Archilochos: Critique


Archilochos Critique
1. Introduction ‘It’s all Greek to me’ Ancient Greek (simply referred to as ‘Greek’ from now on) literature has long been considered difficult to comprehend. This Critique discusses a project to make the poetry of Archilochos more easily accessible. A website has been constructed to attract the inquisitive reader. The original audience would have enjoyed the music and the spectacle as well as the words themselves. This website attempts to provide an audio visual experience, albeit different, and an opportunity for a non-Greek reader to interact with the actual Greek text at whatever level she chooses. The poetry of Archilochos is very important because it represents one of the cornerstones on which Western Literature has been constructed. The great epic poems of Homer are well known. He was the first Western Poet to have his work written down and is considered by some to be the greatest poet of all time. Few people have heard of Archilochos, although he was the inventor of the iambus - at least in the sense that no earlier examples of this genre have survived. He was considered by many of the ancient commentators to be second only after Homer. As well as iambus, Archilochos had a wide range: ‘there is affectionate banter with friends, bristly remonstrance with enemies, satirical comment on public figures, solemn lament for men lost at sea, vivid references to impending or recent battles’ Very little is known about the poet himself. Rankin, quoting Pausanius, Eusebius and Stephanus Byzantius states: ‘He was the son of Telesicles, who founded a colony on Paros, and his mother was a slave. He was disappointed in a prospect of marriage with Neoboule, the daughter of Lycambes. Possibly he drove some members of this family to suicide by means of his satires. He engaged in politics and war. He died in battle. He said much about himself and his own life in his poetry. He led a wandering life. At times he may have been a mercenary soldier. He lived in seventh century B.C.’ Archilochos was a vital link between Homerian Epic and the Classical age of Greece some 200 years later. ‘But the span of years in which Archilochus is mentioned by ancient authors stretches from Heraclitus in the sixth century B.C. to the church fathers of the sixth century A.D. His fame is illustrated not only by the spread of centuries in which these literary references occur, but also by its frequent and close association with those of Homer and Hesiod. This does not mean that he was thought necessarily to be their equal in every respect, but it suggests that he was classed as one of the great originators who founded the Greek poetic tradition.’ Traditionally Greek poetry has been available to two distinct audiences. Post graduate Greek scholars have access to the Greek texts, manuscripts and commentaries by fellow scholars. Such scholars typically have great aptitude for Greek and specialised knowledge. Poetry lovers often have no Greek at all but can access Archilochos plays in English translations by such authors as West and Davenport . Undergraduate students must choose between studying Archilochos in Greek (within the Classics discipline) or in translation (Classical Studies). There is little material available to help a Classical Studies student who wants to get into the underlying Greek without having to pursue Greek for several years in order to become proficient at it. The intended learning benefit of this website for the student is to have some fun from experiencing the poetry. In addition she will learn about some of the seed-corn poetry from which sprang the whole of the Western Literary Tradition. Of course there are other good ways of studying Archilochos. Section 4 details some of the alternatives to this website. Education theory (see below) suggests that students learn better by having an audio/ visual rather than a purely visual experience and that words + pictures make learning easier too. The website therefore combines words, sounds and pictures. Using a website also makes it possible to move pages around the screen so that lines of poetry can be matched in turn with vocabulary, literal translation, poetic translation and commentary. Theory also suggests that interaction aids learning. The very action of matching these sections provides interaction; and this is backed up by a quiz. The latter sections of the critique explore the theoretical benefits of using a website to study Archilochos and then go on to discuss how the website can best be designed to deliver the benefits. Considerable care was taken to make the ‘Homepage’ easy and as intuitive as possible. The design of the pages generally was planned to make them clearly part of a family. The navigation is similar for each poem so that the reader can easily find the tools he needs to unravel the meaning of each poem. A chart is provided to complement the verbal description of the web structure. Inevitably there were a number of challenges and disappointments. These are covered in detail in section 8. There are plenty of areas for future development and expansion. The critique ends with an upbeat and positive conclusion. 2. Archilochos and his poetry Most of Archilochos’ poetry has been lost. Much of what survives has been preserved because it was quoted by subsequent ancient scholars. Some finds of lost poetry are still being made and the ‘Independent on Sunday’ has very recently reported the discovery of an unknown 30 line poem by Archilochos, the publication of which will lead to considerable excitement . Students with no knowledge of Greek will enjoy Archilochos poems in translation because they provide vivid descriptions of his culture and times particularly in relation to philosophy, war, sex and insult. For example: • Philosophy - reciprocal violence And you too, O lord Apollo, strike the guilty ones With harm, destroy them as you do destroy, But prosper us..... • War With our slick spears we were inflicting woe, but round the wall they busily set ladders, their courage high. Loud boomed the ironclad contrivance... alternate; streams of missiles... Quivers no longer hid their store of death ...arrows while they... ...twisting the sinews, drawing bows... • Sex Such was the lust for sex that, worming in under my heart, quite blinded me and robbed me of my young wits... • Insult Otherwise You’d not be using scent, a crone like you. ...fat round the ankles, a disgusting creature. A translation will also appeal to students of literature and drama who have an interest in one of the earliest practitioners of their craft. Students studying feminism and Gender issues are particularly interested in the work of another great archaic poet, Sappho. A study of Archilochos provides an interesting comparison – another poet, based on a Greek island, writing at a similar time. For instance Sappho writes: ‘Supreme, like the singer from Lesbos performing abroad.’ While Archilochos writes: ‘Let Paros go – those figs, that life at sea.’ But to obtain a full understanding of Archilochos’ greatness it is essential to experience the poem in its original language. To study the poetry only in translation is to be a blind man being told about the beauty of a sunset. This distinction is well illustrated by Professor William Harris in his readable examination of Archilochos. He gives a detailed interpretation of several of Archilochos’ poems starting from the original Greek. This quotation gives a good insight into the individuality and detail of Archilochos’ work, how much extra meaning there is in the original Greek text and how hard it is to explain it in English: ‘Of course it is not just FIGS and the Mediterranean SEA. There is a curious magic about the word " (e)keina" as "those (figs) over there", which evokes a sense of closeness, perhaps the sweet smell of fructose laden fruit drying in the baking Mediterranean sunshine. And then it is not just "The Sea" but the sense of life on the sea, the blue of the water, sea smell, and little boats sailing into the horizon, a sea-life encompassing and surrounding the floating isle of Paros. It would seem to be a typical postcard picture, except we also have the smells of drying fruit sheds, balanced by the salty fishy odor of sea life all around. Now if this is a complete and picture-perfect little vignette of something far off and away, a remembrance in the poet's memory, then what is that first word, that hard and monosyllabic "ea" doing there? This is the stem of the verb 'let go, leave, let alone' , which has much of the associations of our "skip it, forget it...."., so used from Homer down into the Drama. This abrupt word has a special place at the start of a flowing trochaic line, specifically standing outside the three-partite ring of the visual imagery of 'Paros in the Sea'. With typically Archilochean vigor, he wipes out, scratches, eradicates the pretty picture of Paros he had once known, and it comes out something like: "Paros and those drying sheds and the sea life all around " "The Hell with it!" 3. The target audience This website is intended for enquiring readers of all ages who have less than an excellent knowledge of Greek but who want to extract more of the poet’s meaning than is available from a translation alone. Such students need a lot of help with vocabulary and translation if they are going to appreciate the poetry in the original. A website is an excellent way of making this supporting material available and easily manipulated around the Greek text and it is this group upon whom this site is focused. Some of the text is perhaps too racy for school-children - ‘Like a Thracian or Phrygian drinking beer through a tube she sucked, stooped down, engaged too from behind. And his dong ...flooded over like a Prienian stall-fed donkey’s... ...foam all round her mouth.’ - but for the project version of this website the more purple passages have been omitted. The website is not intended for Classics postgraduates and lecturers, who understand Archilochos ‘straight off the page’ and need, for stimulation, the learned commentaries and academic debate of their peers. They are ‘converted’ already and do not need such elementary guidance. 4. Alternative sources for Archilochos Translations The quotations in this critique are from West he refers to the earlier Bowra and the Cambridge History . There are also poetic translations by Guy Davenport . Books about Archilochos, the man, include: Archilochos of Paros Three Greek Poets Greek texts and commentaries include: Greek Iambic Poetry Greek Lyric Poetry Web pages: There are a number of web pages that include some of Archilochos’ poems in English but most of these are from the books cited above. The other and substantial work I have been able to locate is Harris, already quoted. This is essential reading for my target audience and so there is a link on my website. It looks at many of the poems in a deep but fairly conventional way, using the Web as a conduit to reach his audience rather than taking advantage of the multi media tools that HTML provides. 5. Theoretical basis for providing access to Greek Poetry through a website Educational theory recognises that young adults, no less than children, use a number of skills and techniques to learn and appreciate new information. These include: For Perception: • Things we see • Things we hear • Things we read • Things we touch For memorizing: • Abstract generalisations • Concrete practical examples • Ideas ordered in a sequential way, step by step • Overview first, details later For engaging with the subject: • Active participation • Reflective introspection Most students use a combination of all these techniques, but every individual uses some of them more effectively than others. The traditional teaching method in Universities was for the lecturer to come into the lecture room and speak to an assembly of undergraduates for an hour and then leave. The average student can fully concentrate for only 20 minutes . Much of the detail is never heard or is quickly forgotten. For the student who is relatively weak at perceiving spoken ideas the percentage learned is lower. It is easy to conceive a student being further confused if he is presented with abstract generalisations when he prefers to memorize examples, especially if the lecturer moves straight on to details where the student needs a framework; and expects the student to make logical sense of the whole in his head without having the chance to practise with concrete examples. The result can be that a perfectly able student struggles and gets low grades only because the lecturer’s teaching technique does not suit him. Of course the learning process in modern universities pays some attention to these educational theories. Where there is reasonable rapport between lecturer and students it is a common practice now for the lecturer to back up her verbal presentation with visual aids, where possible, including maps and diagrams, providing written notes for the student to read, making it as easy as possible for the student to take in the material by writing his own notes and providing participation by taking questions and organising seminar groups. The good lecturer will be conscious of the need to provide material to stimulate all the four perception skills, to approach concepts both by example and generalisation, to provide an overview before the detail and then to provide the detail in a logical step by step manner and finally to provide exercises and revision that will engage the practical as well as the reflective learner. Riding and Rayner quote a comparison of two modes of presentation, textual and pictorial, in a study with 74 eleven year old pupils. They presented groups of ‘verbalisers’ and ‘imagers’ (as assessed by a different Verbal Imagery Code Test) with either a textual or a pictorial version of the same information. They found (perhaps unsurprisingly) that the verbalisers were superior with the verbal version and imagers when learning in the pictorial mode. They recommend that ‘it will usually be feasible to present information in both modes to some extent’ They then go on to quote an analysis of student’s recall of information provided on multimedia (cd-rom). Some of the information was in the form of pictures-plus-sound (PS), some pictures-plus-text (PT) and some pictures-plus-text-plus-sound (PTS). For all learning styles the recall for PTS was significantly higher for PTS than either PS or PT. This all suggests that the best way to appeal to as wide a cross section of learning styles as possible is to provide information in both verbal and pictorial forms and back this up with sound. Wherever possible learning should be reinforced by the active participation of the student. As part of the project to find the best method to engage the target audience the writer interviewed three of the Classics lecturers at Exeter University; ones who were also particularly interested in education. L. sees the challenge in terms of the specific subject matter. Her initial approach would include asking students to imagine what it must have been like to be a seafarer in Greece in the 7th century B.C.E. She regards it as essential to create empathy with what Archilochos was doing – going out into an unknown, map-less world. She also regards it as important to move from a broad overview to an examination of the background and then to move on to the detail. The broad overview might involve looking into how Archilochos fits into the historical structure between Homer and the Lyric poets. Archilochos is an antiheroic voice and may represent a different elite from the heroic poets. She referred to work on this subject by Ian Morris and Lesley Kirk but concluded that she was not yet convinced by them and that Archilochos’ position may be more complex than it used to seem. The detail might involve looking at one or two poems in great detail, comparing the language with language that could have been used and looking for nuances of difference in style and vocabulary between Archilochos and Homer & Sappho. P. sees the start of the challenge in the roots of the word ‘education’ itself. He wants to lead students to use their critical reasoning to search out morals and values so that they can become good human beings and friends to one another. He regards the product of education as impossible to measure except qualitatively in terms of increased confidence and a better sense of values. He quotes one of the teachers he most respected as an undergraduate; ‘I don’t teach Classics, I teach students!’ He sees The Humanities as a rejection of utilitarian models which seek to provide students with diligence skills to fit into the corporate structure. He regards it as essential to include interested amateurs in the target audience as well as undergraduate students. His approach to Archilochos would be to ask students to read the text, examine the performance setting (studying, for instance, ‘What is Satire’ by Elliott ), introduce background material such as examining anthropological comparisons and provide notes explaining difficult passages. ‘Active learning’ might involve the student finding out the ‘meaning’ of a passage rather than being told. R. sees the lecturer as a facilitator of learning. Students studying Archilochos in this year’s ‘Literature of Passion’ module have been asked to organise their own study groups. One group annotated a poem and presented the results using a Microsoft Power Point presentation. She considers music is a helpful analogy for studying Archilochos. Comparison with Popular Music of our own time enables students to access the Classical world through a medium they are already familiar with. The very personal voice of Pop resonates with Archilochos’ personal approach. Knowing that such personal themes have a much more general application in our world and that they invoke emotions in the listener’s own life helps the student to see how the Greek audience might have interpreted their poetry. Reading the lyrics of a pop song alone or just reading the lyrics out loud sounds very flat to a present day audience used to hearing the music as a minimum or better, experiencing the whole atmosphere of the performance at an ‘event’. Such a workshop helps the student appreciate how much of the original performance has been lost to us. R considers that students have to engage personally with the text. They have to find out for themselves the deep meaning of what the poet says and not just be told. She considers a website ought to encourage enquiry and not just provide answers. Questionnaire: In an effort to find out what a target audience would seek themselves, a questionnaire was designed. This is appendix A to this critique. It was introduced to all year 1 and 2 classics and classical studies students (the target audience) at Exeter University during one of their lectures. 42 responses were received from 43 students. The questionnaire was also sent, more in hope than expectation, as an e-mail attachment to senior Classics lecturers at five other universities. Three were ignored. The other two were acknowledged with a promise of a response in due course but no actual responses were received. Details see Appendix B. The responses were transferred onto an Excel spreadsheet with the following averages (0=agree strongly, 5=disagree strongly):
	Can read Greek Enjoy archaic poetry in Greek Enjoy archaic poetry in English Often refer to the World Wide Web Would study Archilochos from a book Would study Archilochos on the Web In a website would want Greek text Would want vocabulary Would want ‘crib’ (literal translation) Would want apparatus criticus Would want commentary Would want details of sources Would want audio of text Would want audio of translation Would want pictures Would want a ‘challenge’
		all 3.71 3.95 1.17 0.71 1.04 2.36 2.31 1.36 0.52 1.81 0.43 0.55 2.01 2.31 1.29 2.60	Greek readers (response 1-3 to 1st question) 1.92 2.23 1.38 0.92 1.27 2.38 1.08 1.15 0.85 2.23 0.54 1.00 2.58 2.46 1.62 2.77	Non Greek reader (4-5 to 1st question) 4.88 4.77 1.15 0.69 0.92 2.46 2.96 1.58 0.42 1.62 0.38 0.35 1.85 2.19 1.04 2.46
These averages imply that the target audience are already avid Web users. They particularly want a commentary and a literal translation, would like pictures, vocabulary and apparatus criticus, and would quite like audio of the text and translation and the Greek text. They were not so keen on the ‘challenge’ favoured by teachers. As might be expected, the Greek readers were more concerned to have the Greek text but there did not appear to be any other significant differences in their requirements. It was concluded that the website must have commentary, literal translation and Greek text. It should have as many of the other features as possible as all features scored below three. Some of the participators agreed to review the draft website. Their replies are reviewed in the Conclusion (section 9) 6. Usability The key to any good website is the ‘Home Page’, the page on which a web surfer would normally alight when she first visits the site. A great deal of effort has been devoted to making this page simple and effective using Nielsen’s 113 guidelines . The homepage is differentiated by having a darker background from the other pages and by including the succinct heading ‘ΑΡΧΙΛΟΧΟΣ’ This word immediately establishes the subject matter as well as conveying that it has Ancient Greek content and is intellectual rather than frivolous. Instead of a ‘welcome message’ it carries a ‘tag line’, which is brief, simple, and to the point: ‘Archilochos – Best poet after Homer. Value is emphasised in the tag line by adding ‘and most accessible here. The questionnaire identified that the highest priority for the target audience is to have a literal English translation (crib) so the homepage specifically mentions it. The homepage includes a contact link which specifies that any feedback will be dealt with when the site is revised. The homepage specifies the educational nature of the project to deflect any fear of the reader that, appearing to be something for nothing, it may be a ‘scam’. An effort has been made to use ‘consumer focussed language’ by asking students to preview the site and suggest alternatives for old fashioned words. Redundant content is avoided on all web pages; but particularly on the homepage where each word has been scrutinised for relevance. ‘Clever’ phrases and ‘marketing lingo’ have been avoided. Style standards and capitalisation have been applied consistently and obvious artefacts (such as the homepage logo) are not explicitly labelled. There are no single item categories and lists. Non-breaking spaces have been used to keep words together where this seemed necessary. Abbreviations, initialisms and acronyms have been avoided as have exclamation marks, all-upper-case-letters, inappropriate spaces and punctuation. The homepage does not include any unrelated tools, browser function tools or credits; graphics and ‘Watermark’ graphics have been avoided. A limited number of font styles are used with high contrast text and background colour. The page has been designed not to require horizontal scrolling at a page size of 800x600 as around 35% of users still have displays limited to this resolution . The most critical elements are visible on the screen at this resolution but the layout is generally ‘liquid’ so that the homepage (and subsequent pages) adjust to different screen resolutions. The ‘window title’ includes the tag line (Archilochos – best poet after Homer). This is about half the length of the recommended maximum of 64 characters. For the project the site is buried within the University computer with a nondescript URL. If this were a commercial site the domain ‘Archilochos.org’, which is available, would be purchased. In a commercial situation the sites Archilochus.org and Arkilokus.org would also be purchased so that hits to these common alternative spellings could be redirected. The HTML would specify keywords to help search engines find this site. The Web design The overall structure, page design, font and colours were chosen to emphasize the fact that the site deals with a scholarly, cultural subject. Accordingly the vision is very simple and uncluttered with only a few colours, a couple of sharp, sans serif fonts and no ornamentation. Unity is preserved in the website by retaining a similar layout and family of fonts and colours for all the pages. Gold was chosen for the main background colour because it implies value, antiquity and freedom from tarnish. The homepage has a slightly darker tone so that the user knows clearly that he has returned there. The main text is in a complementary teal colour which also has good contrast. The Greek text is contrasted from the English by being in red and the literal translation is distinguished by a navy colour. Black is used for text to do with administration of the site. The links are treated wholly according to convention so that a user (unless he has changed his own settings) will see clickable links in royal blue and underlined. These links turn purple when the link page has been visited. To avoid confusion royal blue and purple are not used elsewhere on the site and bold is used for emphasis instead of underlining. All links use clear language, rather than icons or the words ‘click here’, and make it clear when they are to unusual areas (such as audio files) or involve a long download. The logo forms a link to the homepage but will be inactive on the homepage itself. The issue of simple navigation was considered carefully. No page except the homepage has more than six links (the homepage has four main links and 3 subsidiary ones). The links are always positioned in the same place on the right hand side of the page with a logo image that always links to the ‘home’ page. The logical choice for the navigation would be on the left hand side of the page but it was considered essential to be able to line up the English version of each poem with the Greek text and the literal translation. For this reason the latter pages pop up in separate windows and all have the text on the left hand site so that it will not be lost as the page width is made narrow. There is a drawback that if the user maximises the pop up window, e.g. to study the Greek text in detail, he is left without the function of a standard ‘back’ button. Consideration was given to adding a ‘tip’: ‘Close this window to revert to the parent page’, but this would clutter the page and might lead to more rather than less confusion. If the user has maximised the page he will always have the option of clicking the ‘home’ logo to revert to the ‘home’ page as a last resort. The possibility of using ‘frames’ to allow the Greek and literal translations to be lined up with the English was explored. The idea was rejected as being complex to design and inflexible to use, particularly with low screen resolutions. Upper Level Flowchart. The paper version has a flowchart setting out the top levels of the website. It was considered essential to use illustrations to make the site more visually attractive but it was particularly difficult to locate illustrations that added value to the page. Where possible the illustrations are relevant to the subject matter of the page. In other cases, against the suggestion that the illustrations are distracting, it is argued that at least the photos were taken on Archilochos’ island of Paros and add some ‘Greek rugged atmosphere’. To maintain a clear structure and prevent the site becoming overbearing and threatening to students the initial project was limited to five of Archilochos’ best-known poems. If the site proves popular it will be relatively easy to add further poems using the same format. Because the homepage would become too cluttered with more than five poems, an intermediate page ‘The Poems’ has been inserted to give access to each of the five poems. A paragraph on this page explains that Greek poems had no titles and the author has named them for convenience, together with the numbers that identify them in Campbell’s version of the Greek text as follows: • Confounded Heart. (67a) • A beautiful Shield. (6) • My Spear (2) • The fox and the hedgehog. (103) • Men only want one thing. (118 and appendix) The homepage also has links to • Context (Archilochos’ story and background) This page provides a top level summary for those students who need an overview of the subject before going on to specifics. • Web links • Quiz This is designed to allow students ‘reflective introspection’. In the project website the questions are trivial but if this model was adopted as a serious teaching tool the questions could be much more sophisticated needing more than short answers. There is a link to a ‘help page’ for downloading a Greek font and another to a number of subsidiary links (to the project proposal, this critique and site acknowledgements) which are accessed via a link in the ‘small print’ at the bottom of the page. The critique is provided here as a project requirement. Because of its length and its tables and footnotes it is particularly unsuitable for display as a single web page. If the writer had a licence for Adobe Acrobat, subject to supervisor agreement, the critique would have been provided on the web in PDF format so that the reader who really wanted to examine the critique could print it out for detailed study. The web pages for each poem have a similar layout, structure and linking. Because relatively few of the target audience can read Greek the primary link for each poem is a readable English translation. The aim has been to provide the sense of what Archilochos wrote as far as can be achieved without necessarily translating every individual word accurately. Inevitably the literalness of a translation is a controversial issue but translating the spirit is justifiable to retain the enthusiasm of the target audience. The primary page links to an audio version, primarily intended for those with a sight disability but also to help those students who learn more easily from audio input, to the original Greek, to a literal translation and to a commentary. The Greek text also links to its own audio version, not only for those mentioned above but also to emphasize the metre and performance setting of the original which would usually have been aural and often sung. Where any sung version of the poem can be located a link to this has been provided too. The Greek text has all the less common words in bold text. A ‘title tag’ has been incorporated within the ‘bold’ element of the HTML code containing a translation of the word. When the user places his mouse over the word the translation pops up in a small rectangle. The dictionary form of the Greek word is referenced in a vocabulary to the right of the Greek text. Another pop up window has a word by word literal translation to further help students who want to know the meaning of individual words and phrases. The vocabularies plus the literal translation make it easier for students who would like to attempt their own translation. A final window provides commentary on the words and structures and on any other background information available on the poems. Although an apparatus criticus is beyond the scope of this project attention has been drawn to major issues about the Greek text in the commentary page. Flowchart for each poem The paper version has a flowchart setting out the detailed structure for each poem. 7. Challenges and how they were overcome • Greek diacritic characters Ancient Greek uses not only a different alphabet from English but also adds marks to vowels – breathings, accents and iota subscripts. To reproduce Greek therefore it is essential to have an Ancient Greek font available on the user’s computer. Consideration was given to providing all the Greek sections as images, but this would only really have been practicable for the text of the poems themselves and would have made vocabularies and Greek words in the commentary impractical. Fortunately most modern computers have access to at least one Unicode font (Arial Unicode MS) and this was therefore made the preferred font for all areas of the site where Greek characters were likely. It proved impossible to find a foolproof system of ensuring that the Greek text was reproduced correctly across all operating systems. Arial Unicode MS is available for all Windows XP computers and this worked on Opera and Mozilla/Firefox browsers as well as Internet Explorer 6. A way of embedding fonts for earlier versions of Windows was explored, but this would not have worked for other manufacturer’s operating systems, was complicated and was eventually dropped because the time being taken was out of proportion to the small numbers likely to benefit. A ‘public domain’ Unicode font was discovered and links to download this were provided in a ‘help’ page. The author successfully used this to obtain the Greek characters on his old computer with Windows 98. Another ‘guinea pig’ user downloaded the font from the help page using the link and the instructions provided. In any case according to W3 statistics, Widows XP had 62% of the total market for pc operating systems in February 2005 and this has been rising more than 1% per month over the past year so the majority of users should not have difficulties with the Greek. The Greek characters also considerably complicated the production and storage of the underlying text files. A package called Antioch was purchased as an adjunct to Word and this proved effective at converting the keyboard to Greek and giving access to the diacritics via the numeric keys. It is considerably easier to use than the ‘Son of Wingreek’ available previously and even uses the automatic correction facility of Word to add diacritics to some of the most common words. This feature has not been sufficiently developed to make it very useful yet. The package was particularly useful with the poem ‘Men only want one thing’. Because of the nature of the Greek text many of the letters are printed with a dot underneath to indicate they are illegible in the original. These dots would have been impossible to reproduce with a standard word processor. Marking up the text into HTML was also a challenge. Programs other than Word did not reproduce the Greek characters consistently and Word itself would only display .html files as web pages. To maintain the information it was therefore necessary to save the HTML first as a .txt file in Word and go through two separate stages of options to save it unformatted and in Unicode and then save the file as .html to review and upload as a web page. Eventually a way was found to declare Unicode fonts within the ‘Edit’ ‘Preferences’ options of Dreamweaver and this package then worked well, taking over the text and formatting once the Greek had been initially typed into ‘Word’. When the site was complete, each page was validated using the facilities provided by the W3 group . The homepage contained three trivial errors and these unfortunately had been copied onto every single web page. The author had learned from this that in any new project it would be much better to do an initial validation of each page as soon as it is written, particularly if it is going to be used as a template for subsequent pages. • Different Browsers It was soon clear that different browsers display ‘elements’ in their own ways; for instance Mozilla/Firefox ( that now has nearly 25% of the market ) would not display ‘margin’ instructions in a style sheet. The problem was solved by dispensing with ‘margins’ and using ‘tables’ instead. Also, to get better consistency ‘heading’ elements were not used and headings were defined using paragraph declarations. The ‘title’ element worked very well as a means to flash up translations of individual words in Mozilla/Firefox. In Internet Explorer the word, although readable, flashed on and off, while in Opera it was preceded by the label ‘Title:’ each time. Mozilla, unlike Explorer, does not display the ‘alt’ tag if you ‘mouse over’ an illustration. This issue was overcome by providing all the illustrations with a ‘title’ tag as well as the ‘alt’ tag. • Different File Servers The website was initially loaded on a personal domain and then transferred to the University of Exeter server once space had been allocated. Unfortunately the Exeter site converted all Unicode to ‘Western European (ISO)’ This issue is currently under investigation by Pallas staff. • Audio files The writer had no previous experience of audio files on the Web. A package called ‘Total Recorder ’ was downloaded. The free version (which inserts an audible noise every 60 seconds during the recording) was adequate to make .wav files from a microphone plugged into the computer. The file sizes were rather large and an option was located within ‘Total Recorder’ to convert files to .mp3 which substantially reduced the file size without any noticeable reduction in quality. Some of the audio files subsequently needed trimming. Neither Total Recorder nor any of the standard Windows media handling programs seemed to provide facilities for this. Another package called ‘WavePad’ was downloaded and found to work intuitively and efficiently. • Copyright Much of the material reproduced is copyright and could not be made publicly available without the permission of the copyright holder. The supervisor advised that permission is not required for this educational exercise. 8. Conclusion By undertaking this project the writer has considerably increased his knowledge of Archilochos’ poetry, both in Greek and in translation. It has given him further insights into the world of seventh century Greece which was far more civilised than he realised. The great strength of this web design is the ability to provide the reader with the tools of vocabulary, translation, audio versions and commentary instantly and in an easy to compare format. The website is also very flexible compared to a book as it can be amended and updated almost instantly and is available at the click of a mouse to almost all its intended audience. The main weakness of the web design is the difficulty of putting long texts on the screen without the process feeling cumbersome. Luckily this is not a major problem with Archilochos because most of his fragments are short. There may also be some prejudice against upstart technology by academics but academics are not the primary target audience for this website. If this had been a commercial venture it would have been worth commissioning a graphic artist to provide illustrations more relevant to each page. It proved impossible to find a foolproof system of ensuring that the Greek text was reproduced correctly across all operating systems but this problem will disappear in future as Unicode fonts become more universally available. The principal area for future development would be to extend the number of poems and fragments covered on the site. There are only just over 100 in existence so it would be practicable to cover them all. Alternatively or in addition the structure could be extended to the other archaic poets such as Sappho. Her poetry is popular in translation and the volume of her surviving poetry is quite modest too. Several of the students who had completed the questionnaire had expressed a willingness to comment on the site and so they were sent an email providing a link and asking for their comments. The memo was also sent to anyone the author thought might be interested. Only a few replies were received, all highly complimentary. As a result of the feed-back the background colour of the ‘home’ page was made lighter. The ‘bold indicates vocabulary facility’ in the Greek text was extrinsically labelled but, after consideration, the Logo link back to the homepage was left unlabelled, except via the ’title’ tag to avoid clutter. The writer has enjoyed this project and would like to thank his supervisor, Pallas, and the University of Exeter for providing the framework in which it could be carried out. Appendix A: Questionnaire Greek Poems on the World Wide Web Would you like to have easy access to archaic Greek poems (Sappho, Archilochos etc.) on the Internet with hyperlinks to translations, vocabulary, commentary and sources? I am doing a third year project in Pallas to design and build a website of Greek archaic poems for undergraduate Classics students. I need your comments so that I can design a site that best meets your needs. I have tried to make the questionnaire simple to answer. Simply ring the number that is closest to the extent to which you agree or disagree with each comment. Thank you for your help — Robert Magson (r.t.magson@ex.ac.uk) I can read Ancient Greek Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree I enjoy archaic Greek poetry in Greek Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree I enjoy archaic Greek poetry in translation Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree I often refer to the World Wide Web Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree If I want to study Archilochos I will go to a book Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree If I want to study Archilochos I will look on the Web Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree As well as a good English text I would like: A Greek text Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree B vocabulary Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree C English ‘crib’ (literal translation) Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree D apparatus criticus (ancient text variations) Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree E commentary Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree F information about the source and history of the poem Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree G audio of the text sung or recited in metre Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree H audio of the translation etc. for the benefit of the partially sighted. Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree I pictures where appropriate to provide variety and Help concentration. Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree J a challenge relating to each poem ( e.g. quiz, correct the errors, supply the missing word ) Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree 8. I would be willing to review and comment on the draft website Agree 0 1 2 3 4 5 Disagree and my address is …………….@ex.ac.uk. Appendix B: The questionnaire was sent to the following universities, which were known still to have Classics departments: Birmingham K.Dowden@bham.ac.uk No Reply Cambridge jd10000@cam.ac.uk No Reply Durham c.j.rowe@durham.ac.uk No Reply Oxford ewen.bowie@ccc.ox.ac.uk Acknowledged follow up promised Reading s.p.oakley@reading.ac.uk Acknowledged follow up promised Royal Holloway (London) richard.hawley@rhul.ac.uk No Reply Appendix C: Bibliography and acknowledgements Bowra, C.M., Greek Lyric Poetry, 2nd. edn., Oxford 1961 Burnett, A.P., Three Archaic Poets, Bristol Classical Press, 1998 Campbell, D. A., Greek Lyric Poetry – A selection of Early Greek Lyric, Elegiac, and Iambic Poetry, Bristol Classical Press 1982 Davenport, D., 7 Greeks – Translations by Guy Davenport, New Directions, New York, 1995 Easterling, P. E. and Knox, B. M.W., The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, Volume 1, Greek Literature, Cambridge, 1985 Elliott, R.C., The Power of Satire, Magic, Ritual Art, Princeton University Press, 1960 Gerber, D. E. (Editor), Greek Iambic Poetry, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1999 Harris, W., Archilochus, first poet after Homer, http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/Archilochus.pdf accessed on 22 March 2005 High Criteria Inc., Total Recorder Standard Edition, http://www.highcriteria.com/ accessed on 25 March 2005 Independent on Sunday Decoded at last: the ‘classical holy grail’ that may rewrite the history of the world, 17 April 2005-05-03 Ioannidis, N., Nikolaos Ioannidis – Works, http://homoecumenicus/ioannidis.htm accessed on 24 March 2005 Liegeois, D., and Hancock, R., Antioch classical languages utility, http://users.dircon.co.uk/~hancock/antioch.htm accessed on 24 March 2005 NCH Swiftsound, Wavepad v1.2, http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad Nielsen, J., Homepage Usability:50 Websites Deconstructed,New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis, 2001 Ohio University, Study Tips, http://studytips.aac.ohiou.edu/?Function=Concentration&Type=Span accessed on 25 March 2005 Rankin, H. D., Archilochus of Paros, Noyes Press, Park Ridge, New Jersey, 1977 Riding, R. and Rayner, S., Cognitive Styles and Learning Strategies, David Futon, London 1988 Robinson, M., Classical Greek Fonts and Utilities, http://www.ud.ac.uk/GrandLat/greekfonts/ accessed on 24 March 2005 The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, i:Greek Literature p117-244, Cambridge, 1985 W 3Schools, Browser Statistics, http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp accessed on 24 March 2005 W 3Schools, Web Page Validation, http://www.w3schools.com/sitesite_validate.asp accessed on 24 March 2005 West, M. L., Greek Lyric Poetry –A new translation, Oxford University Press, 1994 Credits for Audio Versions Poem Spoken English version Spoken Greek version Sung version Confused heart Robert Magson Richard Seaford Nikolaos Ioannidis The fox and the hedgehog Celia Shannon Richard Seaford (see above) My spear Mary Critchley Richard Seaford A beautiful shield Mary Critchley Richard Seaford Men only want one thing Mike and Julie Bisacre Richard Seaford Credits for images on the web site Most photographs were taken by the author on Paxos in April 2005. The two Greek Soldiers are images of model soldiers from the website of Dave's Trains, Inc. The fox and the hedgehog are taken from Graham-Cameron Illustration web page, the girls in 'Men only want one thing' are from image-in-air3d.com web page. The map of Greece is cropped from a map on the website of South-eastern Louisiana University web page.