Series 5 - Notes

2.2 m of textual records

This series contains notes taken by Cochrane on secondary source readings, mainly monographs and encyclopedia as well as notes from primary documents such as the writings of early Greek and Roman philosophers and historians. While some notes are simply summaries of texts, others are annotated with Cochrane’s own subjective comments and evaluations. These notes most certainly served as source material for lectures, addresses and publications. Since there are no early drafts of his two major books, Thucydides and the Science of History (1929), and Christianity and Classical Culture (1940), the notes give some sense of how Cochrane’s theses developed and what contemporary and past works influenced his thinking.

This material is the most voluminous series and files are arranged in various ways. Firstly, there are notes grouped by subject as identified by Cochrane and arranged by author within.

Secondly there are a series of notes on Roman History arranged by subject that often relate to subjects found in lectures (see Series 2) as well as a box of miscellaneous notes that may relate to the writing of Christianity and Culture. There are also 16 small notebooks on secondary source writings that relate to the broad subjects covered at the beginning of the series, a bibliographic card index arranged by subject, as well as four files of bibliographic lists. Finally, a selection of annotated books from Cochrane’s personal library has been preserved here for the value of the notes in the margins.

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