Harvesting the Sea: The Exploitation of Marine Resources in the Roman Mediterranean by Annalisa Marzano

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 375 height changes drastically as one progresses through a volume. Those pages that in the LCL contain copious notes are rendered in the DLL as perhaps one third the height of others that have none. As page height changes, so also does the relative position of the fairly small triangle that must be clicked to page forward or backward. Consequently, it is not easy rapidly to page through a DLL volume. Finally, after a few minutes, the coloured stripes tire a reader’s eyes. I believe DLL can substantially improve the reading experience if they put the notes in the same position as they appear in LCL, not in pop-up, provide a much bigger target for paging through the interface, and remove the coloured stripes from the sides of the page. Naturally, the DLL also allows a subscriber to perform text searches on its collection. It is important to note that, as yet, this search is not “morphologically aware”: that is, a search for fero knows nothing of the form fert, much less tulerunt, etc., and searching on “run” will not also find the word “ran.” This is somewhat compensated for by the wildcard search, such as, for instance, “Tertullian*,” which would find all forms of the author’s name, English and Latin. Search results can be further narrowed by language, genre, and other facets, and one can refine a search by adding another search term. In this case, and with respect to a search on a group of words, such as arma virumque, the search unit is the Loeb edition page; that is, if both words appear anywhere on the same page of English, or of Greek or Latin, that page will be accessible through the search results list. Words that are very close together, though coincidentally separated by a page break, will not have their pages presented to the searcher. This means the DLL underreports the “proximity search” of two or more keywords, a common and important form of text search. When a matching passage is found, a summary of the Loeb page that contains it is listed with the author, title, and citation using Loeb page, for instance: “LCL 38, Pages 462–463.” Indeed, as yet no aspect of the DLL is aware of standard classical references, and to obtain this the searcher needs to click through to the page and glean the reference manually. The DLL of 2015 shows the rich potential of Harvard Press’s digitization of LCL and the generally high quality of its raw data. Using it to browse text will become a pleasing experience with minor changes. However, it will take time before DLL’s data can be accessed through a powerful and reliable search tool of the sort scholars have been accustomed to in, for instance, the Perseus Project. Fortunately, the source code of open projects such as Perseus and PhiloLogic should provide guidance in how best to implement these features. In the meantime, it might be hoped that Harvard Press would consider packaging the DLL texts in secure e-book formats, such as EPUB or Kindle. Many prefer reading on devices purposely built for the task, while others might wish their digital Loeb purchase to be a lifetime’s treasure and not a yearly subscription. Mount Allison University Bruce Robertson Harvesting the Sea: The Exploitation of Marine Resources in the Roman Mediterranean. By Annalisa Marzano. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy). 2013. Pp. 365, 46 ills., 2 appendices. In the Introduction to this book on ancient fishing, Marzano states that her aims are “to offer a general study of the various production activities centred on and around the sea in the Roman period, and to analyse their role in regional economies, and their 376 PHOENIX social and organizational structure” (5). She stresses that the book “is about scale of exploitation of marine resources, not of utilization,” and the focus is therefore not on small-scale but large-scale fishing, that is, “migratory pelagic species . . . and fishing in lagoons for given species that migrate between the sea and these coastal environments” (8). Some attention, however, is given to small-scale fishing, and...