The transformation of classic lexica in contemporary electronic media

Abstract

Most Ancient Greek and Latin lexica, as well as classical text editions, are still valid scholarly works, over 70 years after they were published. Which has given classical scholars, unentangled by copyright issues and the related extra costs, a considerable advantage in applying the latest hardware technologies, and developing new software for the transformation of this old---although not out-of-date---printed material, into electronic textual bodies, for the purpose of scholarly research. Thus, paradoxically, computing in the Ancient Greek and Latin classics, especially in North American universities, has been cutting-edge for decades. This paper describes the most important existing classics sites on the Internet (The Perseus Project and TLG), discusses in some detail the theoretical implications of the new technology, provides a demonstration of the kind of research made possible through connecting texts and lexica by means of parsing scripts, and speculates about possible future projects in the context of Icelandic literature in Latin.