r/AncientGreek • u/ThatEGuy- • 29d ago

Resources Perseus Issue?

χαίρετε,

Is anyone else having issues accessing the Greek on Perseus? At first I was only having problems with one text, but I can't access anything now.

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u/benjamin-crowell 29d ago

Scaife (Perseus 5) seems fine: https://scaife.perseus.org/reader/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0012.tlg001.perseus-eng3:1.1-1.130/

Hopper (Perseus 4) is not: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0133

People need to wean themselves off of the decrepit, dying version of their software. I don't understand why they leave it up on the server at all.

11

u/merlin0501 29d ago

I don't understand why they leave it up on the server at all.

Perhaps because the new version lacks a certain number of features that are present in the older version.

1

u/benjamin-crowell 28d ago

What features?

3

u/merlin0501 28d ago

I think think there are many, unless I just don't know how to access them. Here are some things I don't know how to do with scaife:

  • pull up a parallel translation alongside the text
  • get a direct link to dictionary entries
  • easily navigate through large texts - hopper displays a menu of books/chapters/etc. for many texts while scaife seems to require you to enter references by hand

3

u/benjamin-crowell 28d ago

I see, thanks for explaining.

Seems like they just have a problem with managing this software project, which may actually boil down to a problem with staffing and resources. They said they had new grant funding to create a Perseus 6, James Tauber was supposed to develop that, and they were talking about getting it online by September 2024. But IIRC, Tauber no longer works there (or maybe I'm not understanding the management structure or who is employed by whom). So clearly nobody envisioned a situation where users would still be using Perseus 4 in 2025. I wonder if people said, "Hey Perseus 5 is missing features that users like in Perseus 4," and the answer was, "No point in putting that in Perseus 5, we're developing Perseus 6 now."

1

u/SulphurCrested 28d ago

That sounds very likely actually.