Perseus · Tufts
Perseus Home Page
Collections: Classics · Papyri · Renaissance · London · California · Upper Midwest · Tufts History
Configure display · Help · Tools · Copyright · FAQ · Publications · Collaborations · Support Perseus

About Perseus 2.0

Contents of Perseus 2.0
Perseus 2.0 is the latest CD-ROM version of the award-winning digital library on Archaic and Classical Greece, intended to expand the ways in which ancient Greek literature, history, art, and archaeology can be examined. Perseus seeks to serve as both a teaching and a research tool; its low cost, comprehensiveness, and essential simplicity make it broadly useful in a variety of settings. Perseus will introduce the beginning student to antiquity and provide powerful research capabilities for the specialist. Named for the Hellenic hero who explored the world to its most distant reaches, Perseus is the work of a collaborative team including philologists, historians, and archaeologists.
Perseus contains over 380 texts in Greek and in translation. The major authors of the classical period are represented, as well as some later authors whose works are useful for the study of the fifth century B.C. Perseus 2.0 contains the works of Aeschines, Aeschylus, Andocides, Antiphon, Apollodorus, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Bacchylides, Demades, Demosthenes, Dinarchus, Diodorus, Euripides, Herodotus, Hesiod, Homer, the Homeric Hymns, Hyperides, Isaeus, Isocrates, Lycurgus, Lysias, Pausanias, Pindar, Plato, relevant parts of Plutarch, Sophocles, Strabo, Thucydides, and Xenophon. More texts will be added in later versions. The Intermediate Liddell-Scott Greek Lexicon is also in Perseus, together with complete morphological databases for all Greek texts in the database. The complete Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek Lexicon too will be added in a later version, and is already available on the World Wide Web version of the Perseus database.
Perseus 2.0 contains detailed catalogue entries for 1421 vases, 366 sculptures and sculptural groups, 524 coins, 384 buildings, and 179 sites. Perseus allows viewers to examine sites and objects in particular detail; thirty or more images document many vases, thus illustrating these objects in far greater detail than would be possible in a print publication. In the site catalogue, the images and plans are so linked that the user can select buildings and perspectives on the plans and call up the corresponding view, in effect "walking" around the site, while preserving the ability to view an object's opposite sides simultaneously.
The Perseus Atlas contains color maps of Greece taken from satellite images, annotated with place names. It is possible to roam through the Atlas, zoom in on regions, and see various photographs of a region. The archaeological site plans are also linked with the Atlas. An Historical Overview and an Encyclopedia provide two different secondary means of entry to Perseus. The Historical Overview is a narrative with links to the primary sources: e.g., a mention of Alcibiades is linked to a passage in Plutarch; a description of the Parthenon is linked to its architectural catalogue entry. Encyclopedia articles also include links to primary sources, so that a reader can take a topical as well as a chronological approach to a question.

Navigating Across Different Content Areas: One Advantage of the Perseus Environment
Users will benefit from the diverse materials in the Perseus digital library, which have not been integrated in traditional scholarship. For example, the user can read Euripides' Bacchae and examine the depictions of satyrs and maenads in art, or investigate the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides with maps and photographs of the places they mention. It is enlightening to read a Greek text when it is accompanied not only by an English translation (as in some editions), but by a lexicon and a morphological database that can parse any Greek word in Perseus.
There are a number of ways to navigate the digital library in addition to the links provided in the Historical Overview and the Encyclopedia. Users can create and save individual paths through the database. These paths can be used as a record for individual research and as an expository tool for other readers. Although the sources in the database may not be changed, it will be possible to create new links and paths so the user can navigate through the data, as well as add supplementary materials.
By enabling such heterogeneous study, Perseus explores the possibility of the digital library of the future, which is already emerging in today's computing environment. It presents a range of information relevant to many different purposes. With Perseus it is possible to move between traditionally distinct types of information, such as images and texts, hence traditionally distinct disciplines, such as archaeology and philology.

Ordering & Availability
Yale University Press publishes, distributes, and markets Perseus 2.0: all inquiries on pricing, availability and support should be directed to Yale University Press. The Perseus Project does not have the staff or resources to directly support Perseus 2.0. Yale University Press will contact the project if such a need arises. For more information on how to order Perseus 2.0, please see our ordering information page.

Operating System Requirements
Perseus 2.0 is available for Macintosh and Windows platforms. Please visit the Yale University Press site for more specifics.

Support for Perseus
Perseus is a non-profit enterprise, located in the Department of the Classics, Tufts University.
The Perseus Project is funded by the Annenberg/CPB Project, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Getty Grant program, Tufts University, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Modern Language Association, the Berger Family Technology Transfer Endowment, and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. Support for the project has been provided by Apple Computer, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Packard Humanities Institute, Xerox Corporation, Boston University, and Harvard University.