Text and Word Study Tools Help (deprecated)

last revised: 09/29/03
see the updated version of this document


For help with Greek font display, please see the Greek Font Help page.

Reading Texts

About the texts

Our texts are special Perseus-edited editions. Some were originally published in the Loeb Classical Library; others are available through the courtesy of other publishers. The Perseus Text Browser allows you to read these works broken into logical, quick-loading sections. Links at the top of each section allow you to go on to the next or previous section, or to jump to any other passage in the text. You may choose whether to read texts in English translation or in the original language, and you may choose to see more or fewer interconnections among the texts.

Looking up passages, works, authors

You can view works by choosing them from the library or collection table of contents, (see the Classics TOC as an example) by searching for them with the Lookup Tool (see results for Homer Iliad as an example), or, while already looking at a text, by typing the numerical reference into the "Go to" box and pressing return. If you already know the abbreviation for an author and work (i.e., Hom. Il. 1.1), you may also type the correct reference for any author, work, and book, chapter, section and/or line number (if applicable) into the Lookup Tool Search box at the top of each page and then pressing return. Perseus will display an example lookup for the work you are currently viewing, with correct abbreviations and format.

Note the ways we found the sample text:

Those comfortable with URLs might notice that the actual URL for a passage is "http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=" followed by the reference for the passage, typed as above except with "+" signs replacing spaces (which URLs aren't allowed to contain.) However, the Search Perseus/Lookup feature we've provided means you don't have to worry about that; it does it for you.

Document IDs: URLs do not always contain the abbreviated author and title. Instead, they may contain the internal document identifier, a quick way for the system to locate the text you want to read. If you are making a link to a Perseus text from a page of your own, you should always use the more readable form. For example, for the opening of Homer's Iliad, use "http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Hom.+Il.+1.1" instead of "http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0133&loc=1%2C1". The internal document ID encodes information about a particular version of the text. If you make links using the document ID, you override or disable readers' choice of versions. If you make links using the standard author and work abbreviations, readers will see the text in the language they prefer. When Perseus contains more than one version of a text, the preferred URL form, using the standard abbreviations, will appear at the bottom of the page. Abbreviations are also visible on the Perseus Table of Contents page, right after the language of the text.

Mirrors: The main Perseus site is located at Tufts University, at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu. Examples in this file use the URL for the main site. There are currently three additional Perseus mirror sites in Berlin, Germany (http://perseus.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/), Chicago, IL (http://perseus.uchicago.edu/), and Oxford, England (http://perseus.csad.ox.ac.uk/). All three copies are identical. You should use, and create links to, whichever mirror is most convenient for you.

Getting around in the texts

Once you're reading a text, you will find a variety of tools on your screen. Here's an overview of a sample text page:

Version Selection:
At the top of the screen, below the name of the text, there will be, when applicable, links to alternate versions of the text. You can also use the Display Configuration Tool to make either original languages or translations the default for every text you look at. (For help with Greek font display, please see the Greek Font Help page.) Perseus contains alternate versions for some of the texts in the Renaissance collection as well.

Navigation:
Next come the location tools. The blue navigation bar shows where you currently are relative to the whole text. When you are reading the very first page of a text, the red marker will appear all the way at the left; on the last page, it will appear all the way at the right. Click on the blue bar to jump to another approximate position.
The Go To Box allows you to jump to an exact position. Note that the Go To Box only works for the text you are reading; use the "Search Perseus" box in the top bar at left to go to a different text. In the Go To Box you can enter a reference, by book, chapter, section, and/or line. The Box initially contains the reference for the part of the text you are reading. You can separate the parts of the reference with commas, periods, or spaces.
The Table of Contents link brings you to a full table of contents for the work you are reading. For most texts, a short table of contents appears at the bottom of the sidebar at left. Entries in both the long and the short tables of contents are links back to the appropriate part of the text.
Below the Go-To Box and the Table of Contents link are arrows to the left and the right. These allow you to page through the text; the left arrow leads backward to the previous page and the right arrow forward to the next page. Naturally, the first page of a text has no previous page, so no left arrow, and the last page has no next page and no right arrow.

Text-only browsers: If you are using a browser without graphics, or if you have disabled images, the navigation bar will not appear; use the Go-To Box instead. Instead of arrows pointing to the previous and next sections, you'll see the words "Previous" and "Next" as links backward and forward. The sidebar that normally appears at the left of all Perseus pages will appear at the top of your screen.

Credits, sources, text quality:
At the bottom of each page, below the text and annotations, you will see information about the text and how we created it. The "Preferred URL for linking to this page" appears when there are multiple translations or editions of the same work in the Perseus Digital Library. If you wish to make a link in a web page of your own to the page you are reading, we recommend you use this URL to make a link that will respect readers' preferences; see above. The agency, corporation, or private donor who supported adding this text to the collection appears next, for most texts. Perseus is grateful to the many groups and individuals who have supported us.

After the funder information comes source information. Most of the books in the Perseus Digital Library are electronic editions taken from printed books. This section of the page describes the printed book, usually including title, author, and publication date, and ISBN when available. If there is an ISBN, there will also be a link to Amazon.com, allowing you to purchase a copy of the book (assuming it is still in print). Finally, for some texts, we give information about the electronic edition itself: whether it was created by scanning the printed text and using optical character recognition (OCR), or by a professional data entry firm. Texts entered by the data entry firm have many fewer transcription errors, but data entry costs more money, so we cannot use it for all of our texts. Whether the original electronic version comes from OCR or from data entry, it must be proofread and converted to structured markup in SGML before it can be used in the digital library. Further editing may improve or refine the text. We qualify the completeness and accuracy of the proofreading as "low," "medium," or "high degree of accuracy." A text at a medium degree of accuracy will have no more than 2 incorrect characters per thousand (roughly, per page), and probably has fewer. A text at a low degree of accuracy may have slightly more; a text at a high degree of accuracy will have fewer. For more about document quality indicators, see this short paper.

Other Features: Atlas Plotting:
For most texts in English, you will also see links to the Perseus Atlas. "Plot sites on this page" will appear when there are place names on the page you are reading. "Plot sites in this book" appears for texts that are divided into books, like Homer's Iliad or Thucydides' History. "Plot sites in this document" appears for any text that contains any place names at all. Each of these links brings you to the Atlas, with the selected places marked on the map. The Atlas will open in a new window, so you can arrange the text and the map together on your screen. Only places for which Perseus has latitude and longitude information will appear, however; coverage is currently better for ancient Greek sites than for other parts of the Mediterranean world. For some documents, like Caesar's Gallic War, many key places are not yet available.

Timeline Plotting:
Texts in English may also have links to the Timeline Tool. "Plot dates in this document" appears whenever the text contains dates. The link brings you to a timeline showing the chronological scope of the text. The timeline opens in a new browser window, just as the Atlas does. This tool is most obviously useful for historical texts, but often provides interesting insights into other kinds of texts as well. See the Timeline Tool Help for more information.

Features of the texts

The Perseus text tools are designed to help you analyze and discover the meaning of Greek and Latin words and the key ideas of Greek and Roman history and culture for yourself. As a result, within a text, many of the words appear as hyperlinks.

For texts in English, including both translations of ancient texts and modern secondary sources, key words have links to the Perseus Lookup Tool. The Lookup Tool tells you what kinds of information are available about the key word: images, sites, art objects, and texts.

For texts in Latin or Greek, most -- if not all -- of the words in the text are links to the Word Study Tool, giving an enhanced morphological analysis of each word. You may use the Display Configuration Tool to turn this feature on or off. The analysis shows the gender, number, and case for nouns and adjectives, or the tense, mood, and voice for verbs. This analysis also provides:

See below for more on word counts and relative frequencies.

Here's a schematic of what this tool looks like, for ethêke, the last word in the second line of the Iliad:

Commentaries and Cross References:
Asterisks (*) and crosses (+) in a Greek or Latin text are links to commentaries on this text, or references to this text from elsewhere in the Perseus Digital Library. You may use the Display Configuration Tool to control what kinds of reference links are displayed and how they appear on the screen. When Perseus has a commentary specifically about a particular work, asterisks in the text will indicate words that are discussed in the commentary. Each asterisk is a link; you will need to position your mouse pointer precisely. When you follow this link, the commentary will open up in a new window. The commentary is itself a text, and all the same navigation tools and morphological analysis tools are available for commentaries just as for primary source texts.
Here's a sample text:

When the text you are reading is quoted by another text in Perseus, a cross in the text will indicate the words quoted in the other text. The cross is a link to the place of the quotation, and the other text will open up in a new window, just as commentaries do. Many of these quotations come from grammars, or commentaries on other texts. You can choose whether or not to see these links.

Sometimes a commentary will have notes that do not refer directly to a single word or phrase in the text. Links to these notes will appear at the bottom of your screen, after any footnotes that belong to the text itself.

Configuring your display

The Display Configuration Tool allows you to customize Perseus for yourself. The settings you choose will be stored in a cookie on your local computer: whatever choices you make will persist from one Perseus session to the next. The Display Configuration Tool is available from the "Configure display" link in the top bar of every Perseus page. It looks like this:

Default Text: This allows you to choose whether translations or original Greek and Latin texts are displayed by default when you look up a work. Select "translation" to see the English version, "original language" to see the Greek or Latin.

Word Study Links: With this you may choose whether Greek and Latin words appearing in Perseus texts are links to the Word Study Tool. If you select "yes," Greek and Latin words will have these links; if you select "no," they will not. The Word Study Tool is described above. Note that this tool is available not only for complete texts in Greek or Latin but also for individual Greek or Latin words that are quoted in other texts. For example, if you are reading an English commentary on Vergil's Aeneid, Latin words that appear in the commentary will have links to the Word Study Tool just like the words in Vergil's own text.

Greek Display: This option controls how Greek is displayed. See the Greek Font Help page for more information. "Latin transliteration" is relatively readable and will work on any system.

Arabic Display: This option controls how Arabic is displayed.

Cross references: This section controls which cross-reference links should be displayed. You may select as many of these choices as you like. "Commentary" links are references from a commentary on the work you are reading, if Perseus contains one. "Cross reference" links come from other works that quote the work you are reading; these may be reference grammars, commentaries, or other texts. You may request ordinary cross references, cross references from the footnotes of the referring work, or cross references from the index of the referring work, or any combination of these. Commentary and cross-reference links are most useful with original-language texts, but they are also available for use with English translations.

Lookup Tool Links: This option allows you to turn off Perseus Lookup Tool linking, or limit it to the collection you are currently using.

Meter display: This permits you to choose how you would like to display meter. For more see the Meter Font Help.

Sanskrit display: Like Greek Display and Arabic display: allows you to choose how you wish Sanskrit to be represented.

Lemma mapping: Finally, you may choose how the commentary and cross-reference links will appear. "Don't mark lemmas" means that there will be no marks in the main text. All commentary and cross-reference links will appear together at the bottom of the screen. "Place mark at end of lemma" means that the asterisk (*) for commentary links, or the cross (+) for cross-reference links, will appear in the text, next to the word or phrase that the comment refers to (the "lemma"). "Italicize whole lemma and place mark" means that the asterisk or cross will appear in the text, and the lemma being referred to will be italicized, so you can see whether a reference refers to a single word or to a phrase.

When you've made your selections, choose "set configuration" to store them, or "reset" to return to the settings that were in effect when you entered the Display Configuration Tool. You will automatically be returned to the page you were reading, with your new settings applied. Note, however, that you will go back to the same version of the text -- original or translation -- even if you have changed the "Default Text" option. The "Default Text" option only applies when you look up a text by its author and title. If your browser cannot return you to the page you were reading, you will see a screen saying "Your Perseus display configuration has been changed. You may now return to Perseus." The words "return to Perseus" are a link back to the page you were reading.

Default settings:
Until you make your own selections, Perseus applies the following defaults:

Cookies and security: Only the Perseus site can read your Perseus configuration cookie. It is stored on your machine, under your control. Perseus does not store any information about you.

Using tools as your starting point:

On the Text Tools & Lexica page, tools are listed as follows: