Assael, Y., Sommerschield, T., Shillingford, B., Bordbar, M., Pavlopoulos, J., Chatzipanagiotou, M., Androutsopoulos, I., Prag, J. & de Freitas, N. 2022. Restoring and attributing ancient texts using deep neural networks. Nature 603, 280–283. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04448-z
Nature, 2022
Ancient history relies on disciplines such as epigraphy—the study of inscribed texts known as ins... more Ancient history relies on disciplines such as epigraphy—the study of inscribed texts known as inscriptions—for evidence of the thought, language, society and history of past civilizations1. However, over the centuries, many inscriptions have been damaged to the point of illegibility, transported far from their original location and their date of writing is steeped in uncertainty. Here we present Ithaca, a deep neural network for the textual restoration, geographical attribution and chronological attribution of ancient Greek inscriptions. Ithaca is designed to assist and expand the historian’s workflow. The architecture of Ithaca focuses on collaboration, decision support and interpretability. While Ithaca alone achieves 62% accuracy when restoring damaged texts, the use of Ithaca by historians improved their accuracy from 25% to 72%, confirming the synergistic effect of this research tool. Ithaca can attribute inscriptions to their original location with an accuracy of 71% and can date them to less than 30 years of their ground-truth ranges, redating key texts of Classical Athens and contributing to topical debates in ancient history. This research shows how models such as Ithaca can unlock the cooperative potential between artificial intelligence and historians, transformationally impacting the way that we study and write about one of the most important periods in human history.
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Books by Jonathan Prag
The book represents a new, updated, and comprehensive view of the political world of Republican Rome and some of the included essays are available in English for the first time.
Divided into six parts, the discussions consider the institutionalized loci, political actors, and values, rituals, and discourse that characterized Republican Rome. The Companion also offers several case studies and sections on the history of the interpretation of political life in the Roman Republic. Key features include:
A thorough introduction to the Roman political world as seen through the wider lenses of Roman political culture
Comprehensive explorations of the fundamental components of Roman political culture, including ideas and values, civic and religious rituals, myths, and communicative strategies
Practical discussions of Roman Republic institutions, both with reference to their formal rules and prescriptions, and as patterns of social organization
In depth examinations of the 'afterlife' of the Roman Republic, both in ancient authors and in early modern and modern times
Perfect for students of all levels of the ancient world, A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic will also earn a place in the libraries of scholars and students of politics, political history, and the history of ideas.
Contents:
Merryweather, Andrew D. (Sydney) & Prag, Jonathan R.W., (UCL) Preface' (5-6)
Crawley Quinn, Josephine, (UC, Berkeley) Roman Africa? (7-34)
Roth, Roman Ernst, (Cambridge) Towards a ceramic approach to social identity in the Roman world: some theoretical considerations (35-45)
Berrendonner, C., (Paris I) La romanisation de Volterra: 'a case of mostly negotiated incorporation, that leaves the basic social and cultural structure intact?' (N. Terrenato, in Italy and the West, Oxford, 2001) (46-59)
Burns, Michael T., (UCL) The Homogenisation of Military Equipment Under the Roman Republic (60-85)
Raja, Rubina, (Oxford) Urban development and built identities. The case of Aphrodisias in Caria in the late republican period (86-98)
Franklin, Claire, (Reading) To what extent did Posidonius and Theophanes record Pompeian ideology? (99-110)
Hingley, Richard, (Durham) Recreating coherence without reinventing Romanization (111-119)
Papers by Jonathan Prag
Nell'ambito della nuova pubblicazione dei primi quattro volumi dei taccuini di Paolo Orsi, questo lavoro offre una riflessione sull'attività epigrafica dello studioso roveretano in Sicilia. La prima parte dell'articolo esamina brevemente le posizioni assunte dalla ricerca contemporanea sulla figura di Orsi epigrafista, soffermandosi poi sulla sua formazione epigrafica (a partire dagli anni viennesi) e sulla sua iniziale attività come epigrafista, tanto nella ricerca quanto nell'insegnamento. La seconda parte recensisce la nuova pubblicazione dei taccuini. La parte finale prende in esame le testimonianze dell'attività epigrafica di Orsi così come risulta documentata dai primi quattro taccuini, mostrando in particolare i notevoli sforzi iniziali compiuti dallo studioso per censire l'intera collezione del museo di Siracusa al suo arrivo nel 1888. Esempi dell'acume epigrafico di Orsi, del quale i taccuini e le pubblicazioni a essi collegate sono testimonianza, sono illustrati attraverso il confronto tra la sua opera e ricerche di altri studiosi sui medesimi materiali. Nel corso di tutto il contributo viene inoltre presentato materiale inedito presente nei taccuini e dimostrata la grande rilevanza che ancora questi documenti rivestono per le ricerche future.
three centuries BCE is bedevilled by many of the same challenges as an
attempt to write the history of Sicily itself in the same period. Surviving
narrative histories forsake the island, once the city of Syracuse has
been sacked by Marcellus. Beyond the occasional spotlights cast by the
fragmentary accounts of the Slave Wars, and the very unique portrayal
provided by Cicero’s , “grand history” only returns, albeit briefly,
for the Civil Wars of the 40s and 30s BCE. For the island of Sicily as a
whole, any attempt to move beyond the pessimistic portrayal invoked
by the combination of the “loss” of Greek Sicily and the corruption of
Verres, must lay aside the increasingly sterile debates over civic status
and seek to engage with the more complex and disparate evidence of
archaeology, epigraphy and numismatics.1 Paradoxically, perhaps, this
moves the story towards an emphasis upon the local, and the implications
of readings of the evidence of local material culture for the wider
history of the island. At the same time, such an approach entails a rather
different sort of history, less focused upon narrative, individuals and institutions, more concerned with cultural patterns and interactions.