Scientific results:
The main scientific result was the preparation of an extensive modern commentary on certain comedies of Aristophanes ("Women at the Feast of Thesmophoria", "The Acharnians" (prologue), "The Clouds" and parts of the comedies "The Frogs" and "The Birds", about 800 pages), the first time it has been realized in Russian in such a form in recent period, as well as in-depth preparation for the development of a system of digital commentaries.
An extensive bibliography on the subject of the project was collected, books were purchased for the Laboratory library, many of which were brought to Russia for the first time and became available to readers.
Prof. S. Douglas Olson, who headed the Laboratory for three years, prepared for printing 5 different volumes of texts, commentaries and auxiliary materials (indices) for various works: Antiphanes, Aristophanes' "The Horsemen," Athenaeus' "The Feasting Sophists," "Commentary on the Odyssey" Eustathius (2 volumes).
The volume of Prof. Olson's commentary on Aristophanes' "Clouds" was translated (with additions). Separate work was done on the study of prologues to the comedies, hapaxes and neologisms, comic fragments, and papyri. A part of the scholia to the comedy "Women at the Feast of Thesmophoria" was translated and commented.
Implementation of research results:
Under the project, a web application was created that provides the necessary functionality to create and manage digital comments on texts, as well as parallel text and comments delivery. The functions of creating and editing text and comments with linking them to the text have been realized. The anchor points are visually highlighted in the text and in the comments, which allows to achieve constant preservation of context and minimizes the effort required to work in the system. The functions of quick navigation through the text and comments, use of tags, search through the text and comments, binding of abbreviations and sigla in the text and comments are implemented.
Education and personnel occupational retraining:
During the existence of the project, 7 people have studied in the postgraduate program, 2 of them successfully defended their theses.
On December 16, 2021, Sofia Kharlamova successfully defended her PhD thesis on "Homeric Quotations and Homeric Problems in the Platonic Tradition of Poetry Criticism: Plato's "The State" and Plutarch's "De audiendis poetis"" in the Dissertation Council of MSU.10.09 at the Faculty of Philology of MSU (the academic degree was awarded by Lomonosov Moscow State University).
On December 12, 2023 the graduate student E.N. Buzurnyuk successfully defended her PhD thesis on "The Structure of Prologue in Aristophanes' Comedies" in the Dissertation Council 24.1.080.02, created on the basis of IWL RAS (academic degree was awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences).
In 2022 the PhD program in "Classical Philology" was compiled and implemented in the educational plan of IWL RAS, postgraduate students have already been enrolled in this program.
In 2021 a permanent seminar for students, postgraduates and young scholars on Aristophanes' commentary was held (supervisors: Boris Nikolsky, Igor Makarov). Also in 2022-2023, a weekly online seminar with Prof. S. Douglas Olson on reading and commenting on Aristophanes' comedies was held (three comedies were read in their entirety).
The Lab organized bimonthly discussions of the materials produced and open lectures, inviting leading scholars in both the field of commentary on ancient texts and digital technologies in the humanities.
Cooperation:
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Stormcorp LLC (Russia): development of a digital commentary system.
Research Institute of Ancient Manuscripts named after Mesrop Mashtots Matenadaran (Armenia): two international conferences ("Problems of Commentary on Ancient and Medieval Texts", November 1-5, 2022; "Text, Commentary and Interpretation: Problems of Commentary on Ancient and Medieval Texts", October 31-November 3, 2023, Yerevan, Armenia) were held on the basis of this organization in cooperation with RANEPA. In addition, a seminar on reading and commenting on Greek and Latin authors was organized for the young staff of the Institute in 2022.
