
Example of the upright variant of the original Teubner Greek type: Iamblichi Babyloniacorum reliquiae, ed. E. Habrich, Leipzig, 1960
Examples of more recent variants of the original Teubner Greek type, both italic (top: Euripides, Electra, ed. G. Basta Donzelli, Stuttgart 1995) and upright (center: Aeschyli tragoediae, ed. M.L. West, Stuttgart, 1990; bottom: Poetae epici graeci, Pars II, Fasc. 1, ed. A. Bernabé, Munich, 2004)
Teubner Greek type based on Griechische Antiqua (top: Philodemi De ira liber, ed. C. Wilke, Leipzig, 1914; center: Homeri Odyssea, ed. P. Von der Muehll, Stuttgart, 1962), with a more recent digital descendant (bottom: Homeri Ilias, rec. M.L. West, volumen alterum, Munich, 2000)