do they ever work? they always fail with me, when I need to find for instance a particular Greek word in a given work.
I was having trouble with it a few days ago, attempting to scour the database and cross-reference translations of particular signifiers of a “spherical” conception of the Earth, particularly in Phaedo. For whatever reason, that’s how I spent my day. The search tool seems overly-complex, which is fine, especially for precision, but I was unable to sort the specific queries that I was staring directly at on the screen. I was convinced It was a user error and I was handling the tool incorrectly. Until now. Once is anecdotal… twice is a twin-tempered, double-wrought systemic issue. Perhaps, and still yet, the settings need to be tweaked and calibrated?
It seems that since the covid outbreak, the Perseus site has not been maintained very well. Eventually they’ll be transitioning to the Scaife viewer, so I suspect they are more focused on that project than on maintaining Perseus. For me that means a lot of broken hyperlinks in the course of a session. With search, the one thing I did discover was that you must type your search entry in beta code, as opposed to using a Greek keyboard. For example, searching for σφαῖρα, Ι entered “sfai=ra” and even got a result from Phaedo!
where do u get the beta code from?
If you’re already working with a text, go to the search box. Just beneath, there is a hyperlink to more search options. Click on that link and you’ll see a new page with a number of search fields on the left and in the upper right hand corner a chart of the beta code equivalents for greek letters and diacriticals. Use that to write the beta code characters corresponding to the Greek word or expression you’re searching for.
ok i did it and it did not work
There are several search tools in Perseus, so you’ll need to make sure you’re using the “collection search tool”. You can access it from the search bar at the top right hand corner of any page (except Perseus Catalogue) by clicking on the hyperlink just below the entry window titled “All Search Options”. That should open up a page titled “General Search Tools”. You want the very first tool, titled “Search the collections”. Here’s what I got when I typed in “sfai=ra”:
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/searchresults?target=greek&collections=Perseus%3Acollection%3AGreco-Roman&all_words=sfai%3Dra&phrase=&any_words=&exclude_words=&search=Search
P.S. There’s also a help page:
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/help/searching
ok this is from the Gorgias by Plato : εἰ βούλῃ ἀναθέσθαι , ὦ Καλλίκλεις , ἀνάθου, could you find this phrase in the text please? I could not. Thank you
I got one hit in Perseus, but nothing for Kallikles. In the TLG (Thesaurus Linguae Graecae), I got 62 results mentioning Kallikles in Gorgias, but none using that exact phrase. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.
TLG:
http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/Iris/demo/tsearch.jsp#s=33 (You’ll have to reenter Καλλίκλεις)
I amateurishly google εἰ βούλῃ ἀναθέσθαι and it instantly turns up Gorg.461d εἴ τί σοι δοκεῖ μὴ καλῶς ὡμολογῆσθαι, ἀναθέσθαι ὅτι ἂν σὺ βούλῃ. Are you sure your quote is exact and not an adaptation?
it’s Stephanus quoting, thank you, I Googled it and got something different.
Constantinus, You fragmented your recent several posts and scattered them across different boards, making for unnecessary confusion. Your quotations have been from what purports to be Stephanus of Alexandria’s viva voce (απο φωνης) comments on Aristotle’s de interpretatione (ΣΧΟΛΙΑ ΣΥΝ ΘΕΩΙ ΑΓΙΟ ΦΩΝΗΣ ΣΤΕΦΑΝΟΥ ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦΟΥ ΕΙΣ TO ΠΕΡΙ ΕΡΜΗΝΕΙΑΣ ΑΡΙΣΤΟΤΕΛΟΥΣ). Perhaps it would have been better to read Aristotle’s (probably mistitled) treatise itself?
By the way, there’s a note here in the apparatus of the Stephanus PDF I’ve linked in the other threads, “ἐν τῷ Γοργίᾳ] c. 16 p. 461 D; ceterum verba illic longe alia sunt”.
That says “But the words are very different there.” As indeed they are. Apart from what I noted above, they’re addressed to Polus, not to Callicles. That’s what threw Aetos off, along with the OP’s mistaking it for an actual quote from the Gorgias.
The commentary rightly or wrongly went under the name of Stephanus, that is Stephanus of Alexandria (6th-7th cent.), not to be confused with Stephanus of Byzantium nor with Henri Estienne (latinized as Stephanus) whose monumental 16th-cent. edition of Plato inaugurated the standard reference system to Plato’s works (e.g. “461d”).
I will probably have more posts on Stephanus, so would it not be better to move to another board? Either the one dedicated to philosophy or to late Greek literature?
I’ll split up the thread and move things around when I have some time.
Surely the Academy—Plato’s home turf—would be the appropriate dumping ground.