eComparatio – a Software Tool for Automatic Text Comparison

The following paper gives a short description of the software-tool eComparatio that was originally intended as a tool for the comparison of different text editions. An example of its original purposes will be given, the larger part of the paper consists of a detailed description of the actual comparison process in detail. In a final section, some differences to similar text comparison tools for plain text will be given. 1 Some preliminary remarks To explain why there are different versions of “a text” and why it might be necessary to compare them seems – at least while approaching the readers of a volume entitled “Digital Classical Philology” – like carrying coals to Newcastle. The eComparatio software tool we will be presenting in the following pages, however, has its origins not so much in the “purely philological” realm of collating and editing. It is rather grounded in the daily needs and practical experience of those who are working as historians or literary scientists with the so-called “classical” and “canonical” texts, which oftentimes happen to be at hand in several different editions. In the following paper, we are trying to show that the software could be a useful tool for textual criticism in a narrower sense as well, and that it is also taking some steps towards this direction in its latest development. We will therefore try to illustrate the idea of eComparatio as a useful tool for ancient historians (and scholars working with different text editions in general), Oliver Bräckel, Hannes Kahl, Friedrich Meins, Charlotte Schubert, Universität Leipzig 1 The software was developed by Hannes Kahl during a project funded by the DFG from March 2014 to March 2016 and developed further in 2016 in the follow-up project “Annotating and Editing with Canonical Text Services” funded by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation and conducted in cooperation with Christopher Blackwell from Furman University in Greenville, SC. The following paper is mainly a summary of presentations from the DHd conference in Cologne and the “52. Deutscher Historikertag” in Münster (Germany). Further documentation and the software itself are available online at http://www.ecomparatio. com and eComparatio on GitHub via the homepage http://www.eaqua. net (last access 2019.01.31). Open Access. ©2019 Oliver Bräckel et al., published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110599572-013 and we will also try to give some insight into the unique comparison method. A concluding section is aiming at a comparative analysis of eComparatio and some other similar tools concerning their different applications. 2 An example from practice The famous fragment B1 of Anaximander plays an important role in the reconstruction of the world views of the Pre-Socratic philosophers. In this fragment, Anaximander discusses the origin (arché) of the world. The fragment is part of a paraphrase ascribed to Theophrastus, which in turn is handed down to us by Simplicius – hence telling the paraphrase from the direct quotation is made even more complicated here. Kirk et al. (2001) point out that Theophrastus’ interpretation shows a strong Aristotelian influence, an impression which might even be increased by the fact that Simplicius quotes the passage in a commentary on Aristotle. In modern editions, the textual context of the fragment considered relevant for the interpretation varies profoundly (see Figure 1). Furthermore, the editions differ with regard to their interpretation of what exactly is to be considered as part of the verbatim quotation. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker marks the whole phrase ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών. διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν [. ] as actual “B”-fragment. Scholars as Vogel (1963) and Mansfeld (1983 and 2009) are following this notion. Kirk et al. (2001) take κατὰ τὸ χρεών to be the only original part of the first sentence, and so does Graham (2010). The main argument for this line of interpretation is the terminological application of certain words in Aristotle and the Peripatetics, wherefore Kirk et al (2001). consider the bigger part of the sentence to be an adjunct by Theophrastus himself. In cases like this, a helpful overview of different editions of fragments as well as of the source texts can be provided to the scholar by the eComparatio tool. An even more interesting insight is highlighted by the tool concerning the editorial history of the verbatim part of the fragment itself (see Figure 2). In the oldest edition of the text, the Aldina of Franziskus Asulanus from 1526 A.D., the word ἀλλήλοις is missing. This is grammatically valid, since δίκην or τίσιν διδόναι are known collocations with the meaning “being punished”, and do 2 Cf. Kirk et al. (2001, 115). 3 Cf. Kirk et al. (2001, 129, 133). 222 Oliver Bräckel, Hannes Kahl, Friedrich Meins and Charlotte Schubert