Where is the best source online for downloading any Platonic dialogue in the Greek? With commentaries included would be a plus! Thanks everyone.
Hi, do you mean in the original (ancient) Greek? If so, the best place is still Perseus:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/collection?collection=Perseus:collection:Greco-Roman
Links to commentaries (‘notes’) are displayed on the side where available.
These won’t give you the latest critical editions of Plato, but they are certainly good enough for almost all purposes. The editions I have and use are: for First Alcibiades, the version edited by Denyer (2001); for Gorgias, by Dodds (1990); for Ion, by Rijksbaron (2007); for Meno, by Bluck (1964); for Protagoras, by Denyer (2008); for Republic, by Slings (2003); for the other dialogues, the versions in the five-volume Oxford Classical Texts set of Plato’s works: volume 1 edited by Duke, Hicken, Nicoll, Robinson and Strachan (1995), and volumes 2–5 edited by Burnet (1901–7). I think I read somewhere that there is a better edition of the Laws (the French one), which I need to track down. These are the editions I’ve used in a personal study I’m finalising on Socratic method, but for almost all other purposes I use the Perseus site: I’ve been on it almost every day for decades now…
Cheers, Chad
Thanks Chad!
You’re welcome!
Which dialogue(s) are you thinking of translating? In the course of writing my personal study on Socratic method, I’ve translated all the quotes, and realised that I disagree in quite a few places with the translations in Cooper’s edition (multiple translators). There’s still lots of good work that could be done on translating Plato I think.
As a (completely far-fetched) idea for a future personal project, I was thinking it would be great to do a fresh ‘Plato Latinus’, translating Plato into Latin, and seeing how differently it turns out compared with the beautiful work of Ficino in the 1400s, working on the hills overlooking Florence - a translator today could draw on over 500 years of Plato scholarship not available to Ficino…
Cheers, Chad
Chad,
The problem i have with perseus is that I cant get a complete document in greek from beginning to end. I have to turn section after section. Any ideas how to solve this?
Thanks,
Dimitri
I use the PDFs of the Plato OCTs downloaded from HathiTrust, which is decent for reading on a Kindle or whatever. Amazon.com also has something called print books, but these tend to be less convenient and can’t be read underwater or in the dark, etc.
Hi Dimitri, in Perseus, click on the left hand side “view text chunked by: text”. Problem solved.
Hi Joel, thanks for the OCT PDFs recommendation - I haven’t seen those before. I still prefer hard copy though, and solve the “underwater“ and “in the dark” problems by not reading then.
Cheers, Chad
It doesn’t seem to have greatly bothered ancient readers either that they couldn’t read their papyri underwater.
I’m a great admirer of Ficino, whose translations of Plato’s dialogues into Latin made them accessible. But whatever would be the point of a Plato Latinus today?
We could also ask Franck Goddio for a second opinion on underwater reading.
And it’s not impossible that more people will be able to read Latin a few hundred years from now than will be able to read 20th century pre-internet English.
It worked for the Atticizers.
Hi Michael, you’re right that the point of a Plato Latinus today would not be to make Plato accessible. Its point would be whatever the point is of Latin prose comp. Really though, I think I just like the dream of having a substantial amount of time to devote to classics, and on the hills overlooking Florence would be nice…
Cheers, Chad
Hi, w.r.t Greek on ebooks. Maybe someone is interested: I wrote once a small python script which translates Perseus files to ebook Format (I used an Amazon Kindle, others will likely work as well). Tested i.a. with Platon’s Apologia. I know: not great software engineering, but it works and can by very easily adapted. Steps to take:
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Install Python. I used the free Anaconda on Windows.
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Download the XML from Perseus (link a the bottom of each text).
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Adjust the python script if necessary (cf. example “Apologia”).
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run the script → provides a html file
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(for Kindle): use “upload to Kindle” in Windows. That’s for free.
I find this useful to read the Greek with larger Font size e.g. on trains (bad light/constant shaking). The quality of the Greek Perseus files is very high (as far as I read them).
# %% Convert (e.g. Perseus) XML to html (for ebook reader)
import re
fIN_XML_Path = 'C:\\Users\\user\\Google Drive\\_Griech\\'
fOUT_XML_Path = 'C:\\output1\\'
#fIN_XML_File = 'Perseus_text_1999.01.0173_case.xml'
# %%
#text1 = "Symp."
text1 = "Apol."
text1 = 'Rep.'
if text1 == "Symp.":
fIN_XML_File = 'Perseus_text_1999.01.0173.xml'
fOUT_XML_File = 'Symp.html'
elif text1 == 'Apol.':
fIN_XML_File = 'Perseus_text_1999.01.0169.xml'
fOUT_XML_File = 'Apol.html'
elif text1 == 'Rep.':
fIN_XML_File = 'Perseus_text_1999.01.0167.xml'
fOUT_XML_File = 'Rep.html'
with open(fIN_XML_Path + fIN_XML_File,encoding='UTF-8') as f1:
s1 = f1.read()
# %% Extract "text" part (sometimes, e.g. Symp., nested: search for "<text>"
if text1 == "Symp.":
x1 = re.findall('<text n="Sym."><body>(.?)</body></text>', s1, re.DOTALL)
if text1 == "Apol.":
x1 = re.findall('<text n="Apol.">(.*?)</text>', s1, re.DOTALL)
if text1 == "Rep.":
x1 = re.findall('<text>(.*?)</text>', s1, re.DOTALL) ## only one text in file
if not len(x1) == 1: print("ERROR!!!!!!!")
if x1:
x2 = x1[0]
# %% remove head and "cast list"
if text1 in ["Symp.", "Apol.", "Rep."]:
s = re.sub('<head>(.*?)</head>', r'', x2)
s1 = re.sub('<castList>(.*?)</castList>', r'', s)
# %% find all speakers: INFO only for next step
sp1 = re.findall(r'<speaker>(.*?)</speaker>', s1) ## non-greedy: (.*?)
set(sp1)
# %% Replace speakers by short names
s = s1
if text1 == "Symp.":
s = s.replace('<speaker>*(etai=ros</speaker>', '[*E.] ')
s = s.replace('<speaker>*)apollo/dwros</speaker>', '[*A.] ')
s = s.replace('<speaker>*fai=dros</speaker>', '[*F.] ')
s = s.replace('<speaker>*swkra/ths</speaker>', '[*S.] ')
elif text1 == "Apol.":
print("ok, no speakers")
elif text1 == "Rep.":
s = s.replace('<speaker>*swkra/ths</speaker>', '[*S.] ')
# %% quotes
s2 = s
s2 = s2.replace('<q direct=\"unspecified\">', '‘')
s2 = s2.replace('</q>', '’')
# %% Cell 1
#sTest = '<milestone unit="page" n="135" />'
r3digits = "<milestone unit=\"page\" n=\"(\d\d\d)\" \/>"
r2digits = "<milestone unit=\"page\" n=\"(\d\d)\" \/>"
#s3 = re.sub(r1, r'[p. \1]', sTest)
#s3
if text1 == "Symp.":
s3 = re.sub(r3digits, r'[$\1]', s2) # '$' can be easily searched in ebook readers
elif text1 == "Apol.":
s3 = re.sub(r2digits, r'[$\1]', s2)
elif text1 == "Rep.":
s3 = re.sub(r3digits, r'[$\1]', s2)
# %% not used
#r2 = "<milestone unit=\"section\" n=\"(\d\d\d)a\" \/>" ## only "a"
#s4 = re.sub(r2, r'[p. \1]', s3)
s4 = s3
# %% remove all other tags
s5 = s4.replace('\n', ' ') # replace "newline" by "space"
# TODO replace 'di' ' by 'δι᾿ ' ersetzen (bug in betacode transformation)
s5 = re.sub('<(.*?)>', r' ', s5) # sometimes the tags separate, therefore 'space'
# %% remove all other tags
from cltk.corpus.greek.beta_to_unicode import Replacer
#BETA_EXAMPLE = r"""O(/PWS OU)=N MH\ TAU)TO\ """
#ex1 = r"a)pologoume/nou di' w(=nper ei)/wqa"
r = Replacer()
#r.beta_code(BETA_EXAMPLE)
##r.beta_code(ex1)
s6 = r.beta_code(s5)
# %% output
import functions_annot_for_latex
with open(fOUT_XML_Path + fOUT_XML_File, 'w', encoding="utf8") as file:
file.write(functions_annot_for_latex.header1)
file.writelines(s6)
file.write("</body>")
@Thrasystomos you may want to grab them from the official Perseus Github repo instead. Also, they have a java xml parser that you can use instead of doing your own. And consider leveraging the beautifulsoup python library if you do want to write your own parser. The Perseus java parser is not infallible (the last time I looked) and the XML varies quite a bit.