Classical Allusions: a Tool for High School and Undergraduate Students

Large-scale data mining of classical literature has facilitated studies of classical intertextuality in recent years of a type previously unimaginable. Projects like Tesserae and the Quantitative Criticism Lab’s Filium allow researchers to compare classical texts and identify lexical similarities, opening new vistas for academic research. However, these tools are often out-of-reach to students at the undergraduate or high school level. I aim to provide a tool more closely aligned in the first instance to the AP Latin curriculum. My project enables students to identify allusions between texts familiar to them. It places each text in its historical context and allows students to visualize how the literary dialogue morphs and transforms over the centuries of Roman history. My project provides an accessible entry point into intertextual studies and the digital analysis of a subset of classical texts, beginning with Vergil’s Aeneid. My goal is to offer a tool comprehensible to advanced readers, rather than academic researchers, and to reveal the evolving literary traditions of the ancient world.