Corpus description

The WoPoss corpus is a diachronic corpus of Latin texts covering the period from the 3rd century BCE to the 7th century CE. Texts have been selected taking into account not only the chronological criterion, but also sociolinguistic—mainly diatopic and diastratic—variation. The WoPoss corpus includes literary and documentary texts, direct sources (such as inscriptions) and replica documents (such as modern editions of ancient texts based on the manuscript tradition).

Diachronic and sociolinguistic variation is encoded at the level of the text files metadata, according to the following tagset:

• author name
• birth and death date
• place of birth
• gender
• title of the work
• dating of the work
• principal type of transmission:
  • codex
  • inscription
  • papyrus scroll
  • mixed
• basic textual features:
  • dialogue
  • in verse
  • prose
  • translation
• textual genre:
  • Christian (or Christian-related) theological (in a broad sense) texts
  • documentary text: legal
  • documentary text: other
  • epistolographic texts
  • historiographical texts
  • novels
  • oratory
  • philosophical texts
  • poetic texts (not assignable to a more specific category in the list, e.g. epigrams)
  • theatre:
    • comedy
    • tragedy
  • technical texts:
    • agriculture
    • architecture
    • cosmography
    • erudit compilation
    • lexicography
    • medicine
    • rhetoric
  • travel literature

The setting-up of the corpus builds upon projects providing open access text files (see the credits page for the list of projects with which we have either informal or formal agreements).

A full description of the annotated corpus will be provided soon.

Current state of the corpus

The WoPoss corpus is currently under construction and the annotation of the texts according to the WoPoss guidelines is ongoing. We have made available a small sample of the corpus through the search interface. The annotated texts are available in this repository under a CC-BY licence. The sample consists of the following texts (for a total of 53,947 words):

• Octavius by M. Minucius Felix:
  • Text provided by Perseus Digital Library, with funding from The Mellon Foundation. Original version available for viewing and download at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/. Text retrieved from: http://data.perseus.org/texts/urn:cts:latinLit:stoa0203.stoa001.perseus-lat1. Original printed edition: Tertullian Apology - De spectaculis - Minucius Felix Octavius. Translated by T.R. Glover & William Heinemann. Harvard University Press: London; Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1931.
  • Reference edition: Minucius Felix, Marcus. Octavius. Edited by Bernhard Kytzler. Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. 1992.
• Metamorphoses (First book) by P. Ovidius Naso:
  • Text provided by Perseus Digital Library, with funding from The Mellon Foundation. Original version available for viewing and download at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/. Text retrieved from: http://data.perseus.org/texts/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0959.phi006.perseus-lat1. Original printed edition: Ovid. Metamorphoses. Edited by Hugo Magnus. Gotha, Germany: F.A. Perthes. 1892.
  • Reference edition: P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphoses. Edited by Richard Tarrant. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2004.
• Satyricon by G. Petronius Arbiter:
  • Text provided by Perseus Digital Library, with funding from The Mellon Foundation. Original version available for viewing and download at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/. Text retrieved from: http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0972.phi001.perseus-lat1:1. Original printed edition: Petronius Arbiter. Petronius. Edited by Michael Heseltine. London: William Heinemann. 1913.
  • Reference edition: Petronius Arbitrer. Satyricon reliquiae. Edited by Konrad Müller. Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. 2004.
• De spectaculis by Q. S. F. Tertullianus:
  • Text provided by Perseus Digital Library, with funding from The Mellon Foundation. Original version available for viewing and download at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/. Text retrieved from: http://data.perseus.org/texts/urn:cts:latinLit:stoa0275.stoa027. Original printed edition: Tertullian Apology - De spectaculis - Minucius Felix Octavius. Translated by T.R. Glover & William Heinemann. Harvard University Press: London; Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1931.
  • Reference edition: Tertullianus, Quintus Septimius Florens. Les spectacles = (De spectaculis). Sources chrétiennes no 332. Paris: Les Editions du Cerf. 1986.
• Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus:
  • Text provided by Epigraphic Database Rome (EDR). Record: EDR169402, 24-04-2021 (Annarosa GALLO) http://www.edr-edr.it/edr_programmi/res_complex_comune.php?do=book&id_nr=EDR169402. Based on the edition: Gallo, Annarosa, “Senatus consulta de Bacchanalibus. Normenpluralität in der Tafel von Tiriolo und in der livianischen Überlieferung” in Die senatus consulta in den epigraphischen Quellen. Texte und Bezeugungen edited by Pierangelo Buongiorno and Giuseppe Camodeca. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 2021, pp. 107-145.

How to cite

To cite single files or the results related to single files, please use the following format:

• Octavius by M. Minucius Felix. How to cite: The WoPoss modality corpus
• Metamorphoses (First book) by P. Ovidius Naso. How to cite: The WoPoss modality corpus
• Satyricon by G. Petronius Arbiter. How to cite: The WoPoss modality corpus
• De spectaculis by Q. S. F. Tertullianus. How to cite: The WoPoss modality corpus
• Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus. How to cite: The WoPoss modality corpus

To cite the project and/or website as a whole please use the following format:

• Francesca Dell’Oro, dir., WoPoss. A corpus to analyse the evolution of modality in the diachrony of the Latin language, Swiss National Science Foundation [https://woposs.unine.ch/].