It is happening

A couple of hours ago, I was sitting out on the back deck with my wife and pets, enjoying perfect temperatures, morning birdsong, lavender-scented country air, and a cup of freshly brewed Costa Rican coffee (roasted by the good folks at the Kaffeeklatsch in Huntsville). Idyllic.

I was flipping through the latest news stories, blog posts, and such, brought into my phone by my feed reader (currently Feedly). I was trying to ignore the omnipresent bad news of the world, when this popped up:

Forma[m] Lollianus fecit?!? I'm predisposed by my dissertation experience to trigger on certain Latin and Greek words because of their sometime significance for the study of Roman geography. Forma is of course one of those words, and it does (probably more often than justified) get translated as "map" or "plan." Could this be — admittedly against the odds —an inscription on a map or plan drafted or surveyed by some guy named Lollianus?

If you're me, the possibility warrants a click-through to a corresponding record in the Heidelberg Epigraphic Databank (EDH).

My mappish hopes were quickly dashed, but just as quickly were replaced by interest in a group of inscribed objects I hadn't run across before: mirrors from Roman Dacia bearing makers' inscriptions. "Forma" can mean "mirror"? A quick check of Lewis & Short at Perseus doesn't support that idea, but builds confidence in a better interpretation: "mold, stamp, form". Was this mirror, or some part of it, somehow cast or stamped out? The EDH entry tells me there are 9 identical mirrors extant and that the inscription goes around the "Fassung" (frame?). Yup.

Cool. I learned something today before breakfast. And it's knowledge I can use when I come back to doing more with the geographical/mapping/surveying vocabulary.

And then it hits me: that's not information I went looking for, not a search I initiated. New information of interest was pushed to me because I had previously used a software tool to express interest in a number of information sources including, but not limited to, ancient inscriptions. The software kept an eye on new output from those sources and made it available to me for review and engagement in a mode and at a time and place of my choosing. And because the source data was online, open, and linked in a standard format, I was able to drink coffee and pet my dog on the back deck in Moontown, Alabama while making use of the scholarly work done yesterday(!) by Brigitte Gräf in Heidelberg, Germany.

Isn't this one of the things we've been working toward?

How did that happen?

Sometime earlier this year, Frank Grieshaber in Heidelberg rolled out web page listings and corresponding Atom feeds of recently changed content in the EDH (e.g., latest updates to the inscriptions database). I added them, along with similar data-oriented feeds, to a feed aggregator I dubbed Planet Potamos (with "Potamos" trying lamely to evoke a rushing river of data; the "Planet" acknowledges the feed aggregation software I use). I put the same feed subscriptions into my personal feed reader (I could also have put the Potamos aggregator's feed, but it only updates periodically and I'm an immediacy junkie). I installed and configured my feed reader on every device I use.

The rest is magic. Magic made the old-fashioned way by lots of people in many different places and times developing standards, building software, creating data, doing research, and sharing.

What next?

Well, I hope that Frank and his colleagues in Heidelberg will eventually add thumbnail images (where they have them) to the EDH feeds. I hope that the other epigraphic databases (and indeed all kinds of ancient studies web applications) will set up similar feeds. I hope that we can all start using more linked-data approaches in and alongside such feeds in order to communicate seminal interpretive/discovery facets (like geography, personography, temporality and genre) in machine-actionable ways. I hope the spirit and practice of openness that lubricates and accelerates this sort of synergy continues to grow and flower.

As for me, I'm thinking about how I might set up some kind of filtering mechanism that would highlight or prioritize content in my feed reader that's potentially relevant to my (e.g.) geo/map/survey vocabulary interests. Hmmmmm....

People from my dissertation in RDF

On the road to turning my dissertation into linked data I've minted URIs for, and produced basic RDF for, all of the historical individuals I dealt with examining boundary disputes internal to the early Roman empire.

I used foaf:Person, foaf:name, and bio:olb (the latter from the BIO Vocabulary for Biographical Information, developed by Ian Davis and David Galbraith). The Roman emperors who appear in my list have been aligned to dbpedia resources using owl:sameAs. I intend to do more alignments in future to resources like dbpedia and viaf.org.

Here's the XML I started from (part of an Open Document Text format file I converted from Word), and the XSLT I used to produce the Turtle RDF, which was then cleaned up by hand.

More to come.

First pass at extracting useful data from my dissertation

You'll find context in yesterday's post on the dissertation.

It turns out it wasn't as hard as I anticipated to start getting useful information extracted from my born-digital-for-printing-on-dead-trees dissertation. Here's a not-yet-perfect xml serialization (borrowing tags from the TEI) of "instance" information found in the diss narrative:

https://github.com/paregorios/demarc/blob/master/xml/instances.xml

Each instance is a historical event (or in some cases event series) relating to boundary demarcation or dispute within the empire. Here's a comparison between the original formatting for paper and the xml.

For paper:

XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<div type="instance" xml:id="INST9">
  <idno type="original">INST9</idno>
  <head>A Negotiated Boundary between the <placeName 
    type="ancient">Zamucci</placeName> and the <placeName 
    type="ancient">Muduciuvi</placeName></head>
  <p rend="indent">Burton 2000, no. 78</p>
  <p>Date(s): <date>AD 86</date></p>
  <p type="treDisputeStatement">This boundary marker was placed in 
    accordance with the agreement of both parties (<foreign xml:lang="la">ex 
    conven/tione utrarumque nationum</foreign>), and therefore may be taken as
    evidence of a <hi rend="bold">boundary dispute</hi>.</p>
  <p rend="indent">This single boundary marker from coastal <placeName 
    type="modern">Libya</placeName> provides the only evidence for the resolution
    of a boundary dispute between these two indigenous peoples. The date of the 
    demarcation, as calculated from the imperial titulature, places the event in 
    the same year as the reported ‘destruction’ of the <placeName 
    type="ancient">Nasamones</placeName> by <placeName type="ancient">Legio III 
    Augusta</placeName> as a consequence of a tax revolt in which tax collectors 
    were killed.<note n="286"> Zonaras 11.19. </note> It is not clear whether 
    the boundary action was related to the conflict, or merely took advantage of
    the temporary presence of the legionary legate in what ought to have been
    part of the proconsular province. Surviving documentation for proconsuls
    during the 80s AD is incomplete, and therefore we cannot say who was
    governing <placeName type="ancient">Africa Proconsularis </placeName>at the 
    time of this demarcation.<note n="287"> Thomasson 1996, 45-48. </note>
    Neither party seems to have been related to the <placeName 
    type="ancient">Nasamones</placeName>; rather, they are thought to be sub-
    tribes of the <placeName type="ancient">Macae.</placeName><note 
    n="288">Mattingly 1994, 27-28, 32, 74, 76.. </note></p>
</div>

One thing that made this a lot easier than it might of been was the way I used styles in Microsoft Word back when I created the original version of the document. Rather than just painting formatting onto my text for headings, paragraphs, strings of characters, and so forth, I created a custom "style" for each type of thing I wanted to paint (e.g., an "instance heading" or a "personal name"). I associated the desired visual formatting with each of these, but the names themselves (since the captured semantic distinctions that I was interested in) provided hooks today for writing this stuff out as sort-of TEI XML.

There's more to do, obviously, but this was a satisfying first step.

Thraces and Moesi update

Nikolay Sharankov has just posted a thorough and helpful response to my recent query about a Roman boundary inscription from Bulgaria.

He includes revised readings -- not only of the inscription for which I have the photo -- but for all four originally published by Hristov in Minalo.

Demarcation Between the T(h)races and Moesi

In working up our OpenLayers + SVG image tracing demo today, Sean and I selected a picture of a Roman boundary marker as our example image. Charlotte Roueché had taken this picture in the garden of the Bulgarian National Museum in 2006. She sent it to me because of the work I'd done on my Chapel Hill dissertation about Roman boundary markers. This particular inscription proved to belong to an instance of demarcation that I'd treated in the dissertation, but this text was not specifically in my catalog. I assumed it was either unpublished, or had been so at the time I was finishing the dissertation.

It appears now that this inscription is either unpublished, or I've failed to spot the publication. I provide the account and background below in the hopes that readers can provide a citation for this particular text, or information about other evidence related to this particular event that I have so far missed. Corrections to what follows are also welcome.

Background

In 2003 or so I wrote (for the dissertation) about this group of inscriptions as follows:

Six boundary markers from various sites in Bulgaria attest to a demarcation between the provinces of Thracia and Moesia Inferior [in AD 135]. These are the only markers in the published epigraphic record that explicitly marked a provincial boundary without making reference to any of the cities or communities in either province. The word provincia is not used. The ethnics corresponding to the provincial names are: Moesi and Thraces. The markers were placed, on Hadrian’s authority, by an otherwise unknown individual named [M(arcus)] Antius Rufus, who is thought to have been acting as a special legate of the emperor. It is most unlikely that he was a governor of either of the provinces in question, since neither governor can have possessed a sufficient span of jurisdiction to affect both provinces. The context and motivation for this demarcation are completely obscure.

Here's a transcription and translation of this particular text, made from the image:

ex auctoritate
Imp(eratoris) Cae(saris) divi
Tra(iani) Parth(ici) f(i)l(i) di-
vi Nerv(ae) nep(otis) Tra(iani)
Had(riani) Aug(usti) p(atris) p(atriae) poṇ[t?]-⁵
if(icis) maxi(mi) trib(unicia) poṭ(estate)
XX co(n)s(ulis) III M(arcus) An[ti?]-
us Rufinus inter
T(h)racas (!) et Moe-
sos fines posụ[it?]¹⁰
vacat

By the authority of the emperor Caesar, son of the god Trajan Parthicus, grandson of the god Nerva, Trajan Hadrian Augustus, father of the country, pontifex maximus, (holding the) tribunician power 20 (times), consul 3 (times), M(arcus) Antius Rufinus placed boundaries between the Thraces and the Moesi.

Notes

The rectangular stone was prepared with a deep rectangular campus that left a heavy external border (I do not have measurements). This frame (and an uninscribed portion of the campus) is broken away at the top right corner. Beginning at the level of line 7, the border has been snapped away at a depth just below that of the campus. The bottom of the stone is missing, but it is clear that the main text terminates above a large empty space before the break.

• 5, end: Part of an N on the upward-sloping portion of the border (i.e., just outside the prepared campus). This may have included a ligature with T that has been worn away(?).
• 6, end: What appears to be a small, irregular T cut across the transition from prepared campus to border.
• 7, end: if TI were inscribed on the border, this has been lost; there is no room for the characters in the prepared campus.
• 7-8: Rufinus: PIR2 A784 + addenda; Thomasson 1984 20:78 + 22:16; Aichinger 1982, 198-199.

Comments

Now, in looking at this image more closely (and starting to hunt for a corresponding publication), I see that I missed at least one of these inscriptions, and yet another has subsequently appeared. But I still haven't been able to identify a published text of this particular inscription. It clearly shares a source text with [EDH HD045725] = [AE 2004.1306] = I. Christov, Minalo 11, 2004, 6-7, no. 4 (citations from EDH), but the text is laid out differently on the stone. It would be interesting to have access to an image of this doppelgänger, but I can't immediately put my hands on a copy of the journal Минало. These are the only two of the inscriptions I know of that put the Thraces before the Moesi; the majority of the texts have the inverse order.

Concordance of Editions

Here's my list of texts and corresponding publications as it stands now:

• Elliott 2004.95.1; EDH HD042659; IGLNovae 73; ILBulg 357; ILS 5956; CIL 3.749
• Elliott 2004.95.2; EDH HD042812; ILBulg 429; CIL 3.12407
• Elliott 2004.95.3; EDH HD006328; ILBulg 390; AE 1985.729; Banev 1981, no. 1
• Elliott 2004.95.4; EDH HD006340; ILBulg 386; AE 1985.730; Banev 1981; CIL 3 p. 992 n. 749
• Elliott 2004.95.5; EDH HD006322; AE 1985.733; Božilova 1985; ILNovae 51; IGLNovae 72
• Elliott 2004.95.6; EDH HD031971; ILBulg 358; CIL 3.14422/1; AE 1902.106
• EDH HD042658; ILBulg 184; AE 1912, 16 n. 56; Filow BullSocArchBulg 2 (1911), 271 (not checked, bibliography per EDH)
• EDH HD045725; AE 2004.1306; . Christov, Minalo 11 (2004), 6-7, no. 4 (not checked, bibliography per EDH)
• [ Horothesia, "Demarcation Between the T(h)races and Moesi" (22 February 2007) ]

Bibliography

Short titles used here are glossed in the PDF versions of my abbreviations list and works cited list. Eventually, all these works will be folded into the Pleiades bibliography.

EpiDoc meets dissertation: epigraphic bibliography

This is the first in a highly irregular series exploring aspects of my attempt to turn my dissertation (or parts thereof) into a digital publication using the EpiDoc customization of the Text Encoding Initiative tagset (in XML). I'm starting using a batch of boundary inscriptions from Roman Cyrenaica, partly because I'm working with a team in London and Cambridge that is working on the definitive publication of the Roman Inscriptions of Cyrenaica (IRCyr) as collected and analyzed by Joyce Reynolds. This collection will include a number of previously unpublished boundary inscriptions.

Today's topic: epigraphic bibliography

There are various examples of code below, but you can also download a fully encoded example.

A proper epigraphic edition includes a complete history of previous published editions, published derivative texts, corrections and, often, commentary on same. There are various common mechanisms for presenting these citations in print, usually in a compact form that makes liberal use of abbreviations and short titles. Thus, text 62.2 in my dissertation (of Claudian date), presented the following bibliography:

EDH HD011697 (Latin); SEG 26.1819; AE 1974.682; *Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1.

Here, order signifies date and the asterisk indicates the edition I follow in my own catalog. So, we can read this as:

Originally published in Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1, whence derivative editions in AE 1974.682, SEG 26.1819 and EDH HD011697 (the latter only providing the Latin portion of this bilingual Greek/Latin text).

Often, such bibliographies include other notation to indicate the "genetic lemma" (derivative relationships) between publications. So, one could have produced something like:

[EDH HD011697 (Latin)] = [SEG 26.1819] = [AE 1974.682] = Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1

where the square brackets indicate derivative editions, i.e., those that derive from another published edition rather than autopsy of the stone and/or reference to a squeeze, rubbing or photograph. This particular lemma is a little misleading, since the provisional EDH edition actually derives from the edition in AE, which is itself derivative of the Reynolds edition.

How to do this in EpiDoc?

Let's start with something like the more prose-ish of the above examples, since this is the approach IRCyr is using (demonstrated in ALA2004 and IAph2007). First, EpiDoc calls for the bibliography to be wrapped in an appropriately typed <div> element, as follows:

<div type="bibliography">
 <p>Original publication was Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1,
    whence derivative editions in AE 1974.682, SEG 26.1819
    and Elliott 2004, 167.62.2. The Latin portion of the
    text is reproduced in EDH HD011697 (1997, provisional)
    on the basis of AE.</p>
</div>

Part of the reason to do our bibliography in XML is to be able to encode relationships, assertions and semantic distinctions in a way that is machine actionable. On the bibliographic front, we might want to be able to search, sort and index by these other editions, or link to them if digitally available. That means we need to mark each citation as a discrete bibliographic citation, and TEI provides the <bibl> element for this purpose:

<div type="bibliography">
 <p>Original publication was
   <bibl>Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1</bibl>,
   whence derivative editions in
   <bibl>AE 1974.682</bibl>,
   <bibl>SEG 26.1819</bibl>
   and
   <bibl>Elliott 2004, 167.62.2</bibl>.
   The Latin portion of the text is reproduced in
   <bibl>EDH HD011697 (1997, provisional)</bibl>
   on the basis of AE.</p>
</div>

We may want to have a search function distinguish between original editions and those that are derivative, so we need to encode that distinction too. We don't want to have to parse text strings and try to infer the meaning of phrases like "original publication" or "derviative". Rather, we'll use the standard TEI "type" and "subtype" attributes on the <bibl> element to make this distinction clear for our little silicon friends. The values we're using for this attribute are specific to the EpiDoc customization of TEI.

<div type="bibliography">
 <p>Original publication was
   <bibl type="edition" subtype="primary">
     Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1
   </bibl>,
   whence derivative editions in
   <bibl type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     AE 1974.682
   </bibl>,
   <bibl type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     SEG 26.1819
   </bibl>
   and
   <bibl type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     Elliott 2004, 167.62.2
   </bibl>.
   The Latin portion of the text is reproduced in
   <bibl type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     EDH HD011697 (1997, provisional)
   </bibl>
   on the basis of AE.</p>
</div>

There's additional tagging internal to each <bibl> element that we can/should do to facilitate sorting, searching and linking to digital/digitized works, but we'll skip over that here (check out the example file for the full encoding).

The only thing our example doesn't do that we might like is encode the derivative relationships between the various editions. We know that one is "primary" and the others "derivative", but it's not clear what the path of derivation is for each one. EpiDoc doesn't currently have guidance for this, and I'm not sure what the broader TEI community thinks (I'm posting a link to this entry on TEI-L to find out), but it occurs to me that this would be pretty easy to do with the TEI <link> element. We'll need unique identifiers on each <bibl> element to make use of this approach.

<div type="bibliography">
 <p>Original publication was
   <bibl xml:id="reynolds-1971-1" type="edition" subtype="primary">
     Reynolds 1971, 47-49.1
   </bibl>,
   whence derivative editions in
   <bibl xml:id="ae-1974-682" type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     AE 1974.682
   </bibl>,
   <bibl xml:id="seg-26-1819" type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     SEG 26.1819
   </bibl>
   and
   <bibl xml:id="elliott-2004-62-1" type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     Elliott 2004, 167.62.2
   </bibl>.
   The Latin portion of the text is reproduced in
   <bibl xml:id="edh-hd011697" type="edition" subtype="derivative">
     EDH HD011697 (1997, provisional)
   </bibl>
   on the basis of AE.</p>
   <link targets="#reynolds-1971-1 #ae-1974-682 #seg-26-1819 #elliott-2004-62-1"/>
   <link targets="#ae-1974-682 #edh-hd011697"/>
</div>

Stay tuned for further adventures, in which we exploit some of this bibliographic tagging, and then move on to encoding the epigraphic text itself.