09.17.08
Pinakes
A few days ago the announcement of the availability of the database Pinakes has been sent out. It is a tool from the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (CNRS UPR 841, Paris) and contains information about manuscripts from all over the world dated from before 1600.
I was playing around with the tool and found out that, according to this database, 235 manuscripts where in Hamburg, the place were I am working right now. Among these texts, figures one from Hesiod’s Works and Days. With another mouse click, I found out that I could consult another 305 manuscripts containing the same text or parts of it.
I guess that the tool is worth other much deeper researches and I won’t go on fooling around with it ! I hope however I may use it more properly in the future.
It is also worth mentioning that, as the project from the CHS mentioned in the previous post, this French tool allows collaboration from outside in the future.
08.18.07
A Modern Attempt to Put on a Map Demetrios’s Subject Matter
The map shows a modern attempt to repeat what Demetrios did in his time: trying to find places in a real landscape fitting the ones mentioned in the Iliad. The present achievement is about both, the Catalogue of the Ships and the Catalogue of the Trojans. Demetrios was more attached to his homeland and focused on the Trojans and their allies.
This internet page is however also a way of mixing information from ancient sources, like Strabo or Demetrios himself, with a modern stage of the places mentioned. The goal of such undertakings seems double. It is a quest of some readers to find the toponyms mentioned in a text in a real landscape and to give therefore more weight to the story. By starting with the places themselves, it helps to better know ancient geographers or scholars by analysing what was available for them.
08.16.07
Perceptions of Newer Publishing and Communication Practices
The article quoted below is the result of a very stimulating case study about academic values attributed to different methods of publication or communication. It shows the difficulties newer forms of publication encounter in the academic world. One of the main concerns singled out by the study is the supposed lack of peer reviewing and, linked to it, the difficulty to establish the value of the communication submitted in a non-conventional form. Another inconvenience is the absence of storing support for newer forms of publication. This leads to a distinction of works “in-progress” where electronic means are more welcomed and final archival publications done in more traditional forms.
08.08.07
Troad in wikimapia
a view from above:
It is a point of view rather common nowadays. Ancient authors could not see it. Maps were made by mathematical abstraction. Nevertheless some texts describe landscapes from this point of view. First of all passages is maybe (Il. 13. 1-14). Both gods, Zeus and Poseidon, are looking down to earth from far above. This is not at all surprising for Greek gods, but it is more puzzling to think about how the Homeric narrator got this information.
04.24.07
Books: Mapped
The backstage described in a book or mentioned for a story is often neglected by readers but it is nonetheless necessary. There is an attempt made by Google to create a map listing all the place mentioned in one book.
see:
booksearch
be-virtual
Demetrius of Scepsis seems to have done something similar, but with the means of his time.
