The Digital Schoolbook v.0.3a:Exploring the long history of education

Abstract

The Digital Schoolbook (DSB), a labor of love by a multidisciplinary team based at the University of Notre Dame and the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, is an online research and learning environment devoted to Latin educational material, ancient, medieval, and modern. The DSB focuses currently on the Disticha Catonis, a collection of two-verse Latin poems of proverbial wisdom composed between the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, erroneously ascribed in the Middle Ages to Cato the Elder (234-149 BC) or Cato the Younger (95-46BC). Copied and translated in the thousands, the Disticha Catonis was one of the basic texts for teaching Latin to young children in the Middle Ages and up to the 19th century. The DSB aims to transform the Disticha Catonis into a digital schoolbook