"Roman Perseus" Update

In the premier issue of the Perseus Project newsletter, we announced plans for a "Roman Perseus" CD-ROM. These plans have since changed. The project is currently concentrating its resources on the acquisition of art and archaeological materials related to the Roman world. Visual Collections Curator Maria Daniels has spent over four months in Europe thus far collecting digital photographs of the Roman world.

We are also continuing to edit the Latin texts and tools currently on-line. Revisions to the orations of Cicero have recently commenced. Efforts to enter the remaining Lives of Plutarch have been underway for several months, and the first stages of work have been done on entering Tacitus and Vitruvius. Much of the text entry of late has been focused on several important secondary works, all of which will provide important supplementary materials for the study of the Roman world. The recently unveiled Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites is one example. Currently in development is an electronic version of S.B. Platner's Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (commonly known as Platner-Ashby, since it was completed and revised by Thomas Ashby).

The Perseus Project is dedicated to delivering Roman materials to the widest audience possible. New technologies, including faster modems and less expensive forms of removable media capable of storing larger and larger amounts of data, are constantly changing. Project members are currently re-evaluating the way in which Perseus publishes electronic materials. We hope to deliver future releases of Perseus in the quickest and least expensive way. One possibility for better delivery of materials is the establishment of local WWW sites so that a given school would have Perseus materials installed locally. This would provide schools with faster and more reliable access to Perseus while still enabling them to avoid installation of large collections of data on local computers. Please let us know what you think about the current Roman materials and the new developments and additions underway. Comments are welcome at webmaster@perseus.tufts.edu.

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document placed on-line 6/21/99, LMC