Text Mining with the Atthidographers

Abstract

During the Third eAQUA workshop that took place at the University of Leipzig on the 27th – 28th of June 2010, I presented approaches to investigating the Atthidographers using text mining methods. The Atthidographers are a group of ancient authors who had written a history of Athens, whose works, the so-called Atthides, are now lost. The content can be extrapolated only from scarce references in surviving texts. I shall here summarize problems that arise when dealing with fragmentary authors represented in digital text corpora and specifically when text mining methods are applied. My second aim is to present strategies that bypass the methodical disadvantages of the material. At the same time, I am here providing a concise introduction of the tools being used and finally a sample application in order to allow for an evaluation of the results.