Theano Classical Fonts

Theano is a common name for some fonts I have designed from historic samples. Most of these fonts were initially intended as Greek-only faces, but finally I found it interesting to supplement them with stylistically compatible Latin letters, thus reproducing the general look of old classical text editions.

The package is named after Theano, a famous Ancient Greek woman philosopher, who was first a student of Pythagoras, and supposedly became his wife. In 1211 or 1212 Michael Choniates, a highly educated Greek Metropolitan of Athens, wrote a large poem devoted to Theano. Thus Theano seemed a good example of a person joining the ancient and the medieval world. Another reason for which I selected her name is that it starts from theta, just like my Thessalonica package itself.

The package currently includes three fonts, listed below. Each font is currently available just in one weight/shape (regular) and contains Latin and Greek letters (no Cyrillic). Like Old Standard, all fonts also support a large set of Open Type features, in particular smart accent positioning.

Theano Didot

A classicist face, with both its Roman and Greek parts implemented in Didot style. Unlike Old Standard, this font is designed from French sources.

Theano Modern

A font with Greek letters designed in the Porsonic style. Unlike most modern implementation, it is based on Figgins Pica No. 3 / Small Pica No. 2 — probably the most successful and once the most popular Greek face of a Porsonic origin — rather than on later Monotype's design. The accompanying Latin font is implemented in the Modern style and modelled after English Modern faces of later 19th century, often used alonglide with Porsonic Greek types.

Theano Old Style

A modernized "Old Style" Greek font with a large number of historic ligatures and alternate forms, modelled after some early 19th century types designed by Figgins' type foundry. It is accompanied by a Latin face based on some "Old Style" Roman fonts of the late 19th and early 20th century.

You can find more samples of Theano classical fonts, accompanied by a list of supported smart font features with detailed explanations in Theano PDF specimen.

Note on available formats

Main distribution format for Theano Classical Fonts is TrueType, or, more precisely, OpenType with TrueType outlines. Note that despite the traditional *.ttf extension these files are "real" OpenType fonts, fully supporting all "smart" font features implemented in the package. They also contain a dummy DSIG table: such a dummy table is sufficient to cause Windows to recognize a font with TrueType outlines as an OpenType font and mark it in Windows Explorer with a dog-eared page icon with a slanted green "O".

Alternatively you can download a package containing OpenType fonts with PostScript outlines. You will probably want to do so if you are planning to use these fonts with Adobe's applications (e. g. Adobe InDesign). Install either *.ttf or *.otf fonts, but don't mix files from these two packages, as they share the same font names. So if you install them alongside, the result is unpredictable.

Finally, you also can download FontForge sources of Theano Classical Fonts. Of course this package may be useful for you only if you have the FontForge font editor and know how to use it.

Terms of Use

Theano Classical Fonts are freely available and may be used by anyone at no cost. They are released under the SIL Open Font License, a free and open source license that permits modification and redistribution.

To download Theano Classical Fonts, go to my font download page, where all download links are placed.