Digital Philology
Introduction:
As discussed in Module 2, Classical Studies is primarily a literary field. Central to the study of any literature is a grasp of the language in which a particular text was written, which is ancient Greek or Latin in the case of Classical Studies scholarship. Every Classical Studies student knows all too well the agony and tedium of dissecting the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of ancient Greek and Latin so that they might be able to read in their original language the works that interest them. Progress is slow and real proficiency takes many years. There would be no Classical Studies scholarship without a firm, working knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin.
But as many senior Classical Studies students have learned, ancient languages change over time and are found in a number of different dialects. In the same way that the English of Chaucer differs markedly from the English written in Canada in the 21st Century, so too does the Greek in Homer’s Iliad, written down perhaps in the eighth Century BCE, differ considerably from the koine Greek of the New Testament, written many centuries later. Any student who has tried to read the work of the Elder Cato (234-139 BCE) after a steady diet of Cicero’s (106 – 43 BCE) speeches and letters is aware of just how much the Latin language evolved in the roughly 130 years separating Cicero from Cato. Spellings and grammatical forms evolve, and the use of words and their meanings can undergo considerable change. Reading a text accurately and extracting meaning from it therefore requires a grasp not only of the basic grammar and vocabular as these are covered in Greek and Latin textbooks, but a working knowledge of how Greek and Latin evolved over time. In other words, Classical Studies scholarship is fundamentally linguistic in nature.[1]
As discussed in the lecture video for this module, linguistics as a field can be subdivided into several sub-fields. The sub-fields relevant to Classical Studies scholarship are ‘historical linguistics’ (the study of the origins and evolution of a language and its relationship to other languages), ‘philology’ (the study of words, their etymology, and their meaning, as well as of grammar and syntax), and ‘textual criticism’ (the application of historical linguistics and philology to the manuscript tradition of a particular work to establish an authoritative edition). All three areas are briefly discussed in the lecture for this module, however, most attention is paid to the subject of philology. This is because Classical Studies has for generations been thought of as synonymous with philology and because philology lends itself to digitization and machine learning applications that historical linguistics and textual criticism do not, or at least have not to date. The objective of this module is therefore to introduce students to the place of philology in Classical Studies research before turning to some of the open access digital tools that have be