EpiDoc: News and Views

If you visit http://sourceforge.net/projects/epidoc/files/ you'll now find readily downloadable releases of the following EpiDoc tools:

• Guidelines
• P5 Conversion Tools
• Transcoder
• Example P5 XSLTs
• Example P4 XSLTs (deprecated; last/final release)
• DTD (deprecated; last/final release)
• Schema
• CHETC JavaScript

These releases reflect the current state of code or documentation as it is to be found in our SVN repository. All of the tools have had README.txt files added in order to help the person downloading them figure out what they are and how to start using them. They also all have LICENSE.txt files that spell out the terms under which they are distributed. If you want to see our agenda, feel free to visit: http://epidocroadmap.pbworks.com/Release-Sprint-July-2010

Some of these packages are out-of-date or not feature-complete (e.g., especially the guidelines). We'll want to marshal volunteers in coming weeks and months to work on these discrepancies. There is in fact, already a group working hard on the guidelines. If you're not part of that group and would like to be, please shout out about it on the markup list.

My hearty thanks to Gabriel Bodard, Hugh Cayless and Charlotte Tupman, who assisted in today's sprint, and to Marion Lame, who also volunteered but could not be available during the time that I had scheduled.

Our next big step is to update http://epidoc.sourceforge.net/resources.shtml so that it properly reports on the state of each tool and links directly to the appropriate release. I'll be issuing a call for volunteers for that follow-up sprint shortly.

The Summer 2010 EpiDoc training workshop will now take place in London, at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London, from June 28 – July 1. Thanks to the generosity of the Association Internationale d’Épigraphie Grecque et Latine (AIEGL) we have €500 available for bursaries to help students attend this event. The workshop will be taught by Gabriel Bodard (KCL) and James Cowey (Heidelberg). There will be no charge to attend this workshop.

From the workshop description:

This course will introduce attendees to EpiDoc markup, an XML schema for epigraphic and papyrological editions. The workshop is targeted at Classical scholars: we shall assume knowledge of Greek and/or Latin and some experience in Classical history or adjacent disciplines, but no technical expertise is required. We shall introduce students to the use of EpiDoc markup to record the distinctions expressed by the Leiden Conventions and traditional critical editions, and some of the issues in translating between EpiDoc and the major epigraphic and papyrological databases.

Students will also be given hands-on experience in the use of the “Son of SOL” editing tool (SoSOL), currently implemented by the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, which facilitates the creation of validating EpiDoc XML via a “tags-free” interface. EpiDoc is a standard for the encoding of ancient texts, originally drawn up by and for epigraphic projects (the Inscriptions of Aphrodisias, Vindolanda Tablets, US Epigraphy, and others). While the SoSOL tool is currently operational on a papyrological dataset, training in its use is directly applicable to the epigraphic community. For one thing, SoSOL is already being modified for use by epigraphical projects, but more importantly, it functions at a level of abstraction that invites the user to think not in terms of papyrological or epigraphic conventions for displaying, e.g. orthographic variants, but rather in terms of the underlying semantic meaning. In other words, the tool furnishes, in addition to its practical applications, a pedagogical bridge between the print page, with which students are still conditioned to think, and the full sophistication and explicitness of EpiDoc markup.

To apply to attend the EpiDoc and SoSOL workshop, or for more information, please send an email as soon as possible to gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk; if you would like to apply for a partial bursary to help cover your travel and/or accommodation costs, please indicate this in the same email and give a brief account of your circumstances (student status, funding available, distance to be travelled, etc.).

This year one of the strands in the programme of the Digital Humanities Observatory Summer School is an EpiDoc training workshop, which may be of interest to epigraphists (please circulate this announcement widely, especially to students):

This course will introduce attendees to EpiDoc markup, an XML schema for epigraphic and papyrological editions. The workshop is targeted at Classical scholars: we shall assume knowledge of Greek and/or Latin and some experience in Classical history or adjacent disciplines, but no technical expertise is required. We shall introduce students to the use of EpiDoc markup to record the distinctions expressed by the Leiden Conventions and traditional critical editions, and some of the issues in translating between EpiDoc and the major epigraphic and papyrological databases. Students will also be given hands-on experience in the use of the “Son of SOL” editing tool, currently implemented by the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, which facilitates the creation of validating EpiDoc XML via a ‘tags-free’ interface.

Registration for the summer school costs €300 students / €400 staff.
Subsidized/free places are available for members of Irish universities,
and we hope that a few bursaries will also be available for EpiDoc
students. Please get in touch with <gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk> if you want more information.

Announcement: DHO Summer School registration now open

The DHO Summer School is now open for registration. The School will be held at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. EpiDoc is being offered as a course:

2010 DHO Summer School – Registration Now Open

www.dho.ie/ss2010

The DHO is pleased to announce that registration for the 2010 DHO Summer School, in conjunction with NINEs and the EpiDoc Collaborative, is now open.

The Summer School welcomes registrants from the various fields of the humanities, information studies, and computer science. Workshops and lectures cover subjects as diverse as text encoding, virtual worlds, and geospatial methods for the humanities. These are facilitated by leading experts, with plenty of time during evening activities for informal interaction.

This year, in addition to four-day workshop strands, the DHO is also offering mid-week, one-day workshops. For those unable to attend the entire Summer School, it is possible to register separately for these mid-week workshops and lectures.

As in previous years, the Summer School brings together Irish and International scholars undertaking digital projects in diverse areas to explore issues and trends of common interest. The programme will offer attendees opportunities to develop their skills, share insights, and discover new opportunities for collaboration and research. Activities focus on the theoretical, technical, administrative, and institutional issues relevant to the needs of digital humanities projects today.

The pricing for the full Summer School, as well as one-day workshops and lectures, is available on the registration page: http://dho.ie/ss2010/registration

Full details of the workshop strands, lectures and guest speakers can be found on the Summer School website at: www.dho.ie/ss2010

We look forward to seeing you in Dublin.

2010 DHO Summer School
in conjunction with NINES and the EpiDoc Collaborative

28 June – 2 July, 2010
http://dho.ie/ss2010

The third annual Digital Humanities Observatory (DHO) Summer School will take place in Dublin from 28 June to 2 July 2010. Following the highly successful 2009 Summer School, next year’s event will see the expansion of popular workshop strands such as:

• A Practical Introduction to the Text Encoding Initiative
• Data Visualisation for the Humanities
• An Introduction to EpiDoc Markup and Editing Tools
• The One to Many Text: Text Transformations with XSLT

The Summer School will feature lectures by Dr. Hugh Denard (King’s College London Visualisation Lab) and Dr Ian Gregory (University of Lancaster). Workshop facilitators include Dr Gabriel Bodard (King’s College London), Dr James Cowey (University of Heidelberg), Professor Laura Mandell (Miami University of Ohio), Dr Susan Schreibman (Digital Humanities Observatory), Justin Tonra (NUI, Galway) and Dana Wheeles (University of Virginia).

Major workshop strands will be conducted over four days allowing delegates to choose a mini-workshop on Wednesday from one of the following offerings:

• Geospatial Methods for Humanities Research
• Using Digital Resources for Irish Research and Teaching
• Visualising Space, Time and Events: Using Virtual Worlds for Humanities Research
• Finding the Concepts In the Chaos – Building Relationships With Data Models
• Planning Digital Scholarly Resources: A Primer

The introduction of the one-day mini-workshops allows people to choose to attend a single-day event only at a reduced cost.

2010 DHO Summer School
in conjunction with NINES and the EpiDoc Collaborative
28 June – 2 July 2010
http://dho.ie/ss2010

The third annual Digital Humanities Observatory (DHO) Summer School will
take place in Dublin from 28 June to 2 July 2010. Following the highly
successful 2009 Summer School, next year’s event will see the expansion
of popular workshop strands such as:

• A Practical Introduction to the Text Encoding Initiative
• Data Visualisation for the Humanities
• An Introduction to EpiDoc Markup and Editing Tools
• The One to Many Text: Text Transformations with XSLT

The Summer School will feature lectures by Dr. Hugh Denard (King’s
College London Visualisation Lab) and Dr Ian Gregory (University of
Lancaster). Workshop facilitators include Dr Gabriel Bodard (King’s
College London), Dr James Cowey (University of Heidelberg), Professor
Laura Mandell (Miami University of Ohio), Dr Susan Schreibman (Digital
Humanities Observatory), Justin Tonra (NUI, Galway) and Dana Wheeles
(University of Virginia).

Major workshop strands will be conducted over four days allowing
delegates to choose a mini-workshop on Wednesday from one of the
following offerings:

• Geospatial Methods for Humanities Research
• Using Digital Resources for Irish Research and Teaching
• Visualising Space, Time and Events: Using Virtual Worlds for Humanities Research
• Finding the Concepts In the Chaos – Building Relationships With Data Models
• Planning Digital Scholarly Resources: A Primer

The introduction of the one-day mini-workshops allows people to choose
to attend a single-day event only at a reduced cost.

Announcement
EpiDoc Training Sessions 2009
London 20-24 July
Rome 21-25 September

The EpiDoc community has been developing protocols for the publication of inscriptions, papyri, and other documentary Classical texts in TEI-compliant XML: for details see the community website at http://epidoc.sf.net.

Over the last few years there has been increasing demand for training by scholars wishing to use EpiDoc. We are delighted to be able to announce two training workshops, which will be offered in 2009. Both will be led by Dr Gabriel Bodard. These sessions will benefit scholars working on Greek or Latin documents with an interest in developing skills in the markup, encoding, and exploitation of digital editions. Competence in Greek and/or Latin, and knowledge of the Leiden Conventions will be assumed; no particular computer skills are required.

London session, 20-24 July 2009. This will take place at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London, 26-29 Drury Lane. The cost of attendance will be £50 for students; £100 for employees of universities or other non-profit institutions; £200 for employees of commercial institutions. Those interested in enrolling should apply to Dr Bodard, gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk by 20 June 2009.

We hope to be able to offer some follow-up internships after the session, to enable participants to consolidate their experience under supervision; please let us know if that would be of interest to you.

Rome session, 21-25 September 2009. This will take place at the British School at Rome. Thanks to the generous support of the International Association of Greek and Latin Epigraphy, the British School and Terra Italia Onlus, attendance will be free.

Those interested in enrolling should apply to Dr Silvia Orlandi, silvia.orlandi@uniroma1.it by 30 June 2009.

Practical matters
Both courses will run from Monday to Friday starting at 10.00 am and ending at 16.00 each day.

Participants should bring a wireless-enabled laptop. You should acquire and install a copy of Oxygen *and* either an educational licence ($48) or a 30-day trial licence (free). Don’t worry if you don’t know how to use it!

EpiDoc Training Sessions 2009
London 20-24 July
Rome 21-25 September

The EpiDoc community has been developing protocols for the publication of inscriptions, papyri, and other documentary Classical texts in TEI-compliant XML: for details see the community website at http://epidoc.sf.net.

Over the last few years there has been increasing demand for training by scholars wishing to use EpiDoc. We are delighted to be able to announce two training workshops, which will be offered in 2009. Both will be led by Dr Gabriel Bodard. These sessions will benefit scholars working on Greek or Latin documents with an interest in developing skills in the markup, encoding, and exploitation of digital editions. Competence in Greek and/or Latin, and knowledge of the Leiden Conventions will be assumed; no particular computer skills are required.

London session, 20-24 July 2009. This will take place at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London, 26-29 Drury Lane. The cost of attendance will be £50 for students; £100 for employees of universities or other non-profit institutions; £200 for employees of commercial institutions. Those interested in enrolling should apply to Dr Bodard, gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk by 20 June 2009.

We hope to be able to offer some follow-up internships after the session, to enable participants to consolidate their experience under supervision; please let us know if that would be of interest to you.

Rome session, 21-25 September 2009. This will take place at the British School at Rome. Thanks to the generous support of the International Association of Greek and Latin Epigraphy, the British School and Terra Italia Onlus, attendance will be free.

Those interested in enrolling should apply to Dr Silvia Orlandi, silvia.orlandi@uniroma1.it by 30 June 2009.

Practical matters
Both courses will run from Monday to Friday starting at 10:00 am and ending at 16:00 each day.

Participants should bring a wireless-enabled laptop. You should acquire and install a copy of Oxygen *and* either an educational licence ($48) or a 30-day trial licence (free). Don’t worry if you don’t know how to use it!

Paper delivered at the BES Spring Colloquium.

The final contribution at the 2009 BES Spring Meeting was remarkable by its conciseness, clarity and interest. It was a striking example of how some of our preconceived ideas on ancient Greek practices can be swiftly turned on their head by inscriptions.

The inscription (SEG LIV 214), dated to the 4^th c. BC, is incomplete and fragmented. The stele fragments were actually discovered by different individuals over a long period of time. This led to some confusion about the original location of the inscription, with the Greek scholars’ hypothesis of its coastal origins being confirmed by the discovery of the most recent fragment in the deme of Aixone (modern Glyfada). The question of the exact location of the inscription is presumably answered by the last fragment. It was found near other inscriptions mentioning their being set up in the sanctuary of Herakleidai, Hebe and Alcmene. The text is stoichedon and beautifully inscribed. The bottom section still shows grid lines for the sculptor to follow.

The text presents several issues discussed by Parker and Scullion. To start with, the question of who had commissioned the inscription is raised by the location of the stone. The sanctuary of the Herakleidai is where the deme of Aixone displayed its decisions. This would hint at the deme as the commissioner, although the possibility of a sub-deme body, such as a genos, cannot be excluded. Indeed, line 26 mentions a hero Paralos and the only known sanctuary to Paralos is in Piraeus, outside of Aixone’s control. This leaves open the possibility of a genos dedicating the stele, or of an as yet unknown sanctuary of Paralos in the deme of Aixone.

The number of priesthoods present here amounts to ten (although some are lost with the top of the inscription) which, with two others known for Aixone, would total to twelve for the whole deme. The text notably features two priesthoods (one priestess and one priest) for the same ‘mystery deity’, the Reverend (ἁγνή) Goddess. This title is usually given to the Syrian goddess and is otherwise not attested before the 2^nd c. BC. This occurrence probably belongs here to a different deity, possibly Persephone. The multiple priesthoods for the same deity are in any case unusual.

Scullion then described the last part of the inscription as changing in nature, since the content of the lists no longer includes double portions (of meat), sausages or cuts to be put on the sacrificial table. There is therefore no spare meat from the sacrifice, which in turn would indicate holocausts. The possible objection to this is the fact that hides are still given to the priest/-ess. There are examples in the Greek world of ‘whole-sacrifices’ of an animal that has been cut open (see for example at Cos, 4^th c. BC, Sokolowski LSCG 151 A 32-5) but the case of Aixone is different. Here the skin is preserved. The only ancient parallels are found outside the Greek world with examples from Leviticus (1:3-9; 7:8), Philo Judaeus (De specialibus legibus 1.30 [151]) and Punic and Semitic inscriptions (CIS I 165.3-4; I 167). This could lead to the conclusion that cutting up the animal before burning it whole was a usual practice, thus explaining the otherwise silent sources on the matter. For one, it would require less wood than the whole un-skinned animal. This undoubtedly challenges the mental image of the holocaust as the act of putting an intact animal, albeit a dead one, into the fire. It is also noted that the deities at Aixone concerned by these sacrifices have a chthonic character.

Parker finally noted that the only deity for whom no sum to purchase kindling is mentioned is Dionysos (lines 9-11). This suggests the possibility of omophagia.

Workshop at the e-Science Institute, Edinburgh, February 10-11, 2009 (see programme and registration):

Rationale: The meeting will bring technical and editorial researchers participating in, or otherwise engaged with, the IOSPE (Inscriptiones Orae Septentrionalis Ponti Euxini = Ancient Inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea Coast.) project together with researchers in related fields, both historical and computational. Existing projects, such as the Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica and Inscriptions of Aphrodisias, have explored the digitization of ancient inscriptions from their regions, and employed the EpiDoc schema as markup. IOSPE plans to expand this sphere of activity, in conjunction with an multi-volume publication of inscription data. This event is a joint workshop funded in part by a Small Research Grant from the British Academy, and in part by the eSI through the Arts and Humanities e-Science theme. The workshop will bring together domain experts in epigraphy, and specialists in digital humanities, and e-science researchers, which will provide a detailed scoping of the research questions, and the research methods needed to investigate them from an historical/epigraphic point of view.

The success of previous projects, and the opportunities identified by the IOSPE research team, raise questions of significant interest for the e-science community. Great interpretive value can be attached to datasets such as these if they are linked, both with each other, and with other relevant datasets. The LaQuaT project at King’s, part of ENGAGE, is addressing this. There is also an important adjunct research area in the field of digital geographic analysis of these datasets: again, this can only be achieved if disparate data collections can be meaningfully cross-walked.

The organizers would like to bring to the attention of interested colleagues this upcoming event dedicated to the digital publication of a new corpus of Ancient Inscriptions from the Northern Coast of Black Sea (IOSPE = Inscriptiones Orae Septentrionalis Ponti Euxini).

Enhancing and Exploring Epigraphic and Archaeological Data through e-Science

In Association with eSI Thematic Programme: e-Science in the Arts and Humanities

10 February 2009, 09:30 AM – 11 February, 04:00 PM

e-Science Institute, 15 South College Street, Edinburgh

Organisers: Stuart Dunn, Irene Polinskaya and Gabriel Bodard

The meeting will bring technical and editorial researchers participating in, or otherwise engaged with, the IOSPE (Inscriptiones Orae Septentrionalis Ponti Euxini = Ancient Inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea Coast) project together with researchers in related fields, both historical and computational. Existing projects, such as the Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica and Inscriptions of Aphrodisias, have explored the digitization of ancient inscriptions from their regions, and employed the EpiDoc schema as markup. IOSPE plans to expand this sphere of activity, in conjunction with a multi-volume publication of inscription data. This event is a joint workshop funded in part by a Small Research Grant from the British Academy, and in part by the eSI through the Arts and Humanities e-Science theme. The workshop will bring together domain experts in epigraphy, and specialists in digital humanities, and e-science researchers, which will provide a detailed scoping of the research questions, and the research methods needed to investigate them from an historical/epigraphic point of view.

Further details and programme can be found here. 

Inquiries may be directed to the co-organizer:

Dr. Irene Polinskaya

Department of Classics

King’s College London

University of London

Strand, London WC2R 2LS

Tel. (0)20 7848 1762/Fax (0)20 7848 2545

irene.polinskaya@kcl.ac.uk

Roman Libya: epigraphy, geography and archaeology

The Society for Libyan Studies and the Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica project are organising a joint colloquium and workshop, 13-14 February 2009, at King’s College London.

The Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica project (http://ircyr.kcl.ac.uk) which is funded by the Leverhulme Trust, aims to publish, online, the inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica collected by Joyce Reynolds, together with related geographical data, provided by the Pleiades project (http://pleiades.stoa.org/) and illustrative material from the Ward-Perkins Archive at the British School at Rome. An associated project, Concordia, (http://concordia.atlantides.org) is producing an electronic reprint of Joyce Reynolds and John Ward-Perkins, Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania.

The aim of the colloquium/workshop is to bring together scholars working on the history, archaeology and geography of Roman Libya; we plan to describe and compare our projects, and to discuss ways in which we can help and support one another, particularly by exploiting new media.

For more information and to book see the Colloquium website.

For those who are not subscribed to the Digital Classicist podcast RSS, I’d like to call attention to the latest “occasional seminar” audio and slides online: Marion Lamé spoke about “Epigraphical encoding: from the Stone to Digital Edition” in the internation video-conference series European Culture and Technology. Marion talked about her PhD project which is to use an XML-encoded edition of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti as an exercise in digital recording and presentation of an extremely important and rich historical text and encoding historical features in the markup.

We shall occasionally record and upload (with permission) presentations of interest to digital classicists that are presented in other venues and series. If you would be interested in contributing a presentation to this series, please contact me or someone else at the Digital Classicist.

Over on the Markup list (for discussion of text markup issues) we have been discussing the ligature of VI that appears in some Latin inscriptions. I asked:

We have come across several cases in the Inscriptions of Roman
Tripolitania of the symbol that looks a little like an Arabic '4', but
seems in fact to be a ligature of VI and stands for the numeral six (or,
followed for example by II, part of a larger numeral VIII etc.)

(1) is this a recognised symbol, and is there a Unicode codepoint that
is either dedicated to it or acceptable to use to encode this symbol (as
opposed to just for display)?

(2) is there a common name for this symbol, better than "six-ligature"
or "vi-ligature"?

(The symbol appears not to have a separate codepoint in Unicode, and nor should we expect it to be treated differently from U+2165, “Roman numeral six”, of which it is, after all, only a glyph variant. We have also, I think, answered the question of how to represent this symbol in EpiDoc [i.e. just like any other ligature].)

As an interesting aside, Paul Iversen suggested that there may some influence on this glyph-form from the Greek numeric stigma/digamma for six. There are plenty of other examples of the use of this symbol (including some useful Latin papyrological examples provided offlist by Rodney Ast). I include here the one photograph I have been able to find of a Tripolitanian example, where (VI)III = 9:

What do readers think? Is there any relationship between this and digamma? Is there a name for this ligature? Is there any argument for treating this any differently from a ligature of (NM) or (ΠΡ)?

This announcement has been doing the rounds this week (seen so far on Humanist, Classicists):

Telamon. Online Library of the Ancient Greek Inscriptions from Bulgaria

The aim of the Telamon project, which is hosted by St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia University, Department of Classics, is to create a digital library of the ancient Greek inscriptions found in Bulgaria. Their total number counts more than 3500 written in a period of about 1000 years (6th century BC — 4th century AD). Georgi Mihailov publishes those that have been discovered up to the mid 80’s in Inscriptiones Graecae in Bulgaria repertae.

The focus is currently on the digitilising the inscriptions of the most eminent poleis of the Roman Thrace, Philippopolis and Augusta Traiana. They are approximately 1600, 1200 of which are already included in IGBulg. A third of them, however, need some revision or correction, while other 400 are unpublished or published in dispersed and often inaccessible publications in Bulgarian. Therefore, we hope that the creating of an electronic database of these inscriptions will facilitate the study of the history, culture, and language both of the Bulgarian lands in antiquity and of the Greco-Roman civilization as a whole.

The main standard of applying the XML language in encoding the epigraphic monuments, known as EpiDoc and developed by an international team of specialists, will be put into operation.

Just one highlight in a BMCR Review well worth reading:

Specialists in a range of sub-fields will be consulting this volume for years to come, and the indices facilitate this. As Linderski observes, "without detailed indices all texts but particularly inscriptions are half mute" (412), but as he also points out, one now wants more: electronic editions fully machine-searchable. Academic publishers need to keep up with technology at the rate scholars do or they risk obsolescence.

This will be the ninth and final installment of our summer-long “Virtual Seminar on Some Unpublished Inscriptions from Corinth.” The other eight posts may be found by following the links backwards from here. I want to thank all of you who have participated in this seminar and who made it a most fruitful experience. I also want to wish my friend, colleague, and fellow epigrapher Don Laing all the best as he continues to struggle with the effects of his chemotherapy.

This final post features a fragment of white, micaceous marble preserving the upper right corner of an inscription of at least eight lines with red paint preserved in many letters. It is broken to the left, below, and on the back. It was found 12 August, 1977 in Quarry Trench XVI. A pair of parallel register lines has been lightly incised 0.009 and 0.010 m. respectively from the top edge of the stone establishing an upper margin. Intermittent faint traces of register lines appear above lines two to eight at intervals of 0.010 m. Photo, squeeze, and autopsy of stone.

Unpublished.
Height, 0.088 m. ; width, 0.090 m. ; thickness, 0.038 m.
Height of letters, 0.004 to 0.008 m. ; interspace, 0.002 to 0. 003 m.
Corinth inventory I-77-10 ; NB 652, p. 61 ; NB(FI) 687, pp. 36-37, Object 829

PROXENY DECREE?

fin. IV – med. II a. NON-STOIX

          [θεό]ς̣· vac. 0.084 m.                 1
[— — — — — ]ρίτου vac. 0.038 m.
[— — — — — —] τετάρται
[— — — — — —]ύ̣δωρον v
[— — — — — —]σσαν v                  5
[— — — — — —]πολιτεί-
[α— — — — — —]το vac. 0.030 m.
[— — — — — — —]υ̣ς v
[— — — — — — — —]

Apparatus:
Line 1: The final letter trace can be a gamma, sigma or tau. Given that it appears we have the upper right corner of a decree, [θεό]ς̣ seems likely. If [θεό]ς̣ was written without spaces between each letter and centered, the maximum number of letters per line was circa 25. That some care was taken to align this inscription is evident from the use of register lines.

Line 2: These letters probably belong to the end of a name rather than to the number [τ]ρίτου. If the numeral, we find μηνὸς τρίτου on some cities’ inscriptions, but the numeral in the dative in line 4 seems to preclude this. If a numeral it probably applies to some office, official body, or year ([ἔτους τ]ρίτου).

Line 3: We apparently have only the second instance of the day of a month on which a decree was passed attested at Corinth. The second alpha at the end signals that we do not have the koine.

Line 4: Only the upper right tip of a diagonal is visible, and upsilon seems most likely.

Line 5: The inscribing of the preserved portion of this line was difficult because of micaceous flaws in the surface. The letters ΣΣΑΝ belong either to the proper name [Κα]σσαν|[δρ-], or the ethnic [Κα]σσαν|[δρε-]; less likely is the word [θάλα]σσαν. The ethnic [Με]σσαν|[ιο-] seems to be excluded, for the inscriber observes syllabification (cf. line 6) so the iota should have appeared at the end of the line where there is plenty of space. It is not clear whether a patronymic was found in the lacuna, or perhaps the name of a second honorandus.

Line 6: The inscriber was so determined to observe word-end/syllabification that he risked chipping the stone by inscribing the final iota only 0.002 m. from the edge. The resulting chip has left only half of the iota’s hasta. The appearance of the word πολιτεί|[α—] (or [ἰσο]πολιτεί|[α—]) is the strongest indication that we have a proxeny decree (καὶ εἶμεν αὐτῶι καὶ ἐκγόνοις πολιτείαν…), for which we have only one other sure instance at Korinth (ICor 8,1 3).

Line 7: A piece of the tau’s vertical hasta is just visible. It is not clear why the inscriber left so much space to the right. If we compare this inscription with ICor 8,1 3, possibly we have some sort of preamble in lines 1-5 that ends with the phrase [πᾶσαν ἐπιμέλειαν ἐποιήσα]το, and then on the next line we have ἔδοξε τᾶι ἐκκλησίαι… or the verb [ἐψηφίσα]το. On the other hand, given that the name [—]ύ̣δωρον is in the accusative, we expect the clause ἔδοξε τᾶι ἐκκλησίαι to appear just before it, as it does on ICor 8,1 3.

Line 8: The initial traces preserve the tips of two diagonals that favor upsilon over chi. The next letter has only the upper horizontal with its left corner of what must have been a sigma.

Commentary:

We have a decree, probably a proxeny decree, but it is difficult to find a typical reconstruction that fits all the extant lines. Complicating matters of restoration is that on the only other extant proxeny decree from Korinth, there is what appears to be a random vacat of 3 letter spaces in the middle of one of the clauses. An admittedly very laconic reconstruction (and unparalleled from line 6 onwards) of a proxeny decree could be:

               [θεό]ς̣· vac. 0.084 m.               1
[ἐπὶ γραμματέος . .6-7.. ]ρίτου vac. 0.038 m.
[μηνὸς . . . . c. 11 . . .] τετάρται
[ἔδοξε τᾶι ἐκκλησίαι· Ε]ὔ̣δωρον v
[— — patronymic — Κα]σσαν-             5
[δρέα πρόξενον εἶμεν·] πολιτεί-
[αν δὲ αὐτῶι εἶμεν· — —]το vac. 0.030 m.
[— — — — — — — — —]υ̣ς v
[— — — — — — — — — —]

If wider, then we might have:

                                [θ          ε          ό          ]ς̣· vac. 0.084 m.                  1
[ἐπὶ γραμματ— — — — — — — — — — — —]ρίτου vac. 0.038 m.
[— — — — — — — — — — — μηνὸς — — — —] τετάρται
[— — — — — — — — — — ἔδοξε τᾶι ἐκκλησίαι· Ε]ὔ̣δωρον v
[— patronymic — καὶ — nomen — patronymic — Κα]σσαν-                5
[δρεῖς προξένους εἶμεν καὶ εὐεργέτας καὶ εἶμεν αὐτοῖς] πολιτεί-
[αν — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]το vac. 0.030 m.
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]υ̣ς v
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]

At the Digital Classicist work in progress seminar, held at the Insititute for Classical Studies in London on Friday August 8th, Charlotte Roueché gave a presentation under the title, ‘From Stone to Byte: Implications of the XML publication of inscriptions’. She discussed several categories of ancient and mediaeval texts, not only inscriptions, in a whirlwind history of how scholars have developed both “markup” and “citation schemes” to aid in the discussion of texts with other scholars. Editorial conventions and stable citation, both staples of modern scholarship, are the “semantic and structural markup” that are the keystones of TEI XML (and therefore EpiDoc).

Like all of the Digital Classicist seminars this year, Roueché’s presentation is available to download as a pocast audio file and attached slideshow.

Other seminars in this series treated explicitly epigraphic topics, including Porter, Baumann, and Tupman, but most would be worth following for anyone with an interest in the application of computer science to the study of ancient texts.

New York University: Programmer/Analyst (7421BR)

New York University’s Division of the Libraries seeks a Programmer/Analyst to work on the "Papyrological Navigator" (http://papyri.info), a major web-based research portal that provides scholars worldwide with access to texts, transcriptions, images and metadata related to ancient texts on papyri, pottery fragments and other material. The incumbent will work closely with the Project Coordinator (at Columbia University) and with scholars involved in the project at NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, Duke University and the University of Heidelberg, as well as with NYU Digital Library Technology staff.

The incumbent's initial responsibilities will include: migrating existing PN software applications from Columbia University to NYU; optimizing performance as needed; establishing a robust production environment at NYU for the ongoing ingest and processing of new and updated Greek text transcriptions, metadata and digital images; performing both analysis and programming of any required changes or enhancements to current PN applications.

This is a grant-funded position and is available for 2 years.

Candidates should have the following skills:

• Bachelor's degree in computer or information science and 3 years of relevant experience or equivalent combination
• Must include experience developing applications using Java
• Demonstrated knowledge of Java, Tomcat, Saxon, Lucene, Apache, SQL, XML, XSLT
• Experience with metadata standards (e.g. TEI, EpiDoc)
• Experience working in a Unix/Linux environments
• Preferred: Experience with image serving software (eRez/FSI), Java Portlets, Apache Jetspeed-2, and Velocity templates.
• Preferred: Experience designing, building, and deploying distributed systems.
• Preferred: Experience working with non-Roman Unicode-based textual data (esp. Greek)
• Excellent communication and analytical skills

Applicants should submit resume and cover letter, which reflects how applicant’s education and experience match the job requirements.

Please apply through NYU's application management system: www.nyu.edu/hr/jobs/apply.

At this page click on "External Applicants" then "Search Openings." Type 7421BR in the "Keyword Search" field and select search. NYU offers a generous benefit package including 22 days of vacation annually. NYU is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

New York University Libraries: Library facilities at New York University serve the school’s 40,000 students and faculty and contain more than 4 million volumes. New York University is a member of the Association of Research Libraries, the Research Libraries Group, the Digital Library Federation; serves as the administrative headquarters of the Research Library Association of South Manhattan, a consortium that includes three academic institutions. The Library’s website URL is http://library.nyu.edu

This is post VIII on our “Virtual Seminar on Some Unpublished Inscriptions from Corinth.” The seven previous posts may be found by following the links from here. This installment features three joining fragments of a finely prepared revetment of white marble with slightly tan accretions on the face. Fragments A (top left) and B (bottom) were found 13 April, 1935 in Area 1 of the Agora Southeast in a wall. They were later rediscovered on 7 April, 1938 in Agora South Central. Fragment C (top right) was found 9 July, 1976 in West Road Trench IV of Temple Hill. Photo, squeeze, and autopsy of joined stones.

Fragments A & B:
Published: Kent, ICor VIII,3, 115.
Corinth Inventory I 1583 ; NB 147 p. 104 ; NB 176, p. 89 ; CECI III 1583.

Fragment C:
Unpublished.
Corinth Inventory I-76-17; NB 654, p. 10 ; NB(FI) 655, p. 65, Object 664.

Measurements of the joined fragments:
Height, 0.150 m. ; width 0.220 m. ; thickness, 0.023 m.
Height of letters, 0.165 m. ; interspace, 0.020 m.

238-244 p.                NON-STOIX

[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — Ἀντ]ώ̣νι̣ον [•] Οὐ̣α̣[λέριον? • officium?]     1
[τοῦ • Αὐτοκράτορος • Καίσαρος • Μάρκου • Ἀντω]νίου • Γορδιάν[ου • — — — —]
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —].Ο̣Ρ̣Ι̣Ν̣Ο̣Υ̣Α̣Ν̣[— — — —]
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]

Apparatus:

Line 1: At the beginning, only the bottom of a round letter with the rising of a round stroke on the right is visible followed by a nu, then the bottom quarter of a hasta followed by an omicron, followed by another nu. Then there is an empty space below a broken field that is suitable for an interpunct. After the putative interpunct there is an omicron, then the foot of a slightly bowed hasta that is compatible with the upsilon or rho in the line below, which we take to be an upsilon. At the beginning of the line before the new fragment was found, Kent read [—]ο̣ν̣τ̣ο̣λ̣[—], but with the new fragment we can see that the last letter before the supplied interpunct is a nu, not a lamba. The last name could also be restored Οὐ̣α̣[λερίανον] or Οὐ̣ᾶ̣[ρον].

Line 3: The reading is very difficult and not at all secure. At the beginning of the line only the broadening of the tip of a stroke, perhaps diagonal, is visible at the top of the inscribed line. It is followed by the tops of several letters, the space between which does not seem wide enough to accommodate an interpunct. We believe the traces favor the letters given above, which are the same that Kent read. Possibly Κ̣ο̣ρ̣ί̣ν̣⟨θ⟩ο̣υ̣?

Commentary:

The traces in the line above and below Gordian’s name do not appear to be consistent with any of the formulae that usually accompany inscriptions in his honor. The stone possibly honors an Antonius Valerius or an Antonius Valerianus, who may have been an official of Gordian III. For a portrait head of Gordian III found at Corinth, see BCH 99 (1975) 603-4, fig. 39.