Like Two Pis in a Pod: Author Similarity Across Time in the Ancient Greek Corpus

Grant Storey,David Mimno

doi:10.22148/001c.13680

Abstract

One commonly recognized feature of the Ancient Greek corpus is that later texts frequently imitate and allude to model texts from earlier time periods, but analysis of this phenomenon is mostly done for specific author pairs based on close reading and highly visible instances of imitation. In this work, we use computational techniques to examine the similarity of a wide range of Ancient Greek authors, with a focus on similarity between authors writing many centuries apart. We represent texts and authors based on their usage of high-frequency words to capture author signatures rather than document topics and measure similarity using Jensen-Shannon Divergence. We then analyze author similarity across centuries, finding high similarity between specific authors and across the corpus that is not common to all languages.

Highlights

One commonly recognized feature of the Ancient Greek corpus is that later texts frequently imitate and allude to model texts from earlier time periods, but analysis of this phenomenon is mostly done for specific author pairs based on close reading and highly visible instances of imitation
We represent texts and authors based on their usage of high-frequency words to capture author signatures rather than document topics and measure similarity using JensenShannon Divergence
Arrian, writing in the second century CE, is said to have based his Indica on the model of Herodotus,[1] Aelius Aristides is said to have written in the style of Demosthenes and other rhetoricians,[2] and Apollonius Rhodius is said to have crafted his Argonautica in the style of Homer

Summary

Introduction

One commonly recognized feature of the Ancient Greek corpus is that later texts frequently imitate and allude to model texts from earlier time periods, but analysis of this phenomenon is mostly done for specific author pairs based on close reading and highly visible instances of imitation. While previous studies have focused on imitation by individual authors, many Ancient Greek texts drew on prior works, with authors in genres like history, rhetoric, and poetry often writing in a specific literary dialect to match earlier works.[6] This means we might expect to see imitation of earlier models not just by a LIKE TWO PIS IN A POD: AUTHOR SIMILARITY ACROSS TIME IN THE ANCIENT GREEK CORPUS few authors, but by many authors throughout the corpus This hypothesis is difficult to test, as the idea of imitation involves intention to be similar, and intention is difficult to verify on a case-by-case basis, let alone across a corpus. There are a variety of potential caveats and issues which we will discuss as they come up, but the idea of an author signature provides us with a more concrete starting point for comparing different authors

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion