Streaming Greek and Latin in an Age of Open Data

For those interested in watching our paper presentations at the Greek and Latin in an Age of Open Data conference, see the live stream and links to youtube videos here. We have one more talk scheduled for 11 am Eastern Time, "Digital Access and the Practicality of Citizen Scholarship." You can also see our first talk, "A Redefinition of Classical Scholarship", on Day 2 of the conference.

Greek and Latin in an Age of Open Data

We're pleased to announce that the Homer Multitext project will be presenting two papers at the "Greek and Latin in an Age of Open Data" conference hosted by the Open Philology Project at the University of Leipzig, December 1-4. You can read our papers "A Redefinition of Classical Scholarship" and "Open Access and the Practicality of Citizen Scholarship" from the conference program.

Textual criticism of the New Testament and a multitextual approach

A multitext approach is particularly important in the case of the Homeric epics, as we have argued a number of times in various publications (for just two examples, see this and this), because it more accurately represents the oral, traditional nature of the poetry. Yet that is not to say that a multitextual approach would not also benefit the textual criticism of other texts, and in ways appropriate to those texts, the state of their extant witnesses, and the history of their criticism. In a recent article, which can be read in its entirety here under a Creative Commons License, the New Testament scholar Claire Clivaz (University of Lausanne in Switzerland) examines the state of textual criticism on the New Testament and argues “that a decisive shift is taking place at this very moment in the editing of the Greek NT, a shift that can be expressed, on the one hand, as an ‘institutional deregulation’ of the scholarly critical edition, but also, on the other hand, as an opportunity to reconsider the way this text should be edited.”

It is, on one level, self-serving to link to this article, because it cites the Homer Multitext as a positive model for reconsidering ways in which the text should be edited. But I do so also because it is instructive for me to understand the state of textual criticism in another field as we continue to think through and construct our digital edition. In her discussion of the history of textual criticism of the NT, Clivaz also points out the factors influencing the ascendency of the relative recent idea of a “one, true text” that seems in our discipline of Classics to have always been the case. Such an understanding of the history of another long-standing discipline and how things have changed over time alerts us to the fallacy that there is only one method of textual criticism that has always been practiced and is therefore the only possible correct way. Such a realization frees us to be more open to the possibilities that digital tools and access to the primary sources allows. 

3rd century papyrus of the New Testament, now housed at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia,
available on line here: http://www.csntm.org/Manuscript/View/GA_P1

As optimistic as the decisive moment that Clivaz identifies in her field may seem, though, I was particularly attentive to her warning that a new on-line edition of the NT offered by the Society for Biblical Literature actually represents a step backwards in the textual criticism of the NT, because it “implies overall a return to the 19th edition of Westcott & Hort (1881; 2007) wherein all of the information provided by the papyri, for example, is omitted… and with the chief purpose of conveying the impression that scholars have finally achieved a stable, unified, and simplified Greek text of the NT.” This situation in New Testament Studies is a good reminder that just because an edition is digital and on-line, it is not necessarily progressive in its textual criticism.

Manuscript Collation in the 21st Century

It seems worth restating an obvious benefit that the on-line publication of high resolution images of multiple Homeric manuscripts offers. As was made clear to us again and again during our recent two week summer seminar, when you find something in a manuscript that you don't understand, it is often illuminating to look at other manuscripts. When Martin West or Helmut Van Thiel made their editions of the Iliad, if they wanted to check the contents of the Venetus A directly, they had to make a costly trip to Venice, where they might be allowed to look at the manuscript for a few hours, perhaps, if they were very lucky, over the course of a few days. (When our team was in Venice, we were able to in fact see the handwritten log of visitors that recorded these visits.) If West or Van Thiel noticed something that reminded them, however vaguely, of something they had seen in one of the Escorial manuscripts in Spain, another costly and time consuming trip would have been required to make a comparison. (I believe Martin West was in fact able to make use of a microfilm provided by the Esorial, as have we before we photographed those manuscripts. But he almost certainly was not able to use that microfilm while looking at the Venetus A.) Last week at the seminar, we were able to make direct comparisons again and again between manuscripts that have perhaps never been in the same room. So for example, when students noticed a particular siglum in book 7 of the Venetus A that was used to connect a small subset of intermarginal scholia with the word being commented upon in the poem — a method of linking not typical in the Venetus A, which relies instead upon placement and lemmata to connect text and scholia —we were immediately able to look at Escorial manuscript Ω.1.12 (E4), which makes use of a similar siglum for a particular group of scholia in that manuscript.

In the next month we are planning to make available on a test server an all new manuscript browser. Unlike previous versions, this one will be able to display all of our data, and it will do so in a way that will make perfectly clear the relationships between all the different materials we have collected so far. So for example, you'll be able to ask for line 1.1 of the Iliad, and you'll get a page that will give you the option to also display, in addition to the Greek text of any given manuscript for which we have a diplomatic edition, the manuscript folios and papyri that contain that verse, and what scholia comment upon it. The more editions that we create and publish, the more options there will be for you to choose from. So very soon you will able to collate manuscripts from Spain and Venice (and Geneva and London and so on) side by side, something that has never before been realistically possible. The system will always be a work in progress, in that we will continue to feed it new data as we acquire or create it, but the tools themselves that will enable such browsing are elegant, simple, and flexible — not to mention open source and platform independent. We look forward to sharing this exciting new development with you soon.

The Venetus A and Escorial manuscript Ω.1.12 side by side

The Scribe as Editor, or What the Images Can Tell Us

An on-going research question addressed by the Homer Multitext in the past two years has been the precise relationship between the manuscript known as the Venetus B and Escorialensis Υ.I.1, or E3 (= West E). As we have noted, the layout of the two manuscripts is virtually identical, the primary difference being that in the Venetus B a second set of scholia was written in the available space approximately two centuries later.

This week I have been editing the text of book 3 of the Iliad in still another manuscript, E4 (Escorialensis Ω.I.12, = West F). In the course of that research I have found several places, all in a relatively brief span of lines, where the Venetus B and E3 differ. This alone would be an interesting finding, but having access to high resolution images of the two manuscripts has allowed me to put together a more precise understanding of these differences than a traditional apparatus alone would have. (Though as we will see, West's apparatus has been very helpful to me in my research.) In fact, the images show that in each case, the Venetus B has been corrected by the scribe, who seems to have been comparing his own text to that of another manuscript. In these places the scribe has chosen to erase the text he originally copied, and insert the new reading. The implications of this practice for our understanding of the relationship between B and E3 will be considered at the end of this post.We will also see in this example that having access to the images can correct and clarify the scholarly apparatus in modern editions in important ways.

Here are some examples that I came across this week:

At 3.102, the Venetus B (folio 43v) reads διακρινθῆτε, but B looks like it has been corrected here. (Zoom up on the image as far as possible to see the evidence of correction.) If we compare it to the corresponding spot on E4 (folio 28r) we see that E4 also reads διακρινθῆτε, but records the alternate reading διακρινθεῖτε above the line.

Detail from folio 28r in E4, showing verse 3.102

The alternate reading in E4, διακρινθεῖτε, is the reading of the text in the Venetus A, T, and significantly, E3. Let us note for now simply that 1) B and E3 have different readings; 2) E4 presents both readings; and finally, most manuscripts in fact have διακρινθῆτε (the seemingly corrected reading of B).

At 3.221,  the Venetus B (folio 46r) once again appears to have been corrected. (This is the view of West, as recorded in his apparatus, presumably based on personal inspection of the manuscript.)  The corrected text reads εἵη, but the original breathing seems to have been a smooth, so that the text would have read εἴη before correction. εἵη (with a rough breathing) is the reading of several papyri and the Venetus A. E3, however, (along with Laurentianus 32.15 and the Genenavensis) reads εἴη (with a smooth breathing).

E4, along with the ninth-century manuscript Z and also Laurentianus 32.3, record still another reading: ἵει. But if we look at the image of E4 (folio 29v), we can see that it too has been corrected:

Detail from folio 29v of E4, showing verse 3.221

West's view (again recorded in his apparatus, and presumably the result of personal inspection) is that the reading of E4 before correction was εἵη (the corrected reading of B). So here is another place where 1) there is division among the manuscripts; 2) the scribe of B has changed his original reading; and 3) E3 matches the reading that B had BEFORE correction.

At 3.301, we have perhaps the most interesting case yet. Several papyri, scholia (from West’s manuscripts M, N, P), the Venetus A, E3, and T read δαμεῖεν here. E4 on the other hand reads μιγεῖεν, which is also found in the lemma of the D scholia (such as in the 9th century manuscript Ve1 [= West Z]) and is written as variant in superscript in T. μιγεῖεν is the text of most mss (except those cited above).

The Venetus B (folio 47v) AFTER correction reads μιγεῖεν, but I think you can see if you zoom up that BEFORE correction it read δαμεῖεν:

Detail of Folio 47v of the Venetus B, showing verse 3.301

(Go to the full image to see this most clearly. It can be difficult to distinguish between bleed through on the other side and the erased text, but I believe that I see the brownish ink of the delta.) Unfortunately, the apparatus of Allen in his editio maior is incorrect here: he cites B as reading δαμεῖεν.

So here is our third case of E3 reading what B had BEFORE correction. The corrections in B are in a darker ink, but they do not appear to be in another or later hand. What seems most likely is that the scribe, after copying the main text of poem from one source, collated it against another source, sometimes correcting the text he had previously written to agree with the second source over the first. I think we can also see that this is what the scribe of E4 has done as well. In addition to the examples discussed here, I have found at least six other places within this same brief span of lines where the text is divided among manuscripts and E4 has clear evidence of having been corrected.

This examination, therefore, suggests two import conclusions. First, it does not seem that E3 is a direct copy of the Venetus B, at least not in its final, edited form. It must be either a copy of B before it was collated against another source, or, what is more likely, B and E3 (which are roughly contemporaneous) were copied from the same exemplar. B's text was collated against a second manuscript, but E3's was not. Secondly, and conceptually more important is our understanding that the scribes of these manuscripts were not simply unthinking copyists, but in fact were making sophisticated editorial choices on the basis of comparison of manuscripts. It is intriguing to see that E4 often corrects to a reading that is found in most manuscripts. Might he have had several sources to look at at once? If so, our Medieval scribes in Constantinople may well have been more like the Alexandrian editors working a millennium before them than they are traditionally given credit for.

A traditional apparatus, such as those of West and Allen, can be extremely useful for comparing the readings of many different manuscripts. But those apparatus can be difficult to understand, and often contain mistakes or omissions. (See that of Allen discussed above. West does not record that at verse 3.231, where there is division among the manuscripts, E4 has been corrected, even though the original text is still quite clear to the eye.) Having access to these images has been invaluable to me as I try to work with the text and understand the relationship between E4 and that of other manuscripts. And in this case, it has given us important evidence about the connection between our "twin" manuscripts, B and E3. It is our hope that the Homer Multitext will likewise greatly aid the process of discovery for other scholars as they undertake their own investigations of the transmission of the text.

Review of Poetics of Ambush

An incredibly kind review of Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush appeared in Bryn Mawr Classical Review today. I was particularly pleased that the reviewer commented on the multitextual aspect of the book and linked to the HMT.

Homeric Papyri Service Online

Homer and the Papyri, was first created by Professor Dana Sutton of the University of California, Irvine, to be a database of fragments of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey that survive on papyrus from Graeco-Roman Egypt.

The Center for Hellenic Studies inherited this valuable data, and the project is now under the editorship of Casey Dué and Mary Ebbott, as part of the ongoing Homer Multitext project.

We are pleased to announce the first publication of a new service for scholars and readers interested in Homeric papyri: The Homeric Papyri Canonical Text Service. This is an application hosted on Google AppEngine. While the service is intended primarily to allow other online applications to discover and retrieve texts and passages of text, it does provide a human-readable interface to these papyri.

The texts as delivered by this service include full editorial markup, in TEI-P5-compliant XML. The human-readable form (visible by default) intentionally hides any text that is not physically present on the papyrus. Future versions of the user-interface to this service may give the option to show or hide editorially supplied text at the user’s discretion.

For more information on the Canonical Text Services Protocol (“CTS”), see the project’s Sourceforge site.

— Christopher W. Blackwell