The DFHG Fragmentary Texts is a tool developed by the DFHG Project for providing information about digital data and digital editions of ancient Greek fragmentary authors and works (text reuse) with a focus on historical texts.
This tool collects data from the following digital libraries:
Given that these projects differ in their scope and accessibility, data provided below diverge in terms of number and typology. The goal of this tool is to present what is currently extant in the digital environment and to show the need for more open data, statistics, and numerical information about ancient Greek sources and their editions.
The DFHG Fragmentary Texts is an ongoing tool continually updated with new data and resources. For more information, see M. Berti, "Historical Fragmentary Texts in the Digital Age", in Digital Classical Philology. Ancient Greek and Latin in the Digital Revolution. Ed. by M. Berti. Age of Access? Grundfragen der Informationsgesellschaft 10. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter 2019, 257-276. DOI: 10.1515/9783110599572-015
The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) (subscription required) is the oldest and biggest digital library of ancient Greek texts. Today the online version contains more than 110 million words from over 10,000 works associated with 4,000 authors (TLG About page). As of Early 2018, the TLG Statistics page (subscription required) shows that the TLG collects 3,293 authors for the period of time between the 8th century BC and the 20th century CE including authors dated as varia and incerta.
If we limit the selection to the centuries 8 BC through 6 CE, the TLG has 2,120 authors + 99 varia and 90 incerta for a total of 2,309 authors: see Chart 1.
According to the TLG Canon (open access with registration), the period between the 8th century BC and the 6th century CE counts 1,131 fragmentary authors + 29 varia and 50 incerta for a total of 1,210 fragmentary authors: see Chart 2.
Within this group, there are 215 authors with both extant and fragmentary works, and 995 authors with only fragmentary works: see Chart 3.
These results are obtained by searching the string fragm* in the TLG field All Fields (which includes Author, Editor, Work Title, Publ. Title, Series and Publ. Year). The search is not limited to the fields Author and Work Title because there are TLG fragmentary works without a "fragmentary" specification (e.g., the comic work Κωμῳδούμενοι: tlg {0662.008}). On the other hand, it is also necessary to eliminate works that are included in the results because the corresponding Publ. title has a form of the word fragmentum (e.g., Lysias' extant orations that are part of Carey's edition entitled Lysiae orationes cum fragmentis).
Table 1 shows that for the period between the 8 century BC and the 6th century CE (+ varia and incerta) the TLG collects 1,210 fragmentary authors and 2,314 fragmentary work titles whose texts have been digitized from 489 editions. The TLG field Series includes only the entry Poetarum Graecorum fragmenta.
| Author | 1,210 |
|---|---|
| Work Title | 2,314 |
| Publ. Title | 489 |
| Series | 1 |
A deeper analysis reveals that there are other terms in the TLG field Work Title used to refer to fragmentary works: fragmentum, frustulum, epitome, excerptum, testimonium and titulus (with different inflected forms): see Table 2.
| Fragmentum | 1,950 |
|---|---|
| Testimonium | 158 |
| Titulus | 119 |
| Epitome | 4 |
| Excerptum | 4 |
| Frustulum | 1 |
Table 2 shows the number of occurrences of these terms based on data filtered with the string fragm* in the TLG field All Fields and for the period of time between the 8th century BC and the 6th century CE (+ varia and incerta).
For the same period of time, TLG fragmentary authors are classified according to 69 epithets grouped in 117 combinations, and according to 268 geographical epithets grouped in 313 combinations. TLG fragmentary works are classified according to 69 work classifications grouped in 236 combinations.
As for the centuries 8 BC through 6 CE (+ varia and incerta), the TLG includes 273 fragmentary historians (based on the TLG author epithet Hist.). If we take into account the TLG combination of the epithet Hist. with other epithets, there are 297 fragmentary historians: see Chart 4.
The Perseus Digital Library and the Scaife Viewer (open access) have no texts of fragmentary authors, but the Perseus Catalog (open access) collects information about editions of fragmentary authors and works. The Perseus Catalog includes ancient Greek, Latin, and Arabic works, and it is browsable by Author, Work Title, Work Original Language, Edition or Translation Year Published, Edition or Translation Language, Series and Subjects.
As for Early 2018, the Perseus Catalog counts 2,072 authors and 4,584 work titles: see Table 3.
| Author | 2,072 |
|---|---|
| Work Title | 4,584 | Ancient Greek Work (to 1453) | 2,908 |
| Latin Work | 1,576 |
| Arabic Work | 131 |
| Series | 92 |
| Subjects | 1,072 |
Within the collection, there are 891 fragmentary authors, 1,060 fragmentary work titles, 971 Greek fragmentary works, 69 Latin fragmentary works and 141 subjects pertaining to fragmentary works: see Table 4 and Charts 5 and 6.
| Fragmentary Author | 891 |
|---|---|
| Fragmentary Work Title | 1,060 |
| Fragmentary Work | 1,040 (971 Greek + 69 Latin) |
| Subjects | 141 |
Perseus Catalog Work Titles include not only the term fragmentum (with inflected forms), but also testimonium (with inflected forms): see Table 5.
| Fragmentum | 1,060 |
|---|---|
| Testimonium | 38 |
As far as concerns Subjects, the Perseus Catalog counts 884 fragmentary work titles classified as produced by historians of Greece: see Chart 7.
The Open Greek and Latin (OGL) (open access) is a project developed at the University of Leipzig for digitizing editions of Greek and Latin sources produced in antiquity through the 6 century CE The goal is to generate OCR outputs that are encoded according to the TEI XML Guidelines and are freely downloadable and reusable.
OGL has been digitizing also fragmentary authors and is making available a first limited set of editions of fragmentary works through a GitHub repository (fragm-dev).
The First One-Thousand Years of Greek (First1KGreek) (open access) is a project maintained by the Open and Greek Latin (OGL) in collaboration with the Center for Hellenic Studies, the Harvard Library, Mount Alison University, Tufts University, the University of Leipzig and the University of Virginia. The goal of this project is to collect at least one edition of every Greek work composed between Homer and 250 CE with a focus on texts that do not already exist in the Perseus Digital Library.
As of Early 2018, the First1KGreek includes 882 editions with 30 fragmentary work editions: see Chart 8.
The Brill's New Jacoby (BNJ) (subscription required) has been producing a digital version of the Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (FGrHist) edited by Felix Jacoby and has been publishing a new edition of it and its continuatio through the BNJ (1st and 2nd edition). This is a resource entirely devoted to ancient Greek fragmentary historians.
As of Early 2018, the BNJ has been publishing online more than 1,000 authors: see Table 6.
| FGrHist Author | 1,068 |
|---|---|
| BNJ 1 Author | 848 |
| BNJ 2 Author | 105 |
For a list of correspondences among authors published in the FGrHist and the BNJ, see the Müller-Jacoby Table of Concordance.
The Digital Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (DFHG) (open access) provides the digital edition of the Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (FHG) edited by Karl Müller. It includes 636 Greek fragmentary historians, who are searchable through the DFHG Fragmentary Authors Catalog.
| DFHG Author | 636 |
|---|
The Müller-Jacoby Table of Concordance allows to compare alphabetical lists of ancient Greek fragmentary historians edited in the FHG, the FGrHist, and the BNJ 1 and 2.
The FHG does not provide dates for each author, but arranges the content in 15 sections within 5 volumes according to general chronological classifications: see Table 8 and the DFHG Fragmentary Authors Chart.
| FHG Volumes | FHG Books | FHG Sections | FHG Dates | FHG Authors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FHG 1 | 22 | |||
| FHG 2 | De insidiis quae regibus structae sunt excerpta | 3 | ||
| Liber primus | Inde ab incunabulis artis historicae usque ad finem Belli Peloponnesiaci | 520-404 BC | 22 | |
| Liber secundus | Inde a fine Belli Peloponnesiaci usque ad tempora Alexandri Magni | 17 | ||
| Liber tertius | Aristoteles ejusque discipuli | 14 | ||
| Liber quartus | Reliqui scriptores qui floruerunt inde ab Alexandri temporibus usque ad mortem Ptolemaei Philadelphi | 336-247 BC | 42 | |
| FHG 3 | Liber quintus | A Ptolemaeo III Evergete usque ad finem Ptolemaei VI Philometoris sive usque ad eversionem Corinthi | 247-146 BC | 40 |
| Liber sextus | Ab eversione Corinthi usque ad Caesarem Augustum | 146-27 BC | 32 | |
| Liber septimus | Ab Augusto usque ad Trajanum | 27 BC - 98 CE | 21 | |
| Liber octavus | A Trajano usque ad Constantinum Magnum | 98-306 CE | 41 | |
| FHG 4 | Liber nonus | A Constantino Magno usque ad Phocam imperatorem | 306-602 CE | 18 |
| Liber decimus | Scriptores aetatis incertae ex ordine literarum | 343 | ||
| Appendix ad librum nonum | 1 | |||
| FHG 5 | Pars prior | 9 | ||
| Pars altera | 11 |