Classicists in the 21st Century
Last week, at the ITSEE launch, I –and several other people– had the opportunity to hear Michael Reeve. He delivered a talk called “Disembodying texts: inflammatory thoughts fuelled by the editing of Pliny’s Natural History,” during which he stated that classicists, unlike New Testament scholars and those in other fields, did not readily make use of computer technologies. An alarm went off in my mind, while images of Digital Classicist and Perseus flashed in front of my eyes. Is it possible –I thought– that I have just imagined these things?
Fortunately, a quick look at the Digital Classicist Wiki makes evident that Classicists clearly are making use of electronic resources. Well, then I am not as out of touch as I thought. However, the fact that classicists might be using some electronic resources does not mean that these resources concentrate in textual scholarship. Indeed, a survey of the Projects found in the DC Wiki shows that of the 20 listed projects, only 5 appear to present edited texts (Curse Tablets from Roman Britain, Digital Nestle-Aland Prototype, Electronic Boethius, Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project and Vindolanda Tablets Online). The other 15 projects are databases, archives, concordances and other tools for the study of classical texts. But there is even more, Netither the Digital Nestle-Aland nor the Electronic Boethius really fit in the “Classical box.” The Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament is not in classical Greek and the Boethius is an Anglo-Saxon translation. Naturally, there is nothing wrong with either of these projects, it is just that counting them as Classical takes a leap of faith.
The Intute records for classics does not yet have a separate entry for textual scholarship. Despite that, several interesting resources can be found here –although, one has to work to find them among so many other projects. Notable are: the Aesop Text Project, Homer and the Papyri and The Multitext Edition of Homer.
Given the small number of textual critical projects involving electronic tools in the world of Classics, one has to wonder whether the reluctance to take on the new technologies might be directly proportional to the age of the studied texts. Fortunately, Caroline Macé’s work on Gregory of Nazianzus and especially on the applications of philogenetic software to the study of large textual traditions come to the rescue and stand as examples of the work that Michael Reeve does not seem to have noticed.