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Tools for Students in the Perseus Digital Library

Author(s): Anne Mahoney


Source: CALICO Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2001), pp. 269-282
Published by: Equinox Publishing Ltd.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24147054
Accessed: 05-06-2020 00:04 UTC

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to CALICO Journal

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Anne Mahoney

Tools for Students in the


Perseus Digital Library

Anne Mahoney
Perseus Project, Tufts University

ABSTRACT

The texts, maps, timelines, and other tools of the Perseus Digital Library
can help students learn not only the classical languages but also some
thing about classical culture. All of the tools work together, and refer
ences to other relevant information are offered automatically along with
each page of text. This article introduces the digital library to Latin and
Greek teachers.

KEYWORDS

Digital Libraries, Hypertext, Foreign Language Curriculum Standards

INTRODUCTION

The Perseus Digital Library (www.perseus.tufts.edu) is a growing li


brary centered on Ancient Greek and Roman materials.1 It includes over
100 Greek texts, over 50 Latin texts, English translations, grammars, dic
tionaries, an atlas, over 15,000 pictures of Greek and Roman art, and
nearly 10,000 photos of places in Greece, Italy, and the rest of the classi
cal world. It is easy for new users to get lost in all this material. This
article presents a "guided tour" of the site from the perspective of a Latin
or Greek teacher, explaining how Perseus resources can help students
learn not only the languages but also something of the culture of these two
civilizations. The tour will begin with texts and move on to the historical,
geographical, and visual resources in the digital library.

READING LATIN AND GREEK TEXTS

The sentence Gallia est omnis divisa in partes très. 'Gaul, as a whole, is
divided into three parts.' is of course very commonly known. But where is
Gaul? When was Caesar fighting there? And how do we construe partes?

© 2001 CALICO Journal

Volume 18 Number 2 269

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Tools for Students in the Perseus Digital Library

Space, time, and language are fundamental organizing principles for the
study of any culture. To intermediate level Latin students reading Caesar's
Gallic War for the first time, language may appear the most important,
but such students also need to know about chronology, geography, politi
cal background, and Caesar's place in literary history. The assigned text
book or commentary will answer some of their questions, but only the
ones its author could anticipate. In the Perseus Digital Library, on the
other hand, Caesar's Gallic War is automatically linked to commentaries,
other texts, pictures, maps, and grammatical assistance. Curious students
starting from an assigned passage can follow links to explore much of
Latin literature and Roman history.
No text in Perseus is isolated. Whenever one text quotes another, Per
seus forms a link from the quoting text to the quoted text. For example,
when Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar (1931) cites Caesar to
show how a construction works, the reference to Caesar is a live link to
the text of the Gallic War (see Figure 1).

Figure 1
Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar citing Caesar

-Mi * s
< fr
fit'egggfej»
6WMfelN>&*>
frfe lltllllll|""" 7 r, i . i II mi ii"

Alien
Allen andand
Creenougft's
Creenough's
New Latin Mein/
Grammar Latin
tor Schools
Grammar lor Schools
and colleges (edv |. a
b Grcenough,
Grecnouqh. G. L. Kltiredge,
Kittredqe. A. A.
'TSSJKWr Howard, Ben).
IfowauJ, Benj.I.I.D'Ooge)
D'Ooge)
Starch »orsotli PART S PART 5\F5TONO—SYNTAX
BT ONO—SYNTAX CONSTRUCTION
CONSTRUCTION OF OF CAM*.
CASES. OATIVF CASF
OATIVF CASF

I _ ... ..

f,u I e> J561 Table Q1 Contents


GotcM"

m vtts
» til this Idlhis document
document I tfaj | Jet» kl tits document
Jiies In thi» document

>( tht Purpose or Lfid

sJ82. ihe Datve is• ne


c denote used tc
Purpose denote
or trd. - a-ictrer
often w th ne hurpos? or trd. often w th anctret Datve cr :he pers
Dat ve cf the person
cr tnin9 ejected.

This use cf the itius,


dativs, ores
once apps/onr)^
apparent! geniyremains
■/ general, a. i«nam
irt in only
only a few
a few Cr construction:-, at
ÜS-StHä.. follows —

I. The Oat ve cfn an


abStn
absract rotn is used to show that to- wine* d rhino ter.es or wheh -t
trrnn/t'i*rw«, nfren wan another rlvi >e of thf person arrhng Aftnrtert - -

. retoa.a'c
I.'i KU-rhtye j/Juf^ui;t -lug. 85.-»3> , d*y 4 K igin V: (the/ 4je fui
ie s.ate a disaslti
(they are fuiUi a disaslti to
tne state). —
•"tAti iiai yi'.ne AWP • pftiOPÔ
• >*» nssi It was cf
rrifcjnft area* service tc ojr t.V<(5,
tfeivfilpyfo rren (to our
5,men for
;»25J> It was cf grea- service tc oarrrenCoo
r«1»!*
WHS great iset
* '*0 r,,***r tt/fj/n
< '■!-»■ . tjirvj/m
actwa t-tw 'tkitfn
'>i.n/is sufiidni ir-da (nstiuiri'dm "■sin
> S •'). hi itrnt (o1.SJ),
the he
third 11 he sunt th
as « rali

>j>i
• >u>t -.diJi.
-.»ist, [jit [j<t
(ii f 00), he «»as the sal(/4
van cm /j»C).
of his -rien. he was the salvation of his men.
• fcfew
fcSfHtelle fltsäOVSSJ
fc ißtäS&Ü (UV,IS
U?) •H?.'tS?S>0
tha rame to pass easily wh.thwasIdesired
(LV> 22) • that came to pass easily writ ch
hy
hy the
ftie gods gods
(was for a pleasure(was
On. heart 1for« pleasure Oit. heart) 'o the pods)
'ci th* pods).

MOTE
NOTE l .--This
1 .--This cu1iMru.11 on l> oftenconstruction Is Douule
called the Dailve ufStrvlce, ortt-* often Dative called the Dative ofStrvlce, or the Douule
construction.
construction.• he verb I s usually
• sun.
he Iheverb
roun expressing
is usually
the end firwtvctiii
sun.regularly
I he roun expressing the end tor warms
abstract
abstract and singularand s^nquiar
in number in ay
and is never modified number and
an adjective, except ore ofis never modified ay an adjective, except
degree
inlaws, minor, err.), or
in torus, hy a genitive. err.), or hy a g?nirive.
minor,

NOTE
NOTE2.—TheWood &0q' used as an «djectiyefrugiused
2.—TheWood is a dative ot this kjnd:—
as art adjective is a dative of this kjnd:—

•• i ûcts it>ê
6cdltete
» ■>>« die
rum I um f'ùqi ere
(Foot. rmii'iuiii
i >1, sou fruq'itUm.
compel me tc call tr y er eny HoneM. i >i, ^ou compel me tc call tr y ene
• •Nirm 0> Sit s fort's
horiiir 0> £j t.s?'
ire a x'
s ft-rr
for-isi-o/i. men gjbra»»
■'ernugh
Sre and u
thoroughly
.x- fyerr ),'./). rn«r> brace erough and th
honest.
honest.Cf.
CI. £?tl frtnoi (r*frtf
ant. Kei.r, fujgi
<»>a). I »rill liwte0'aut■
3» good fo- tame thing. (Sec
Pvax
§ I Vv. *H3). i will as good fo- idrfitthiny
thxa»wrr
thamrrOx*B*«

270 CALICO Journal

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Anne Mahoney

Anyone with some experience using the Web would expect these refer
ences to appear as links. In Perseus, however, these links are bidirectional:
not only is there a link from the grammar to Caesar, but there is a link
from Caesar back to the grammar as well (see Figure 2).

Figure 2
Link back from Caesar to the grammar

I t<H ^n»* &f £«WXM&Sitt jïJc

C. Julius Caesar, De hello GaUico


Galileo
Nswftamts UJMMtN I AKIUb
l IMMtNl AKIUb QUARI Ui
IJUAKlUb
1<w»uwrtfy

Search Pers«
Version (Ldlir |g 1j
igtrt<W
I —'
■: frnW-
F'.nW-
ir j».v Ir j».v

- frm TaM«»^(raf»<>nt<
TAHb of Content<

fererices from other

XXV. Quod i-b.


*>V. Quad cbi Ciosa-
C.>ot anrrrudveiTt,
n an m>gv»rct.haves lonqjs,
na«;t guarum
loriQ-ij. «t spades
avenir* oror barbdr->
« t-oscio; irndtetl or
orji immt«!»
al rooms .nl u»i;i>i cjigd imr. rjauiuni re mover! at? unerarii; naurUa* e mn-.rs inciter i et ad
^ vis
j« -«G»constny Ague i rice simdi s,j-aciufs, tarmtntiT nostes aropel-i «c
■uitr-T'Ovoi:
u'frT!0' luesit.
ig noan ret<:«»;/
rgç "^.■w i-.f.jl post-is
jmrr-if IJten M nf/itim finite »: rwn(lnnw
*ii/(t\[7
motngenç-ç
<y>rJ^,r< d.oU- CLÇ*J ft n,!i'Wi tormentié'c
et rrusittto torment
fqpnc-e
urr cirun:tNUt^n
ccrmoti rmv.t.rpru.-t
tormontorum
cermet- baitrari
cermoti-trbarton
ra'ilif1 constUerunt
modo Pfdf t ac panli-m mode pgdem
ftttjltivin[3]
mtjltiuiv.. . |3)A-^«r
A-Cfcie '■- In jj: nylitibus
rv?iy;i* uj <.'.«i titus. K'.-'tV?' rod*
cy!:«4i;Mbve, 4!!!*VSt,«'\' •;»«!».iitHudiitfii
tine propter V K mans, ate K
■fifUmA r&f&g*
jQu/jftfi+i. decs. UI îfeCv.
otn<MiKd.* eg itswleg proUgfoi!
6» i*s fe:.i.cit«r
feiviic ffiSfjffo' desilite".
spuret, • desilitt".
■A'^" y 'rçi/tft3,'r.Giiitit.
■rul tEji, t,jrf.>££
ir.il:tefr, icjj: jn
nffii- *•( Pfi'dsrc^-.
\-gi(i±tk eqLiijatntroo Af-wt :gi
S9Smeufil ;«i
'■»••" »■«- publica»pubncae
«OJ6 Inceratjr: çtfr.u/ri
acme Imceratjn prsesmerd*.
ctp:,upit |4| Hoc
sr&srltertii: cur»
[41 Hoc voce
com i»«;naOlKitset,
voce seseetex
macna aixisget,
*<hn nSy gr&ff.éha*t
itqcCr <ß Hot«!»»
grgtfglft «Itt\
.4?35c® LI KSS3iilLiK
Dfiil9.5 ÖO CC«P't-
&.CIS P]l$J Tym
BfiJJ nçjtr.
DSET■ CO^Jt.K'
coKoit.gl irgw se,»•,
njj«?|
tentuni
ta-,mmdeder-us
d-dtf I'eiinntigret.ir.
■> :r 'tt»'C inuers-
■■>. ine>.►•-
n.-wi rtsslluemrt.
rj_ [0] Hos
iv d»n- -.-r irt.Item e> pc-'im-s
[0| m-_a "f ii prml
e± o»r>-1»> a prml
iifi lui C.U"
ydyjbus Cum;iu[v >ns<i>ita, fiqrUt-u»
ensue dissert. dlt-H'Vlnq.lift'fiu
sybve.cvU <..
(ig&ii&k adyioyjiiyuwjg u;i.

• »f*

• fcn* r 22U2SÈC6E1L2 Thfe are > total of 10 romntrri on «%d trr.tj rgfereneet to :h;s aege.
: S<~>t1>.<fNrWt:S
:t; hin:

rrn^r' Further
rwrws1Further comments
comments from f.
from j. B. Creenouah, B. Creenoioh,
B?hjamln t. D'Ooge andR»Hiamin l. Commentary
M.GrantDarnell, D'Ooge and U. Crant Dan pH, 'orr.merr&y
on CaesaronCaesars
. ^ , ecumrwTitiiw s Cei'tc ■Vir 'Latin) (Allen and
Gatfrc ■VvCreenough's
Lan) Edition):
M/enär.dGcttnouQhs ft/MOl).

bo
l>ool;._1
ok J. 'general
'general
note) note)

Cross references from j. B. Oreencugh, Benjantn L. D'Ooge and m. Grant Darted, Commentary
on Caesar's Gallic A'ar latin) (Allen and Greenoucth's Edition):
'*toot !■■ ).'■
fag* ': UMWWHf»
cwwtHrAM&
"(Tire
fr heAttllltfv.l icross
Art ill tr v.1 reference)
-cross * fSOCK
rcfbrenca) * fcOO-SLVE.N
5t.VENft1-B.C.
I S2.1 Sc'.l
(cross reference
(cross reference
•• tocAf.:
toste: cowKwramw
COHMNT/KtH-S
-•■ reoCK
fBOCK v". v".
EOOkEOOk SIXTH
TIVTH ■—S.C.,-F.C.
r>1). 1C3.1
xrossxrciss
reference)

Preferred URL foi linking to this pacts' |fe|


Preferred UPL foi linking to this pace

« "» « ' - ■ ' •< - 'I' . m m


\__i_

The Gallic War "hears" i


sponds by showing a link
alerted to relevant materia
grows, more and more of
text a starting point for ex
cluding grammars and en
Classical Sites, are particu
are scholarly commentari
they comment on an intere
Our hypothetical interm
are offered help with the
also tempted by referenc
Volume 18 Number 2 271

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Tools for Students in the Perseus Digital Library

Experienced readers are used to making connections among texts based


on a wide knowledge of similar literature. Students who have not yet read
a great deal of Latin or Greek can use these bidirectional links to begin to
build a mental picture of classical literature. The connections created by
citations in reference works, commentaries, and other texts model the
way sophisticated readers experience a classical text. Students can ob
serve and practice this style of reading on their own, transferring their
experience of other hypertexts to this field.2
The Perseus program also includes tools to help students more directly
with the language. One of the most sophisticated computer programs in
the Perseus system is Morpheus, the morphological analysis tool for Greek
and Latin (see Crane, 1991). Every Greek and Latin word is linked to a
morphological analysis (see Figure 3).

Figure 3
Analysis of animadvertit

rK-Wotd
Woid Study Tool - Netscape Study Tool

to direct the mind, give


animadverto attention to, attend to, Entry in L&S
consider, regard, observe
animadvertit près
pres ind
ind act
act3rd
3rdsg
sg
anim advert it
animadvertit perfind
perf indact 3rd.sq
act 3rd sg
Latin Word
Frequency
Frequencv in other Authors
Search
: . f :
Max.
: CorpusIWords
Corpus
Freq./IOK
Inst. zi H-/,ok W
jcaesar i[ 513091 32,i 6.246.24;
: icaesar 51309 32 if 32 f 6.24
j 6.24
iUtin
jLatin Textsih
Texts;1756247
756247H
ill 21 3l|
1.21 1.21 j
213
213!1 1.21
1.21

sfFlR ^
a >&. ;

The analysis pop-up window gives the dictionary form of the w


sible identifications of the form, a short definition, and frequen
mation. For example, animadvertit in Figure 3 is a form of anim
either third person singular present indicative active or third pe
gular perfect indicative active. The short definition is enough to
reader of the meaning of a familiar word. Because it is not an a
definition for an unfamiliar word, or a word with more than one me
the window—called the Word Study Tool—also offers a link to
definition in Lewis and Short's (1979) Latin Dictionary, one of t
dard "unabridged" dictionaries of Latin.3
Morphological analysis is not always enough; sometimes reader
help figuring out why a verb is indicative or a noun is ablative.
reason, the technical terms in the morphological analyses are li
272 CALICO Journal

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Anne Mahoney

overviews of Greek and Latin syntax written especially for Perseus. These
overview texts give the most important uses of the various tenses, moods,
and cases in each language with examples taken from standard school
authors (Caesar, Cicero, Catullus, and Virgil for Latin; Thucydides,
Xenophon, Demosthenes, Homer, and others for Greek). Links to stan
dard grammars allow students to get more details or to find more obscure
constructions that are not treated in the overviews.
The Word Study window also includes frequency information. It can be
useful to know whether a word is very common, worth adding to one's
active vocabulary, or rather rare, not likely to come up again. We find that
Caesar uses animadverto proportionately more often than the other Latin
authors in Perseus. Although he uses the word on average only 32 times,
that is, 6.24 out of every 10,000 words, the 213 occurrences of the word
in the Perseus Latin corpus as a whole represent only 1.21 out of 10,000.
This difference makes the word moderately common in Caesar but rela
tively uncommon over all. The link for "Frequency in other authors" al
lows readers to determine exactly which of the authors represented in
Perseus use a word. For animadverto, we find that the prose writers Cae
sar, Cicero, and Vitruvius use the word often, but poets almost never use
it (see Figure 4).

Volume 18 Number 2 273

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Tools for Students in the Perseus Digital Library

Figure 4
Frequency Table

jot Qo Qgranwut }$ti> ;

;Wcw Scorch ,

Wuid
Wold Fiequentifs in LjUm
Ljlin Jiid
jiiiI Ciefk
(.look

Kg»OK&«a jsnri
by üy Isou
(sort AU.-fi«L'i£ic.&liv
Alphabsital: y.......... ill Zjijj

Frequencicc- tor ^imadverto


' • • tot arunad/orto
\-V Not*
NoteC:lik
C l;k •*■. .
«ft« ...«ward to set its stet
...awardto mo on.
:c« its ctefcnition.
!SfflA.T.'arfife)i?g . ...the
.-.lie nuitit'
nu l le l utMan.
l-itt-e - Mux. li»U culu
Ii»u loluniii lu Ici(l<lin»
to st4ali thatacii).
«oid.
,jh» nuTb«'
...tb» nuTbv iIM U"#
i U Freq /1
v t-req / IUK
UKcolumn
columnto;o>es
seet»'i«qi,a<Ky
•'tequensydistr
ctstroxiun
ü.iOon (cithat
fur thel*>ord.
*or0.

Maximum
Maximum Minimum
Minimum Weiçhte
Weighted
rtorpui
nrpue:: Wnrrtfc
wnrrtfc instance«;
nxranrecjfreq./
jtreq./ uurjinsrwires FrM]-/iuk!irManr«tjFr«i]./10K::
iok jtnsrancn rr»q /i okiinf.tanrex:!Frnq-/iOK j
Latir.
ii-atir-Texts
Text: 1175624
:t75 <-24 7 2131 11.31
-3D 2i
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1.51 : 213 213 '•2i:i
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frase 2CC884
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liniamniFieij./! OK I i
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es fieq./lOK
fieq./lOK iHMdii.es
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•*' a 74
'»./■« *>, •.cm:
174

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4M* . ,
±> s i

A goo
poetic
these
rather
the di
links,
study
The L
read in American schools and all the works on the current Advanced Place
ment syllabus.5 The Roman Perseus program, under development since
1996, continues to grow; more Latin texts and commentaries are added
every few months.6 During the last few months of 2000 and the beginning
of 2001, we expect to increase coverage of the end of the Roman Republic
with texts like Caesar's Civil War. We are also adding commentaries on

274 CALICO Journal

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Anne Mahoney

Cicero and those of other Latin authors as well as more images of Roman
art and Roman sites.

READING IN ENGLISH

Students reading parts of the Gallic War in Latin may want (or be as
signed) to read the entire text in English, and they may also want to read
other related works: poems by Catullus or letters by Cicero that mention
Caesar, battle scenes in Herodotus or Livy, and memoirs or commentaries
by Xenophon. The Perseus program contains English translations for al
most all of its classical texts. (Sometimes, the original language version is
edited and published before the translation.) Many of these translations
are important works of poetry or scholarship in their own right, and many
of them contain useful footnotes and introductions serving to link the
translated text into the rest of the digital library. Translations are matched
page for page with the original texts, making it easy to move back and
forth between the English section and its corresponding section in Latin
or Greek.
Words in Latin and Greek texts are linked to morphological analyses,
and many words in English texts are linked to the Lookup Tool. The Lookup
Tool is the main searching facility for everything in Perseus, not just the
texts.7 Links to this tool act like the glossary at the back of a printed book,
with the difference that readers can see at once whether a particular term
is glossed or not. The Lookup Tool is such a basic part of using the digital
library that a search box appears on every Perseus screen.
The Lookup Tool provides a list of references categorized by type of
object: coins, sculptures, vases, images, sites that can be plotted in the
Perseus Atlas, and of course texts. A search for Caesar, for example, re
sults in a list of 13 coins, an entry in the Perseus Encyclopedia, three
entries in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, a sculpture, two
literary works, and 93 images (see Figure 5).

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Tools for Students in the Perseus Digital Library

Figure 5
Caesar in the Lookup Tool

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Classical Sites articles

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l. Verr.is
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Students can see and read


Shakespeare's play Julius
Links from texts to the L
Greek and Roman culture

HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY

We have not yet answered our hypothetical student's questions: whe


is Gaul, and when was Caesar there? To answer questions about space
we use the Perseus Atlas.8 Each English text that refers to any place in th
ancient world also offers links to dynamically generated maps of the s
named in the current page or in the entire text (see Figure 6).

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Anne Mahoney

Figure 6
Sites in the Gallic War

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The Atlas opens in a separate browser window to facilitate matching


text and geography. On the map, sites mentioned more than 20 times in
the text are plotted in a darker color so they stand out. Other features, like
modern political boundaries or lakes and rivers, can be added to the dis
play. The Atlas page also offers a link to the Lookup Tool for each site
plotted on the map, which allows readers to move from the location of an
ancient place, to a site description, and to photographs of the site as it
looks today.
Two kinds of tools help answer the "when" questions. One way students
gain a sense of chronology is by reading history. In addition to ancient
historians—Livy, Thucydides, Herodotus, Josephus—Perseus includes a
version of Martin's overview of Greek history which summarizes the his
tory of Greece from the Stone Age to the death of Alexander the Great.
Like every other text in Perseus, the historical overview has links to other
texts and to the Lookup Tool. (The Perseus program does not yet have a
corresponding overview of Roman history.) The program also presents
chronology visually. When texts (in English) mention specific dates, Per
seus offers a link to the Timeline Tool which charts those dates (see Figure
7).

Volume 18 Number 2 277

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Tools for Students in the Perseus Digital Library

Figure 7
Dates in the Gallic War

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8HHW« ««b»w ' f ;.9t*.4«?!Ks!s« Sjcyricrs'te -"-Ktf
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Although t
immediately
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earlier years
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sents positio
page and th
text, each h
sion. When t
represents o
dates in the
century," "t
are links ba
the top of
references t
the time axi
ones (years)
Texts with
Cicero's lett
CE—some in
notes added

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Anne Mahoney

center of the range of dates but allows readers to zoom in and out and
scroll backwards and forwards (see Figure 8).

Figure 8
Dates in Cicero's Letters

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fiattft i* fw» H 1 XI u'. r.(vt^.IU*« < :~çti

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It is clear from the aggregate bars at the top of the display that most of
the dates in Cicero's letters are in the first century BCE, in particular
the decades from 70 to 40 BC, precisely the period of Cicero's active p
lic life. The Timeline Tool makes Cicero's lifespan and the period of
Gallic campaigns visible, just as the Atlas makes the extent of Caesar
and Cicero's world visible.
Maps and timelines are not the only visual resources in the Perseus
Digital Library. The archaeological and art historical component of the
library provides another kind of background information. Thousands of
photographs help answer students' questions about how the classical world
looked. Detailed discussion of these resources would exceed the limits of
this article.

CONCLUSION

How, then, is Perseus useful in the Latin or Greek classroom? The A


can Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Sta
for Foreign Language Learning and the American Classical Leagu
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Tools for Students in the Perseus Digital Library

can Philological Assocation Standards for Classical Language Learning


specify the "5 Cs:" communication, cultures, connections, comparisons,
and communities (see ACTFL, 1996; Phillips, 1999; Abbott, et al., 1998).
The resources of an integrated digital library like Perseus facilitate stu
dents' work with the second and third of the "Cs" (cultural study and
interdisciplinary connections). "Multimedia can bring disciplines together,"
says Lamb (1992) in a discussion of academic multimedia projects, in
cluding an earlier version of Perseus. Lamb finds that multimedia hypertexts
engage students' interest and, when well used, can promote active learn
ing. Laurillard (1993) observes that in a digital library like Perseus, stu
dents have access to primary sources (textual and nontextual) with which
they can verify or challenge conclusions they find in textbooks or encyclo
pedias. Laurillard states that "There is nothing revolutionary about these
activities for the academic, but easy access to original data creates the
possibility that students may also do them. And that is [original emphasis]
revolutionary."
The Perseus Digital Library is a large and varied collection. Intercon
nections among texts, images, maps, and timelines make it possible to
start almost anywhere and explore all of classical antiquity. The most im
portant interconnections—language help, references to and from other
texts, keywords, Atlas plots, and timelines—are automatically offered along
with each page of text. More detailed information is a link or two away,
available on demand. Intermediate to advanced language students and
students in beginning and intermediate history and civilization classes will
find the resources of the site particularly helpful for organizing and inte
grating their knowledge of the ancient world.

NOTES

1 Other collections within Perseus include Renaissance English texts (Marlowe


and Shakespeare), the Bolles Collection on the History of London, and Archimedes:
Sources for the History of Mechanics. This article, however, focuses on the Greek
and especially the Roman materials. While Perseus is cited frequently in discus
sions of technology in the Greek or Latin classroom (as in several of the essays in
LaFleur, 1998), many of those references pre-date the publication of the Roman
collection, and many of them focus on the older Perseus CD-ROMs rather than
the Web version.

2 See also Crane ( 1998) on how Perseus affects the way we and our students read
classical texts, with particular emphasis on the use of on-line dictionaries.

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3 Similarly, in Greek, morphological analyses are linked to definitions in Liddell,


Scott, Jones, and McKenzie's A Greek-English Lexicon. For Greek, Perseus also
offers the shorter Intermediate Lexicon, but readers generally prefer the full en
tries in the larger dictionary. Crane (1998) offers some explanations for this phe
nomenon. Rydberg-Cox (in press a) explains how the short definitions are auto
matically extracted from the full dictionary entries.
4 See Rydberg-Cox (2000 b) for details on frequency analyses, collocations, and
other word-study tools within Perseus.
5 The Advanced Placement curriculum for Latin may be viewed at the College
Board's web. Available: www.collegeboard.org/ap/latin
6 Original funding for Roman Perseus came from the National Endowment for
the Humanities; Perseus is grateful for their support. The development of the
Roman collection within Perseus is well described in Crane (2000).

7 The Lookup Tool and other implicit and explicit search tools in Perseus are
described in detail in Mahoney (2000).
8 The best-published description of the Perseus Atlas to date is Chavez (2000).

REFERENCES

Abbott, M. G., Davis, S„ & Gascoyne, R. C. (1998). National standards and cur
riculum guidelines. In R. A. LaFleur (Ed.), Latin for the 21st century:
From concept to classroom (pp. 44-58). Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman
Addison Wesley.
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. (1996). Standards for
foreign language learning: Preparing for the 21" century. Yonkers, NY:
National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project. On-line docu
ment available: www.actfl.org
Albright, M. J., & Graf, D. L. (Eds.). (1992). Teachingin the information age: The
role of educational technology (New Directions for Teaching and Learn
ing No. 51). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Chavez, R. F. (2000). Using GIS in an integrated digital library. In Proceedings of
the 5,h annual ACM digital library conference. San Antonio, TX.
Crane, G. ( 1991 ). Generating and parsing Classical Greek. Literary and Linguisti
Computing, 6, 243-245.
Crane, G. (1998). New technologies for reading: The lexicon and the digital Li
brary. Classical World, 91, 471-501.
Crane, G. (2000). Extending a digital library: Beginning a Roman Perseus. New
England Classical Journal, 27 (3), 140-160.
Greenough, J. B., Kittredge, G. L., Howard, A. A., & D'Ooge, B. L. (Eds.). (1931).
Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar. Boston: Ginn.
LaFleur, R. A. (Ed.). (1998). Latin for the 21st century: From concept to class
room. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman Addison Wesley.

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Tools for Students in the Perseus Digital Library

Lamb, A. (1992). Multimedia and the teaching-learning process in higher educa


tion. In M. ). Albright & D. L. Graf (Eds.), Teaching in the information
age: The role of educational technology (New Directions for Teaching
and Learning No. 51) (pp. 33-42). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Laurillard, D. (1993). Rethinking university teaching: A framework for the effec
tive use of educational technology. London: Routledge.
Lewis, C. T., & Short, C. S. (1979). Latin dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Liddell, H. G., Scott, R., Jones, H. S., & McKenzie, R. (1940). A Greek-English
lexicon (9th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mahoney, A. (2000). Explicit and implicit searching in the Perseus digital library.
In Eleventh ACM conference on hypertext and hypermedia, preconference
workshop [On-line]. Available: www.ics.mq.edu.au/~einat/info_doors/
Martin, T. R. (1996). Ancient Greece from prehistoric to Hellenistic times. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Phillips, J. K. (Ed.). (1999). Foreign language standards: Linking research, theo
ries, and practices. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company.
Rydberg-Cox, J. A. (in press a). Mining data from the electronic Greek lexicon.
Classical Journal.
Rydberg-Cox, J. A. (in press b). Word co-occurrence and lexical acquisition in An
cient Greek texts. Literary and Linguistic Computing.
Stillwell, R., MacDonald, W. L., & McAlister, M. H. (Eds.). (1976). The Princeton
encyclopedia of classical sites. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

AUTHOR'S BIODATA

Anne Mahoney holds a Ph.D. in classics from Boston University. She


programmer for the Perseus Project, where she works on the text proce
ing system, standards and tools for text markup, and editing Greek
Latin texts. She also teaches classics at Tufts University.

AUTHOR'S ADDRESS

Anne Mahoney
Perseus Project
Eaton 124
Tufts University
Medford, MA 02155
E-mail: amahoney@perseus.tufts.edu

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