Ancient Greek Historians in the Digital Age

Ein Beitrag zur Digital History 2023: Digitale Methoden in der geschichtswissenschaftlichen Praxis: Fachliche Transformationen und ihre epistemologischen Konsequenzen, Berlin, 23.-26.5.2023. Abstract: This paper presents results of ongoing digital projects on ancient Greek historians. The research question is the analysis of the language used by ancient sources to refer to historians and cite their works with a particular reference to lost historians (the so-called fragmentary authors). If a lot of scholarship has been devoted to collect fragments of many different genres and try to reconstruct the texts from which they were taken, less effort has been spent on collecting data pertaining to the language used by ancient authors to refer to them and their works. The paper discusses the use of Computational Linguistics techniques and Named Entity Recognition to extract and annotate information about ancient Greek historians and their works from the sources where they are preserved. Morevoer, the paper describes a new catalog of ancient Greek authors and works based on the extraction and annotation of references to them in ancient sources

Quantitative criticism of literary relationships

Authors often convey meaning by referring to or imitating prior works of literature, a process that creates complex networks of literary relationships ("intertextuality") and contributes to cultural evolution. In this paper, we use techniques from stylometry and machine learning to address subjective literary critical questions about Latin literature, a corpus marked by an extraordinary concentration of intertextuality. Our work, which we term "quantitative criticism," focuses on case studies involving two influential Roman authors, the playwright Seneca and the historian Livy. We find that four plays related to but distinct from Seneca's main writings are differentiated from the rest of the corpus by subtle but important stylistic features. We offer literary interpretations of the significance of these anomalies, providing quantitative data in support of hypotheses about the use of unusual formal features and the interplay between sound and meaning. The second part of the paper describes a machine-learning approach to the identification and analysis of citational material that Livy loosely appropriated from earlier sources. We extend our approach to map the stylistic topography of Latin prose, identifying the writings of Caesar and his near-contemporary Livy as an inflection point in the development of Latin prose style. In total, our results reflect the integration of computational and humanistic methods to investigate a diverse range of literary questions

Quantitative Criticism of Literary Relationships

Authors often convey meaning by referring to or imitating prior works of literature, a process that creates complex networks of literary relationships (“intertextuality”) and contributes to cultural evolution. In this paper, we use techniques from stylometry and machine learning to address subjective literary critical questions about Latin literature, a corpus marked by an extraordinary concentration of intertextuality. Our work, which we term “quantitative criticism,” focuses on case studies involving two influential Roman authors, the playwright Seneca and the historian Livy. We find that four plays related to but distinct from Seneca’s main writings are differentiated from the rest of the corpus by subtle but important stylistic features. We offer literary interpretations of the significance of these anomalies, providing quantitative data in support of hypotheses about the use of unusual formal features and the interplay between sound and meaning. The second part of the paper describes a machine-learning approach to the identification and analysis of citational material that Livy loosely appropriated from earlier sources. We extend our approach to map the stylistic topography of Latin prose, identifying the writings of Caesar and his near-contemporary Livy as an inflection point in the development of Latin prose style. In total, our results reflect the integration of computational and humanistic methods to investigate a diverse range of literary questions

Quantitative Criticism of Literary Relationships

Authors often convey meaning by referring to or imitating prior works of literature, a process that creates complex networks of literary relationships (“intertextuality”) and contributes to cultural evolution. In this paper, we use techniques from stylometry and machine learning to address subjective literary critical questions about Latin literature, a corpus marked by an extraordinary concentration of intertextuality. Our work, which we term “quantitative criticism,” focuses on case studies involving two influential Roman authors, the playwright Seneca and the historian Livy. We find that four plays related to but distinct from Seneca’s main writings are differentiated from the rest of the corpus by subtle but important stylistic features. We offer literary interpretations of the significance of these anomalies, providing quantitative data in support of hypotheses about the use of unusual formal features and the interplay between sound and meaning. The second part of the paper describes a machine-learning approach to the identification and analysis of citational material that Livy loosely appropriated from earlier sources. We extend our approach to map the stylistic topography of Latin prose, identifying the writings of Caesar and his near-contemporary Livy as an inflection point in the development of Latin prose style. In total, our results reflect the integration of computational and humanistic methods to investigate a diverse range of literary questions

Digital Philology for the Study of Spanish 17th Century Culture and Literature (2014-2017)

Este artículo presenta una panorámica de los proyectos, programas y trabajos de filología digital aurisecular que se han realizado en el trienio 2014-2017. Se describe, primero, los diferentes tipos de ediciones digitales de textos áureos. Se realiza, a continuación, un repaso por las bases de datos más importantes para el estudio del Siglo de Oro, destacando las tendencias más actuales en la creación de metabuscadores. Finalmente, se presentan algunos proyectos de investigación en los que el análisis literario se realiza efectivamente con la ayuda de un programa informático. Tras un balance se listan los recursos y publicaciones sobre humanidades digitales considerados en este artículoThis article offers an overview on projects, programs and publications done in Digital Philology during the past three years (2014-2017). The author describes the different types of digital editions of Spanish 17th century texts published, as well as he tries to offer a presentation of the most important databases, pointing out the newest tendency to unify several databases in one meta search engine. Finally, he presents some of the most innovative project in digital analyses of literary texts. After he short balance the article offers a list of the resources and publications on digital humanities for the study of Golden Age culture and literatur

Digital Classical Philology

The buzzwords “Information Society” and “Age of Access” suggest that information is now universally accessible without any form of hindrance. Indeed, the German constitution calls for all citizens to have open access to information. Yet in reality, there are multifarious hurdles to information access – whether physical, economic, intellectual, linguistic, political, or technical. Thus, while new methods and practices for making information accessible arise on a daily basis, we are nevertheless confronted by limitations to information access in various domains. This new book series assembles academics and professionals in various fields in order to illuminate the various dimensions of information's inaccessability. While the series discusses principles and techniques for transcending the hurdles to information access, it also addresses necessary boundaries to accessability.This book describes the state of the art of digital philology with a focus on ancient Greek and Latin. It addresses problems such as accessibility of information about Greek and Latin sources, data entry, collection and analysis of Classical texts and describes the fundamental role of libraries in building digital catalogs and developing machine-readable citation systems