Greek and Latin Tools and Texts

The Perseus site has undergone a major transformation. It now contains:

Encyclopaedia of the Hellenistic world
A large number of articles on all aspects of the Greek life and History, together with maps, a gazeteer, some books, including Greek grammars, and a huge database of pictures.

Greek & Latin Literature with translations
A large number of Greek works and some significant Latin works. Most words are tagged to produce an English definition and morpholical analysis when you click on them. Hint: the definitions always go to a separate window which sometimes gets hidden under your main browser window. One can seach these texts for Greek words, Greek phrases, Latin words or Latin phrases in their lexical form.

Greek & Latin Papyri with Greek morphological seaching
Almost all published Greek and Latin papyri are here. They have been imported from the PHI Duke Papyri. Most words are tagged to produce an English definition and morpholical analysis when you click on them. Hint: the definitions always go to a separate window which sometimes gets hidden under your main browser window. You can search them for Greek words, phrases or words near each other, in lexical or morpholical form.

Greek & Latin Lexicons including LSJ
Words can be looked up in English in Greek or in Latin. Includes Liddell & Scott Intermediate Lexicon (ML), Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon of Classical Greek (LSJ9), and the Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary. When the entry includes examples which are in the Perseus site, one can click on them to read them.

Greek & Latin morpholigical analysis
Type in an unaccented Greek or Latin word, and get a morphological analysis, with links to lexicons for fuller definitions.

Greek & Latin Synonym & Contextual analysis
The Synonyms are collected by looking for similar English definitions, so they may not be synonyms at all. The Contextual analysis looks for words which commonly occur within 5 words. These are two powerful tools, but they should be used with care because they are based on computer analysis rather than human selection.

Fonts
To start using Perseus, you do not need to any font, because the Greek can be read in a very straightforward Latin transliteration font, though without accents. To use the resources fully, you need to install a Greek font onto your computer.
All the links and information about fonts is on the Tyndale site at http://www.TyndaleHouse.com/Perseus.htm

Using Perseus at high speed.
Like most USA sites, it is much faster before noon, when the USA wakes up.The future of Perseus looks interesting. They have started a mirror site in Germany (though this doesn't have the Papyri yet) and they will have a mirror in Oxford. I will change the links to whichever site is fastest.

TLG on Perseus
The TLG will probably be added to Perseus in the future, as a subscription service. This will mean the the Greek texts are linked to lexicons in the same way as other Perseus texts. This is not official, as far as I know, and is based on my snooping, so it may not be accurate.

More Latin resources - http://www.bps.sa.edu.au/faculties/latin/
This tells you about what is available, and what is being developed.There is no Latin translation service which I know of though one can type a phrase and get a list of definitions at:http://www.bps.sa.edu.au/faculties/latin/grammar.html or try out the experimental program at: http://www.levity.com/alchemy/latin/latintrans.html

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Update Feb 2000
A few new resources for Greek and Latin background to the NT have become available recently.

TLG CD version E
This long-awaited upgrade to the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae is available at last. The TLG is often said to contain 'all the Greek literature from the year dot to 600 CE'. But the wise examined the PHI web site, which listed a huge number of authors which had not yet been entered (see http://www.tlg.uci.edu/NEW_on_E.html ). The new CD is finally here. It is a free upgrade to anyone who has a current licence, though you have to send in your old CD for the upgrade. PHI are sending out forms to all licencees. Make sure your librarian sends in the form.

Latin Inscriptions by Malitz
Prof. Malitz at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt has made a database of virtually all published Latin inscriptions. It is available online at: http://gnomon.ku-eichstaett.de/Gnomon/ILS.html This data is also available on a Windows CD with a faster interface. This is free to academic institutions. Email Jürgen Malitz <100270.3107@compuserve.com> for a copy. You can see it working at Tyndale House. This database is very important because these inscriptions are not available on any of the PHI CDs. He is also in the process of producing a Greek inscription database. The early version of this is on the free CD. These Greek inscriptions are already available on PHI CD#7, though Malitz's version has a useful introduction to each text.

The Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg
has a similar project, and they too are adding introductions to the text, and they seem to be working with Malitz so that they don't overlap. But it will be a long time before these two sites cover as many texts as as the PHI CD. Many thanks to Dirk Jongkind for pointing me to these sites. The Heidelberg site is at: http://www-uni.urz.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/sonst/adw/edh/recherchen.html

Marriage & Divorce Papyri
This is my own offering. I found, to my frustration, that no-one had ever collected the marriage and divorce papyri, which I needed for my research. I have found over 170 papyri, which I think is an exhaustive collection. It covers 4thC BCE to 4thC CE, including Greek. Latin and Aramaic texts. They are all found at: http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Brewer/marriagepapyri/index.htm

Perseus site
This isn't new, but don't forget it. This is an unparalleled source of Greek and Latin Papyri. Use the Tyndale page to find the best bits of this sometimes confusing site: http://www.TyndaleHouse.com/Perseus.htm

Update Apr. 2000
There have been some significant improvements for those who wish to study ancient Greek documents.
1) Links from TLG to the Perseus - automatic lookup for Greek words.
2) Changes (improvements?) to the Perseus site

1) Links from TLG to the Perseus - automatic lookup for Greek words.
The Perseus site has an automated Greek morphology engine - type in a word and get all the possible grammatical breakdowns. Try http://perseus.csad.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/morphindex?lang=Greek&corpus=2.0&display=Sgreek

This is available from within Silver Mountain TLG (and has been for some time), and is now greatly improved with the better, faster Perseus.You just put the cursor in a word, right-click on it and select Perseus Morphological Analysis. This sends a link to the Perseus analysis engine and up pops a complete grammatical breakdown in your browser (Netscape or Internet Explorer), from where you can click on LSJ to get the complete Liddle & Scott (& Jones) lexicon. By the way, you have to have the browser running before you click.

Faster access for Europeans: There is a hidden feature in the new version for the TLG CD E which allows Europeans to change the Perseus site which the TLG uses. In Europe we have two mirrors, at Oxford and Berlin, which are MUCH faster than the USA site. To use the Oxford site:1) Start up TLG Workplace, and click on "Setup", then "Edit SMI.INI"2) Paste the following line under the words "[TLGWorkplace]":PerseusURL=http://perseus.csad.ox.ac.ukor, for Berlin PerseusURL=http://perseus.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de3) Exit and save SMI.INI, then exit and restart TLG Workplace.

The Oxford site has had some technical problems recently, and also gets busy sometimes, so the Berlin site is sometimes better even from the UK.
At Tyndale we are getting some faster hardware to make the maximum use of this, but it should work fine on any PC with an internet connection.

2) Changes (improvements?) to the Perseus site
There are several changes at the Perseus site, though most of them are cosmetic. Some of the features are still difficult to find, so I still recommend you use the Tyndale Perseus page to find your way around the site. I have updated it accordingly:http://www.TyndaleHouse.com/Perseus.htm

Some of the new features at Perseus:
* A new location bar at the top of manuscripts so you can quickly move to the middle or end of a text. You can also type in the chapter/paragraph number you are looking for.
* A new Configure Display feature in the side menu remembers your preferences, whether you like to read translations or text, and which font you like to use. For those who, like me, want to use more than one font, there is a work-around for this 'feature' below.
* A new Contents tool. This is quite useful for listing all the texts on Perseus. It is at http://perseus.csad.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/perscoll

A word about fonts and Perseus.
The SMK font is the best looking, and available for Macs and PCs. Download it for free from http://perseus.csad.ox.ac.uk/Help/Athenian_Font.htmlIf you are using Bible Windows or TLG with Silver Mountain Software, the more useful font is SGreek, which comes with these products. It is also available as a shareware font costing $20 from http://www.silvermnt.com/fonts.htmNeither of these is ideal when you have to type words into a search engine with an English keyboard. Most of the alphabet is obvious, except for:SMK: Eta = h, Theta = q, Xi = j, Phi = f, Chi = c, Psi = c, Omega = vSGreek: Eta = h, Theta = q, Xi = c, Phi = f, Chi = x, Psi = y, Omega = w

I think SGreek is the most intuative, but neither are as easy as the Transliteration font:Transliteration: Eta = e^ or h, Theta = th, Xi = x, Phi = ph, Chi = ch, Psi = ps, Omega = w or o^

The new Configure Display tool is useful, but they have removed other facilies to change your font. Once you have set your preference, this over-rides other settings.This is OK if you want to stick with one font, but I like switching between Transliteration and Greek font. It is very easy to type a Greek word in with the Transliteration font but it is easier to read a Greek text with a Greek font. So I used to type Greek words with Transliteration, find the text, and then change the Greek font to read the text. If you still want to do this, there is a work-around:
1) Never use the Configure display tool, or delete your Perseus cookie if you have already used it. (Cookies are in C:\Windows\Cookies)2) Append the following to the text in the location bar, without leaving a space, then hit enter:&display=SMK or &display=Sgreek or &display= [this last one sets Transliteration]