Navigating Perseus

I was reading Anchor Bible Dictionary and came across this sentence:

"Luke uses the style of a particular type of Hellenistic historiography here, the style of the tragedy/pathos-centered historiography. Its aim was “sub oculos subiecto” (Gellius 10.3.7 regarding Cicero’s style)…"

I thought "I have Perseus, let's look at the context for that" and tried to find Gellius 10.3.7 … and had such a battle to get to the required information.

I find Logos' breadth of resources absolutely wonderful, but I find it so hard to get information out of the resources I own.

Does anyone know of an easy way to look up references such as "Gellius 10.3.7"?

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Comments

Mike Aubrey

Well, the Perseus Gellius doesn't seem to have the versification built in to the resource, but you can navigate to it by opening up Gellius' works (Attic Nights) and going to book 10, part 3, section 7. Worse the English text doesn't have the last set of numbers, but it looks like this is the paragraph you want:

Now these words about so lawless and cruel an outrage do not differ in the least from those of ordinary conversation. But in Marcus Tullius, when in a similar case Roman citizens, innocent men, are beaten with rods contrary to justice and contrary to the laws, or tortured to death, what pity is then aroused! What complaints does he utter! How he brings the whole scene before our eyes! What a mighty surge of indignation and bitterness comes seething forth! By Heaven! when I read those words of Cicero's, my mind is possessed with the sight and sound of blows, cries and lamentation. For example, the words which he speaks about Gaius Verres, which I have quoted so far as my memory went, which was all that I could do at present: “The man himself came into the forum, blazing with wickedness and frenzy. His eyes burned, every feature of his face displayed cruelty. All were waiting to see to what ends he would go, or what he would do, when on a sudden he gave orders that the man be dragged forth, that he be stripped in the middle of the forum and bound, and that rods be brought.” Now, so help me! the mere words “he ordered that he be stripped and bound, and rods brought” arouse such emotion and horror that you do not seem to hear the act described, but to see it acted before your face.

Gellius, A. (1927). Vol. 2: With An English Translation (J. C. Rolfe, Ed.) (221–223). Medford, MA: Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd.

Some resources are better with these issues than others. It *looks* like the Greek, with the necessity of LSJ references, has received better treatment than the Latin in this regard, but I don't know for sure.

Rosie Perera

You can type the author's name into the navigation bar -- that will show you the title of his only work (in this case), Attic Nights. It's up to you whether you want to open the English or Latin version of it. Then you can navigate to Book X, Chapter III, Paragraph 7 via the Table of Contents.

Once you're in the work, you can click the navigation box to see if there's an index by reference and find out the format of reference that's expected for this work (each one will be unique). In this case, in the Latin edition, it appears to be: Gel., Noctes Atticae 10.3.7. You could type the exact reference you want to go to in that format to get there if you haven't been able to find it yet through the TOC.

I don't actually see the words "sub oculos subiecto" in that location, so maybe the citation in ABD means something else and I'm misinterpreting it. Or maybe it's a typo. A search for that phrase in my entire library turned up zilch.

Disclaimer: I don't know any Latin.

Murray W

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/294074#Comment_294074

Thanks Rosie and Mike,

I had eventually found the same passages that you found but it took me such a long time to get there (and took me so off course of the research that I was doing) that I just wondered if there is a less tortuous route.

Navigating these ancient documents is far from "serendipitous" so I wanted to see if other people fared better than I did. For instance, the next section in ABD has this:

"Adherents of this school of historiography included Duris of Samos (cf. Diod. Sic. 19.108–9; 20.33–34), Phylarch (cf. Plut. Cleom. 19–20, 29, 38), Cleitarch, the historian of Alexander (cf. Diod. Sic. 17.26–27, 98–99), and Curtius Rufus (cf. 4.1.38–4.21), as well as the author of 2 Maccabees (cf. 3:1–40)."

I probably have all those references hidden somewhere in Logos, but I imagine it would have taken me well over an hour to get to all of those references (with the exception of 2 Maccabees, which is keylinked). I can remember trying to use the Nicene and Ante-Nicene Fathers resources and that was similarly painful.

Cheers,

Murray

(p.s. Rosie, the phrase was in the last line of what you highlghted, but it has "subiectio" where the ABD has "subiecto" which is why searches on the phrase weren't working)

Mike Aubrey

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/294079#Comment_294079

Navigating these ancient documents is far from "serendipitous" so I wanted to see if other people fared better than I did.

Just to re-emphasize this: I have found the Greek resources more intuitive in their references and I've been using them in complex morphological searching for a while now in conjunction with an article I'm writing. I'd be willing to bet that those resources that have linked reference in LSJ are generally more intuitive.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/294079#Comment_294079

(p.s. Rosie, the phrase was in the last line of what you highlghted, but it has "subiectio" where the ABD has "subiecto" which is why searches on the phrase weren't working)

Thanks. I overlooked that. I wonder which one is a typo? I don't know Latin, so I can't tell. If someone does, could you report the typo?

NetworkGeek

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/294074#Comment_294074

Once you're in the work, you can click the navigation box to see if there's an index by reference and find out the format of reference that's expected for this work (each one will be unique). In this case, in the Latin edition, it appears to be: Gel., Noctes Atticae 10.3.7. You could type the exact reference you want to go to in that format to get there if you haven't been able to find it yet through the TOC.

As far as I can tell you cannot type in Gel., Noctes Atticae 10.3.7 and have it work. I clicked on Gel., Noctes Atticae 10.3.1 because that's where it was, and just changed the '1' to both a '2' and a '7' and it went back to a '1'. So I don't think this works, probably because of what Michael says that it truly isn't indexed fully that way.

Rosie can you type in Gel., Noctes Atticae 10.3.7 in yours?

Jonathan Pitts

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/294098#Comment_294098

Rosie can you type in Gel., Noctes Atticae 10.3.7 in yours?

The Latin version seems to accept this, but the English version is not marked with the final element of it. It will accept Gel., Noctes Atticae 10.3 (and, interestingly, 10.3.1).

Two tips:

1. Start off by clicking on any part of the table of contents to get the correct reference (in this case, Gel., Noctes Atticae ...) in the reference box. If it shows page numbers rather than sections, click on the arrow of the reference box to see what alternative structure there is.

2. When you then try and modifiy this to get the section that you want, look at what appears in the drop-down list from the reference box. This tells you whether what you have typed is a recognized reference in that resource. If it does not appear in the drop-down, shorten it to find the nearest match. Don't hit enter until you have a match.

Not ideal, but it works without too much bother.