Blog: How Much Latin Does ChatGPT “Know”?
By Patrick Burns | July 31, 2023
Blog: Review: The UGARIT Translation Alignment Editor
By ToriLee | July 24, 2023
Review: Reviewing A Digital Edition of Homer
By Bill Beck | May 6, 2018
The Homer Multitext (HMT) has something in common with the poetry it documents: They are both monumental and impressive works whose gradual evolution over many years by many hands has left traces of its past; it exists in several forms that present the same information in slightly different ways, and its development through changing technologies has left occasional redundancies. Like the Iliad, it lives up to its title, but perhaps not in the way one expects. And like its poetic source text, it richly rewards those who plumb its depths.
Blog: What Classicists Can Do with Video Games
By David Fredrick | December 26, 2017
Ongoing discussions in academic circles about the value and purpose of 3-D immersive technologies have lately been sharpened by the emergence of consumer-ready VR and inexpensive game engines, especially Unity. One side of that discussion asserts that, in an academic context, these technologies are primarily valuable to the extent that they advance serious scientific and data visualization research. Others maintain that game design and “play” more broadly are equally important, and can transform how we teach many subjects. One approach does not exclude the other, of course, but my own experience has convinced me of the exciting potential of the latter, play-based, mode. For classicists, interdisciplinary as we are, the 3-D interactive future of research and teaching beyond textbooks holds important opportunities, especially if we take an active, collaborative role in shaping that future.
Blog: A Transitional Latin Reading Environment
By Emma Vanderpool | November 20, 2017
The pitfalls facing intermediate Latin students as they move from a basic knowledge of forms and the simplified Latin of textbooks to actually reading Latin are well-known. It’s not just the artful word order or sophisticated grammar of classical texts. As Kenneth Kitchell emphasized in a well-known article (Kitchell 2000), the geographical and cultural knowledge required can baffle even the student well trained in verb forms, case usage, and syntax. Then there is the well-known tendency of students themselves to ignore low-hanging fruit, to spurn the solicitously extended helping hand in the form of commentaries on their Latin texts, notes specifically designed to help them surmount these difficulties. What can be done?
Amphora: Flipping a Coin—Building a Numismatic Database with Undergraduate Researchers
By Julie Langford | October 2, 2017
This article was originally published in Amphora 11.1. It has been edited slightly to adhere to current SCS blog conventions.
That sinking feeling when you realize you’ve completely underestimated the scope of a project? I’m far more familiar with it than I’d like to admit. It was what I felt when I began analyzing the data I gathered in the library and vaults of the American Numismatic Society on provincial coinage minted under the Severan dynasty. I’d received a grant from my home institution to place the images and legends on provincial coinage in conversation with that of imperial coinage. I thought by doing so, I could bring to life the negotiations of ideology between local concerns and imperial propaganda.
Blog: Sharing Photos of Classical Sites on Flickr
By Carole Raddato | September 5, 2017
As an amateur photographer and ancient history enthusiast, I have spent countless hours exploring ancient sites throughout the Mediterranean. In the process, I accumulated a very large number of photographs that I wanted to archive, edit, and share with the world. In 2009, after 3 years of traveling, I decided to start uploading my photos to Flickr. This photo-sharing site was founded in Canada in 2004, and acquired by Yahoo and moved to the US in 2005. As of fall 2016, the site reportedly had 122 million users in 63 countries and was the repository of 10 billion images, with a million more added on an average day. Size and popularity, however, were not the reasons why I chose Flickr. I wanted a photo site that would allow me to edit, annotate, organize, and store my images.
Blog: Virtual Reality Pompeii
By Rhodora Vennarucci | August 28, 2017
Blog: Approaching Classical Persian
By Gregory Crane | August 7, 2017
The English academic term Classics has conventionally designated the study of Ancient Greek and Classical Latin. The department from which I received both of my academic degrees makes the point explicit: its official name is “the Department of the Classics.” The department focuses upon Greek and Latin and the addition of the definite article asserts that these are the only Classical languages.
Review: Catullus Online
By Christopher Nappa | July 31, 2017
Catullus Online is a freely available digital edition of the poems of Catullus. It can be accessed simply as a Latin text of the poems—in editor Dániel Kiss’s own edition—or with each line linked to a full apparatus. Many poems can also be viewed in photographs from important manuscripts (such as O, courtesy of the Bodleian Library). This is a useful project for its intrinsic value as a new text of Catullus, for its ease of availability, and for the directions it implies for new tools in the study of very old texts. Here I will review it briefly as a text of Catullus, as a website, and finally as groundwork for the kind of online Catullus edition we can hope for in the future.