PETRAE
A computer programme for processing Greek and
Latin epigraphical texts.
The world of epigraphy has a long scientific tradition,
which goes back to the 19th century. This was precisely the time
when the Berlin Academy launched the huge enterprise of the Corpus
Inscriptionum Latinarum and Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum,
(which later became Inscriptiones Graecae). The corpora
gathered, or were supposed to do so, all the documents of a specific
region. This brilliant project has never been abandoned and continues
to be actively pursued, but a variety of circumstances, primarily
political ones, have prevented it from fully reaching its goal.
Over time, many other corpus volumes and also some very serviceable
Repertoria-style collections of inscriptions have been added,
which help immensely in the daily work of scholarship, and offer
convenient access to material otherwise scattered in an infinity
of books, periodicals, and other publications. Publication in
the form of a book, which until recently has been the only method
available, suffers, however, from its necessarily static character.
New inscriptions are constantly being discovered but updating
is impossible, except in the form of a new edition - a possibility
excluded in the majority of cases by the difficulty and cost of
the enterprise.
In the computer age, new forms of publication
are becoming available which make it conceivable to reach the
original goal of providing up-to-date collections of documents
from all the different parts of the ancient world. The PETRAE
programme was launched by the Centre Pierre Paris, now the Ausonius
Institute, of the Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux
III, to help towards this aim.
The project takes the form of a database programme,
written in the 4th Dimension software environment for Macintosh.
This programme is supplied at no charge, provided that the recipient,
individual researcher or institution, agrees to contribute for
a specific region to the above mentioned database by making available
the file when it is completed. The PETRAE team will then do its
best to publish the information in an electronic format - the
Internet seemingly being the most appropriate form to achieve
this goal. Meanwhile, users will always have full liberty to produce
books, articles, and other publications at their own expense and
responsibility, using the automatic edition routines included
in the PETRAE programme, making sure that in doing so copyrights
will not conflict with the electronic Internet database publication
eventually envisaged. A commitment to regular up-dating of the
database would also be highly appreciated.
The PETRAE programme allows a full treatment of
all the aspects of an epigraphic document. Every form is identified
by its author, with a record of date of entry and, if carried
out, of revision of the document. The basic data concern the stone
and text. The place of origin, material, decoration, state of
preservation and dimensions, are the main components of the description
of the stone (or other object). Photos or other graphic documents
(at this stage and in the present state of the database, in PICT
format) can be stored and accessed at will. The text is then described
by defining its origin (which may be different from the place
where the stone was set up, viz. a decree of Histiaea in Delos),
letter shapes and dimensions, and principal contents (fig. 1).
The text itself is accompanied by an apparatus criticus, translation
and commentary on its main aspects. A full bibliography can also
be added. No field needs to be filled in if the information cannot
be obtained (for instance if a stone is lost) or is irrelevant.
The general philosophy is to use a key world field, then if necessary
to provide a fuller (but concise) comment in a supplementary field.
Key words are in French, but texts and comments may be entered
in any modern language using a Roman character font.
The text of the inscription, Greek or Latin, must
be stored using the fonts Hellas V4 and Latin V4 (provided with
the database). The Greek font has the special advantage of supplying
all the characters currently used in epigraphy, numeral signs
included.
Fig. 1: PETRAE viewed in a Netscape
Navigator browser window. This example shows how a fully
lemmatised text of an inscription can be generated.
Texts of inscriptions can then be semi-automatically
processed to produce indexes: a first step (fully automatic) generates
a concordance of all the words in the inscriptions, sorted by document,
line number and position in the line (as in fig. 2); a second step
(semi-automatic) offers the opportunity to define the dictionary
entry of the different words, and also to specify, in accordance
with a definition list, the historical definition of all the words
beginning with a capital letter; a third step (optional) offers
the possibility of supplementary historical encoding (identity of
persons mentioned, rank or function, such as magistrates, kings
or Roman emperors, etc.). All the information can be corrected,
sorted and accessed by specific menus. The information in the different
files can be made the object of separate or combined searches.
Fig. 2: PETRAE viewed in a Netscape
Navigator browser window. This example illustrates PETRAE's
ability to generate a Greek index
All the information in the database - stone, text,
indexes, and bibliographical concordance - can be fully automatically
edited in two formats: either in RTF format for word processor (an
option available to any user), or in HTML format for the Internet
(an option restricted to the administrators of the database, who
will take charge of the diffusion of the information). The RTF edition
programme offers a high quality output format which can generate
a document ready to print. In HTML format, text, indexes and bibliographical
concordance are linked by hypertext references, so that PETRAE HTML
documents effectively become fully dynamic corpora, a fact which
in itself constitutes a dramatically new philosophy in epigraphic
corpora. The Greek texts may be edited in either Hellas V4 or Kadmos
fomat, the Latin texts in LatinV4 or LatinÉpigraphique.
The PETRAE team, which has already produced a
series of books using this method, now expects to install its
first HTML files for Internet access. Files from different parts
of Gaul (Aquitania), Northern Spain, Sardinia, Tunisia, Greece,
Cyprus and Turkey will be made available as soon as they are ready.
We hope that this example will be followed by new proposals of
collaboration and that in the long run the landscape will be ever
more densely populated.
