Typing in Ancient Greek

As an addendum to my last post I discussed methods for typing in Ancient Greek. I had been using Tavultesoft Keyman from my undergraduate days when others struggled to cite Greek in their papers, resorting to entering diacritics by hand. It was a long-standing habit, and I have to admit that despite the advances made by advocates for computing in the Classics, I hadn’t given any mind to the native capabilities of modern computing environments. Nathaniel commented on using the native Polytonic Greek keyboard, and it seems that it will do the trick for most users.

GreekKeys (mentioned in the last post) is still superior for scholars because it allows you to use characters that are not part of the encoding for this keyboard (e.g., digamma), and because it gives a nice Polytonic Greek font sponsored by the APA. This keyboard does allow you to type stigma, koppa, and sampi, which are primarily used for Greek numerals. (My mnemonic and chart on the Greek numerals really should get a few more hits!)

For this simple solution, however, (and assuming you’re using Windows) you’ll need to access the Text Services and Input Languages dialog box. If you already use multiple keyboards and know what the Language Bar is, then this won’t be a problem. Otherwise, you can get to it by clicking the following:

1. Control Panel
2. Regional and Language Options
3. Languages (tab)
4. Details (button)
5. Add (button)
6. (Input Language) Greek
7. (Keyboard Layout/IME) Greek Polytonic.

If you play around with it you should fairly quickly figure out how to use the keys. Here’s a quick and dirty list of the keystrokes to note:

• semicolon (;) or q + vowel = acute accent
• left square bracket ([) + vowel = circumflex accent
• right square bracket (]) + vowel = grave accent
• single quote (‘) + vowel = smooth breathing
• double quote (“) + vowel = rough breathing
• backslash (/) + vowel = acute accent with smooth breathing
• question mark (?, shift+backslash) + vowel = acute accent with rough breathing
• forward slash (\) + vowel = grave accent with smooth breathing
• pipe (|, shift+forward slash) + vowel = grave accent with rough breathing
• equal sign (=) + vowel = circumflex with smooth breathing
• plus sign (+) + vowel = circumflex with rough breathing
• hyphen (-) + vowel = macron
• underscore (_) + vowel = breve
• left curly bracket ({) + vowel = iota subscript (only with alpha, eta, and omega)
• colon (:) + vowel = diaresis (only with iota and upsilon)
• grave (`, to the left of the 1) + vowel = diaresis with acute accent (iota and upsilon only)
• tilde (~) + vowel = diaresis with grave accent (iota and upsilon only)
• AltGr (the right alt key) + 1 = stigma
• AltGr + 2 = koppa
• AltGr + 3 = sampi
• AltGr + grave + vowel = diaresis + circumflex (iota and upsilon only)

GreekKeys actually installs an alternative keyboard that functions in the same way. I’m not currently using GreekKeys on my work computer (the tech department doesn’t trust us to install anything, and I haven’t found the time to take the laptop in), but, again, I think it’s cleaner than the native keyboard (and I believe it includes support for more characters), and you do receive a nice font for your money, which in turn supports the APA.

Become a tech-savvy classicist in four simple steps

It seems that we classicists are often stuck in the past beyond just our interest in all things ancient. Fashionable theories in literary criticism finally emerge in our journals ten years after most modern language folks have (nearly) given them up, and many would-be tech-savvy classicists still hold to the long-dead notion that Macs beat PCs when it comes to dealing with Greek texts, etc.

But in many ways technology proves (or has proven) insufficient for us. It’s far easier and more comfortable to pull a book off the shelf than it is to fire up a web browser and ensure that the text encoding and fonts are properly set. This is to say nothing of the relative quality of texts available in printed, scholarly editions (with app. crit., etc.) and the myriad, problematic texts we find online, even from reputable sources. We have a certain revulsion to the ways that a clever user can ‘read’ challenging texts with the aid of morphological tools and parallel translations, and fear that such crutches will keep our students from becoming genuine Latinists and Hellenists. We may even fear that such technology will make us lazy, and that we’ll become lesser readers and scholars ourselves.

There are some legitimate concerns there, but ignoring technology does not remove them. Learning what’s available and learning how to use it well — that should be our goal.

For the cost of a simple USB flash drive you can enter the age of digital scholarship and become a more productive scholar from any computer with an internet connection. You can access virtually any file you need, keep all of your references at hand, and read an overwhelmingly large number of texts at virtually no cost.

Are you ready?

Access your stuff from anywhere

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First, get yourself a free Dropbox account, and install the software to your personal computer. You’re given 2GB of online storage space, and whatever you place in your Dropbox folder on any computer on which it is installed will be synced with your online storage space. (Following my link will earn you an extra 250 MB.) You can access this space via the web, make changes, add or remove files, and everything will be synced in all locations. You can earn extra storage by spreading the word, and can purchase storage as well, but you shouldn’t need to. Just be judicious in what you place in the Dropbox.

Get mobile

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Next you’ll want to make sure you have a USB flash drive (or just about anything else you can use as an external drive, like an mp3 player). Make sure to keep this handy at all times. If you have access to a computer (virtually any computer, anywhere) you’ll be able to use this flash drive (in concert with your Dropbox) to maintain access to your most valuable resources, to keep your research up-to-date, and to read any Greek or Latin text available online without lugging around any dictionaries.

Here’s what you’ll need to do all that:

Install Firefox Portable to your flash drive. Whenever you’re not on your own computer, you can run this version of Firefox from your flash drive and maintain access to some resources that you would not be able to use otherwise: resources that make research and the reading of classical texts easier in odd places (like high school libraries, coffee shops, or anywhere where your PC and personal library of grammars and lexicons is not at hand).

Don’t forget to bookmark your Dropbox on the web!

Get organized

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From within Firefox Portable, install the Zotero extension. This will enable you to keep your scholarly citations (and so much more) always at hand. This browser add-on has the potential to help you become a better, more productive, and more organized researcher, less likely to lose references or double past research efforts.

That graphic should give you a quick indication of the range of things you do with zotero, which allows you not only to collect your sources, but to access them from other locations where zotero has been installed (e.g., on your home computer), to generate bibliographies in multiple formats, and to share research and references with colleagues.

Stay well-read

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Also from within Firefox Portable install the Alpheios library extension and both the Greek and the Latin tools extensions. These will allow you to quickly and easily see Perseus-style pop-ups on Greek and Latin words on virtually any classical text online, showing both definitions and morphological analyses.

Simply double-clicking on a word brings up the information you need to work through a text quickly when your usual materials are not available.

These tools, if properly used, should help to make you more productive at times when you might otherwise feel at a loss without your usual resources.

ADDENDUM: Typing in Greek

A very good question from Lydia in the comments has alerted me to something I take for granted. I used an old version of Tavultesoft Keyman for several years, but it seems that all of the newer versions need to be purchased after a month. This utility allows you to install various keyboards to allow you to type in virtually any language with ease by downloading and installing various keyboard files.

A better option for classicists, though, is to give your money instead to the APA by purchasing GreekKeys:

• $30 for APA members
• $40 for non-members.

This utility works in the same way to allow you to type in Polytonic Greek. (Just be sure that you’re using unicode fonts, though these are becoming the norm, so you may be without knowing it.)

When I worked on the new edition of Luschnig’s An Introduction to Ancient Greek: a literary approach I was stationed in the offices of the BMCR, which uses Macs exclusively. I re-typed all of the Greek in the book using a Mac utility called SophoKeys.

The Digital Classicist wiki has more on typing in Greek, including links to a few more keyboard utilities. Schmidhauser’s Graece keyboard looks intriguing. Another may be Sibyllai, though I haven’t tested it.

Praefectus Annonae

Today’s entry from A Concise Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities is Praefectus Annonae.  I am continuing with the subheadings under the entry Praefectus.

PRAEFECTUS ANNONAE.  Augustus created an officer under the title of praefectus annonae to see to the due supply of the corn-market.  Under him worked procuratores, and a large staff of clerks (tabularii) and superintendents of granaries (horrearii).  This office was a permanent one, and only held by one person at a time: he had jurisdiction over all matters appertaining to the corn-market, and was chosen from the Equites.  The office continued till the latest times of the Empire (Tac. Ann. i. 7).

I confess to being puzzled by the reference to Tacitus after “The office continued till the latest times of the Empire.”

The OCD does not have an entry “praefectus annonae.”  But he is mentioned in the entry “food supply”: “Other legislation alternately cut and increased the number of entitled recipients [of a monthly ration of grain], called the plebs frumentaria, until in 2 BC Augustus stabilized it at or below 200,000.  Augustus also reorganized the system of storage and distribution under an imperial appointee of equestrian status called the praefectus annonae, who also had a more general remit to watch over food supplies.  This public supply (annona), drawing on the grain paid to the state as rent or tax in Sicily, Africa, and (from 30 BC) Egypt, helped the privileged minority who held tickets of entitlement [=tesserae frumentariae] , which could be inherited or sold.  But the monthly ration did not meet a family’s need for grain, and the tickets did not necessarily go to the poor.  All residents will still have relied on the private market to some extent (or, if they had them, on produce from their farms), and the majority will have used it for most of their supplies.”

Caesar and the Pirates

A request went through one of the Latin listservs for a specific (textbook) version of the famous tale of Caesar and the pirates (namely that from Civis Romanus), and while what follows isn’t it, the version by Lhomond (Viri Romae) is worth considering, as he has (had?) been highly influential in the compilation of Latin readers and so is partly responsible for many a well-known ‘Latin’ story:

Caesar, mortuo Sylla et composita seditione civili, Rhodum secedere statuit, ut per otium Apollonio, tunc clarissimo dicendi magistro, operam daret; sed in itinere a piratis captus est, mansitque apud eos quadraginta dies. Ita porro per illud omne spatium se gessit, ut piratis terrori pariter ac venerationi esset; atque ne iis suspicionem ullam daret, qui oculis tantummodo eum custodiebant, nunquam aut nocte aut die excalceatus est. Interim comites servosque dimiserat ad expediendas pecunias, Viginti talenta piratae postulaverant; ille vero quinquaginta daturum se spopondit. Quibus numeratis, expositus est in litore. Caesar liberatus confestim Miletum, quae urbs proxime aberat, properavit; ibique contracta classe, stantes adhuc in eodem loco praedones noctu adortus, aliquot naves, mersis aliis, cepit, piratasque ad deditionem redactos eo affecit supplicio, quod illis saepe per iocum minatus fuerat, dum ab iis detineretur; crucibus illos suffigi iussit.

Here’s a quick and dirty version:

After Sulla died and the civil war was settled, Caesar decided to take himself to Rhodes to study at his leisure under Apollonius, then the leading teacher of rhetoric. Along the way, however, he was taken by pirates and spent forty days with them. He carried himself in such a way through all that time that he was equally feared and respected by them.

So as not to raise any suspicion among the pirates, who were only guarding him by sight, he never went barefoot, day or night. Meanwhile, he sent his companions and slaves to seek the funds which would pay his ransom. The pirates demanded twenty talents, but he promised that he would give them fifty. After this was paid he was set down on the shore.

Once freed, Caesar immediately rushed off to Miletus, where he drew up a fleet. He made a night assault on the pirates, still anchored in the same spot, and took some of their ships after the others had been sunk. He subjected the pirates who were forced to surrender to the same punishment with which he had often jokingly threatened them during his captivity: he ordered that they be crucified.

One of the most interesting things here is a detail not found in some of the adaptations used in later textbooks and readers (Lhomond was a goldmine for many later editors):

Why mention that Caesar never went barefoot among the pirates? Footwear is not very conducive to swimming, the only way anyone can hope to escape a pirate ship. As near as I can tell this is a detail of Lhomond’s own invention, intended (I think) to show that Caesar was calculating and careful.

Unfortunately this version (based on a brief passage in Suetonius) does not compare well with Plutarch’s expanded account with it’s apocryphal but might-as-well-be-true details (see a good translation here by Robin Seager), or with the version in Civis Romanus (which follows Plutarch rather than Suetonius).

What Lhomond does show us (in a relatively early ‘textbook’) is the tendency toward the banal in Latin pedagogy. Plutarch’s Caesar was not at all careful, but seems larger than life, like a character students will actually care to read about. In the end students have certainly translated or read a chunk of Latin, but there’s little meat to it, and the exercise, no matter how creatively or cooperatively done, seems mechanical and little worth the effort. I want to hear how Caesar told the pirates to be quiet so he could get some sleep, how he composed poems and speeches and made them sit as his audience, how he mocked and threatened them to their faces, and finally how he took the law into his own hands when the governor vacillated.

Most textbooks and readers have followed Lhomond down this path, diluting the real salt of antiquity through dry, colorless stories crafted to present grammar and vocabulary rather than to inspire student’s through novelty and narrative power. Lhomond had a noble goal, creating a chronological Latin text covering the great men in Roman history, and the way in which he cobbled that story together from various sources is impressive. But many of his stories plod along like the textbooks that put our students to sleep.

Some of us should begin by writing our own Latin stories or adapting older ones with an eye toward student interest, perhaps sharing them through a wiki and offering versions aimed at various levels. I’d be willing to host such a site at theCAMPVS if there were enough interest and volunteers.