Fed up with Perseus

Greek Learning Greek
1

I’m fed up with Perseus. I even emailed the President of Tufts once. He told me he would tell the IT guys to get a move on and thanked me for the feedback. That was two years ago. Nothing has changed. As soon as you try to do anything systematically, it poops out. At present, all I want to do is take a section of text, say Pl. Ap. 31a-e, and generate a vocabulary list with the vocabulary tool. Good luck! I get internal server error 500. Or I’m told to try on a “broader” level; click that link sends me back to 17a. Try sections vs. pages, etc. Finally, I can get it to work for smaller sections 31a, and for 31c, but not 31b, 31d or 31e!!! Server error 500 again! Try the whole Apology? Ha! They lump it with three other dialogues and you can’t get any sequential ordering anyway! Forget ever getting to the verbs of 31 which is all I really want anyway!

Went to the German site. Tonight, I can’t even open the Apology there at all!!

I’m going to take a deep breath and spare everybody a blistering rant. But let’s just say that all of Perseus’ more advanced functions seem to this humble user to be ALL TALK, NO WALK. Yet nobody will come up with anything better because Perseus has such a dominant position.

Questions:

Is there some free way of generating manageable vocabulary lists for sections of text with or without Perseus? If I somehow download Perseus cum LSJ will things improve???

What about alternatives? What is this Diogenese thing? They say “Advantages of Using Diogenes
The goal of this software package is to provide a free, transparent and flexible interface to the classical databases..” But when I looked into it, seems you have to pay annual subscriptions to get Plato.

Is anybody down for a letter writing campaign to put some pressure on Perseus to finally fix up their website??

2

I’ve only used Perseus a couple times, but I noticed the problems you’re talking about. It seems to have a lot of difficulty generating vocab lists. I gave up with that tool a while ago.

3

I can’t help you with the vocabulary generation tool. Sometimes that works for me, sometimes not (though I haven’t used it in a while).

For simply interacting with texts, as well as getting parsing and dictionary entries, you might find Perseus under PhiloLogic more reliable. It can generate word lists, but it is not sophisticated, working only by frequency. It will take a little playing with it to get used to the different interface.

4

Hi pster,

I read your post about your problems with Perseus and tend to agree with you—it is not as easy to use or as reliable as it ought to be.

If you can work with French, the site Hodoi Elektronikai (http://mercure.fltr.ucl.ac.be/Hodoi/concordances/intro.htm) will give you at least part of what you want in generating vocab. lists, and it is easy to use.

Go to the main page (above link) and find the author you want in the list (the French form of the author names is similar to the Greek, i.e., Plato is Platon, Aristotle is Aristote, etc.). Click on the author’s name. This takes you to a page with links to that author’s works in the original language.

Click on the name of the work and you go to a page that has several options: read the text (Texte), read about the author (Lecture), see a list of vocabulary (Liste du vocabulaire), etc.

If you choose Liste du vocabulaire, this takes you to a page with the links to the vocabulary under each letter of the Greek alphabet.

For instance, try this link for the words beginning with λ (lambda) in Plato’s Apology (Platon, Apologie de Socrate): http://mercure.fltr.ucl.ac.be/Hodoi/concordances/platon_apologie/listvocabulaire.cfm?lettre=041.

You’ll note it lists all the words by order of occurrence, frequency of occurrence, and forms (Numéro d’ordre, fréquences d’attestations & formes). The word λαβεῖν (labein), for instance, occurs first and appears 3 times in the Apology. If you click on the word you go to a page giving the text of the lines and page numbers where the word appears.

Hope this helps,

Persequor

5

One can download the Perseus database and the Java hopper here:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/opensource/download

There are installation instructions included, but it is not for the faint of heart. The upshot is that it can be hosted locally (for Linux and OSX).

Check here if you run into any problems:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/perseus-hopper/forums/forum/752200/topic/3716043

6

I had abandoned using Perseus Word List tool for the same reason for months. But I found a remedy for that. Just keep refreshing the page UNTIL the word list shows up. It could be just once, or dozens of times, but in the end it works. A little bit of nuissance, but getting a word list of a work is not what you need every minute.

7

I just tried about 40 times Apology 35 page (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0169%3Atext%3DApol.%3Apage%3D35) to no avail. Can you get that one to work? Thanks.

8

I would do this if I knew it would help. Can you get a vocabulary list for Apology page 35 ( http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0169%3Atext%3DApol.%3Apage%3D35 ) with a downloaded version? You are right that it is not for the faint of heart, so I’m not going to even attempt to download it unless I get some verification that it actually can do what I would like it to do.

9

I always love to work on my French, but I need a list for a section of a dialogue with definitions, but I will bookmark the page. Thanks for the tip.

10

Okay, that section needs a little bit detour.
Go to section 17a or any other section that works, summon the vocab list, and when it shows up alter the section number from 17a to 35a on the address bar of your browser, and hit ENTER.

before the change:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/vocablist?works=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0169%3Atext%3DApol.%3Asection%3D17a&usingChunks=true&fullPage=true&sort=weighted_freq&filt=100&filt_custom=&output=table&lang=greek

after the change:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/vocablist?works=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0169%3Atext%3DApol.%3Asection%3D35a&usingChunks=true&fullPage=true&sort=weighted_freq&filt=100&filt_custom=&output=table&lang=greek

If it says an Error Occurred, then refresh the page as “usual”.
At least this worked for me. Pls let me know if this won’t work either. I’ll try another detour.

Good luck!

[edit]
this is the result with top 25% sorted by weighted frequency:

Showing frequencies for Plato, Apology, text Apol., section 35a

 	Weighted Freq.	 
Count	Word	Max. Freq.	Min. Freq.	This Word	Total	Key Term Score	Definition	Lexicon Entries
εἰμί	22	4	6.4	6.4	-0.001	to be	LSJ, Middle Liddell, Slater, Autenrieth
ὁ	17	2	3.2	9.6	-0.0008	that, those	LSJ, Middle Liddell, Slater, Autenrieth
διαφέρω	2	2	2	11.6	0.0119	carry abroad	LSJ, Middle Liddell, Slater
τις	17	0	1.53	13.13	-0.0008	anyone, anything	Slater
τις	17	0	1.53	14.67	-0.0008	any one, any thing, some one, some thing;	LSJ, Middle Liddell
τίς	17	0	1.53	16.2	-0.0008	who? what?	Middle Liddell, Slater, Autenrieth
εἴτε	6	0	1.5	17.7	0.0174	sive..sive.., either..or.., whether..or..,	LSJ, Middle Liddell, Slater, Autenrieth
11

I am getting sleepy, so I will have to work on this tomorrow. But I ideally want the vocabulary for “page” 35 rather than just for “section” 35a. Can you get that whole chunk to work? I tried your work around but not with the refreshes. I have to switch to the other browser since opera is not the best for refreshing through error messages. I’ll do it with refreshes tomorrow when I wake up. Thanks so much for the help.

12

Well I tried

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/vocablist?works=Perseus:text:1999.01.0169:text=Apol.:page=35&usingChunks=true&fullPage=true&sort=weighted_freq&filt=100&filt_custom=&output=table&lang=greek

, but I get nothing better than a blank table with the headings only. I might have to find a working page as a starting point. But the page wouldn’t respond to refresh method easy today. I’d better try it a couple of hours later.

13

Summoning the vocab list chunked by pages wouldn’t work, how hard I try.
Sorry if I gave you false hope.

But, if it be ever helpful, it works for the entire text of Apology.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/vocablist?works=Perseus:text:1999.01.0169:text=Apol.&usingChunks=true&sort=weighted_freq&filt=100&lang=greek

It gives the vocab list not for the entire book containing Euthypro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, but Apology only.

14

That’s absolutely wonderful. Thank you!! :slight_smile:

One question, though. It’s returning a rather short list of words to me. Could you look at this and tell me if it’s the same list that you’re pulling up? This a PDF print of what it turned up for me.

15

You are right. The list, apparently being too short, when sorted in alphabetical order( http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/vocablist?works=Perseus:text:1999.01.0169:text=Apol.&usingChunks=true&fullPage=true&sort=form&filt=100&output=table&lang=greek ), obviously lacks many words you pick up randomly from the text( http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0169:text=Apol. ).

And sorting seems to be working on beta code or something like that, not in Greek alphabetical order.

[edit]
The list is exactly same to the vocab list for section 17a. I’d better look around if there’s other query keywords I could use.

16

@mingshey: I’m not asking that you do, just asking if you have. Have you ever downloaded Perseus as paulbarnes mentions above? No worries on the false hope. Software has a long history of not working when I want it to. I didn’t think this time would be any different.

Doesn’t anybody know about the Diogenes thingie? Or any alternatives?

17

(ignore)