Help with Latin Texts: Musisque deoque

Musisque deoque is an Italian project developed in 2005 that aims to be a comprehensive repository of Latin works of poetry “from its origins to the Italian Renaissance.” In addition to the full text, the project also offers a critical apparatus for much of the material, as well as metrical analyses and advanced search options. In this guest post, I will take you on a tour of some of the main features.

Advertisement

Help with Research: Using Tesserae for intertextuality, part 4

In our previous posts, we’ve talked about what intertextuality means, how computers can help you locate it, the differences between intertextuality and discourse analysis, how Tesserae can help you with the latter in particular, and how to limit the number of results you get in a Tesserae search. In this post, we finish going through the advanced features and talk about Tesserae’s most innovative search type: sound analysis.

Help with Research: Using Tesserae for intertextuality, Part 3

In our last Tesserae post, I promised an explanation of Tesserae’s advanced features. These are mostly aimed at limiting the number of hits an individual search will come up with, which is useful because all potential matches need to be checked. It’s much easier to check 100 matches than to check 600 or even 1600! But I also want to highlight two advanced features that really advance the way that we can computationally analyze Latin: by using similarity metrics for sound effects and by connecting words that are semantically similar. In this post, I will discuss the second of these; my last (but not the last!) Tesserae post will discuss sound effects.

Perseus under PhiloLogic Part 1: Overview

In my last post I talked a little about mirror sites and the different Perseus Project mirrors. In this post, I’d like to take a closer look at one of these mirror sites: the Chicago Mirror, AKA Perseus under PhiloLogic.

Just as Perseus at Tufts is built on the Hopper, Perseus at Chicago is built on PhiloLogic. PhiloLogic, like the Hopper, is open-source and you can download and run the source code locally if that’s your cup of tea.

Help with Research: Using Tesserae for Intertextuality, Part 2

In this post, we pick up on our discussion of using the Tesserae project for intertextuality.  At the start, we want to acknowledge the generosity of Neil Coffee, the project lead. He was very quick to respond to our questions about best practices for the site and shared a forthcoming article on some of his results with silver Latin poetry. Thanks, Neil!

After reading through some of Tesserae’s research, we decided to expand on the topic of using digital tools for linguistic analysis. Tesserae was one of the first projects to attempt this in any language, and it’s an ongoing project — there are plans for further refinements to at least some of the tools, but probably not the interface as a whole.

Help with Ancient Texts: The PACE Project Revisited, Part 2

In this post, we continue our updated look at the PACE Project. You can read the first post, on Places and Archaeology, or go all the way back to the original. Below, we explain the Bibliography and Compare Text tools.

Help with Research: Using Tesserae for Intertextuality, Part 1

When we talk about classical authors being “engaged with” each other, what do we mean? Often, that term refers to intertextuality. In this post, I first explain what intertextuality is, and then I explain how you might recognize it, both with and without using digital tools. 

Help with Ancient Texts: The PACE Project Revisited, Part 1

One of our earliest posts was about the PACE Project, which was (at the time) a local effort to study Greeks under Roman imperialism. When we wrote the post, the project was already available only as a web archive, since the project lead had left for a different institution; soon afterwards, even the archived site went dark. Oh, the pitfalls of digital publication!

Luckily, the site has now reopened at a new home, so we thought it was time to revisit the material available. This week’s post expands on the original by focusing on Josephus, rather than Polybius. Everything in the initial post except for the web address still holds true. The format and contents of the site have not changed; only the host is new. Update your bookmarks and get ready to explore! 

Help with Research: Recognizing a Fake Publisher

Since the demise of Beall’s List, it’s become increasingly difficult to recognize a predatory publisher. That does not mean that it’s any less important to recognize who’s legitimate and who’s not. In the original publishing post, I mentioned this topic briefly as part of Tip #2. But based on the unscientific survey of “people who spam my inbox,” the number of predatory publishers is growing, and therefore is worth its own post. In this post, I offer a few tips for avoiding a bad deal, as well as reasons why you should not publish at any cost.

Help with bibliographies: APh Updated!

As practicing classicists will know, the field’s major bibliographic database, L’Année Philologique, moved to a new home late last year. That means that our previous posts on the EBSCO and self-hosted versions of APh are a little out of date. In this post, we update the major points about how to use the new APh interface. You should still refer to the previous posts for information about what this database is, its history, and why you should use it.