WEBSITE ATTICA

<ATHENIANS logo> Website Attica complements and enhances the published volumes of Persons of Ancient Athens. The addenda et corrigenda to the published volumes, which are issued as a supplement to PAA periodically, are regularly updated at this web site. Searches may be made 10,000 names of the ATHENIANS database in beta, gamma, and delta (second half of volume 4, the whole of volume 5, and the first third of volume 6). The possible searches range from selecting every person in a particular deme or of a specified profession to more sophisticated searches, e.g. to find all Athenians who lived between specified years and/or are related to a certain person and/or are attested in a class of document, etc.

The results of searches give an up-to-date version of the data in the printed volume (the 'formatted version'), now with transliterated Greek texts. The search form is divided into fields similar to those in the computer database; these do not always correspond exactly to the position in which the information appears in the formatted version. The fields shown in the search form are detailed below, with a summary of the database information from the 'Description of Entries' appearing in each of the printed volumes, together with additional information about the contents of each field to help in the defining of search terms. Access to the printed volumes of PAA is desirable, both for understanding this section and for the formulation of search requests.

addenda et corrigenda <><> database search <><> printed volumes

SEARCHING THE DATABASE

Search results MAY BE LARGE: the whole file for each person who meets the criteria specified is retrieved each time. Thus a search for persons whose activity/id was concerned with Euboia will retrieve, among others, the whole range of activities and kin of the orator Demosthenes (some 61 records and 255 references) among which you will find 'trierarch sent to Euboia, 357a.'

For notes on the use of special characters in formulating searches (i.e., 'wildcards' like '.' for a single character), see the Notes section of the search form. GREEK NAMES are entered in CAPITAL LETTERS, transliterated using:

C=ksi, F=phi, H=eta, Q=theta, U=upsilon, W=omega, Y=psi.

Fields in the Search Form: Section 1

Num.
Each person has a 6-digit Num(ber), which is attached to all the records about that person's activities or relationships. For searching you can specify an individual num, or use the wildcard '.' to specify a range of numbers (useful for statistical searches): e.g., typing '306...' in the Num field limits the search to all persons between 306000 (DHMAGAQH) and 306997 (DHMHTRIA). Note that a Num is also assigned to cross-references, like 'BAXIOS see also BAKXIOS', and that the number of the Nums assigned in any given range of numbers varies considerably -- interleaving of new material takes place regularly, and space for expansion has been left at intervals in the numbering system.
Status.
The pull-down menu in Status allows searches to be limited to a number of categories based on citizenship (see the Notes on the search form for interpretation of the abbreviations). The records retrieved show additional information about citizenship: certain, attributed (with *), doubtful (with ?), and whether the citizenship is attested inside or outside Athens or both (in, out, in+out).
Clicking the button "fem" in the search form restricts the search to women, about one tenth of the database: the records retrieved show (f) after the Status.
Name.
Specifying a name will restrict searches to persons with that name, and the following 'not' field allows one to restrict the name even further: e.g., Name {DHMOS.*} not DHMOSQENHS would retrieve all names containing DHMOS followed by any number of letters (or none), excluding names ending in -DHMOS (the { }s specify a whole word not part of a word), and excluding anyone with the name DHMOSQENHS (not just the orator).
Since variant orthography is maintained -- e.g. BAXXIOS is distinguished from BAKXIOS -- one should use 'wildcard' searches to include all forms: BA.XIOS would retrieve both spellings, and BA.*XIOS would include also BAXIOS. Broken names (i.e., names containing dashes or dots representing unknown letters) may be excluded from the search by clicking the button "only if whole". Other information contained in the 'Code' field in the database can be specified in Comment (see below).
PA or Roman name.
Citation in Kirchner (the PA number), Sundwall (S), or Davies (D), additional O KAI or H KAI appellations, and supplementary Roman names appear in this field in the database. PA numbers are entered as digits only, so entering a # sign in this field will limit the selection to persons who appear in Kirchner's Prosopographia Attica, and entering an @ (for some letters, i.e., not blank) and a # sign in the following 'not' field will select people with an additional Roman name. Of course, a name like AURHLIOS can always be specified, selecting all those with the additional nomen of Aurelius.
Place.
Place contains the demotic or ethnic of a person. As with Name and Kin, variant othography, e.g. MILHSIOS and MEILHSIOS, ALWPEKHQEN and ALWPEKEUS, along with special forms using EK (or EG), should be considered in searches for demotics and ethnics. The feminine forms of ethnics are generally well known, and are common in Attic gravestones. Proper feminine 'demotics', however, are rare, the usual designation being EK + the genitive plural of the masculine demotic. Metics are usually listed with EN (or EM, as phonetically appropriate) and the dative of the deme name, e.g. EN KOLLUTWI, EM MELITEI. For homonymous demes the appropriate phyle should be selected from the phyle menu. For the split or divided demes the designator, usually KAQUPERQEN (Upper) or UPENERQEN (Lower), can be specified in Comment (see below), as can alternative place names, although they appear in the results attached to the demotic.
Phyle.
The results obtained from limiting the search to one of the phylai in the pull-down menu will include that phyle also in combination with alternative phylai. The attribution of demes to the five post-Kleisthenic phylai has been taken from The Political Organization of Attica, pp. 109-112. (NB a topographical and constitutional database of the Attic demes providing this and other information, and linked to this database, is under construction.) Again it is sensible to keep in mind that the indefinite or undetermined dating of many inscriptions permits a number of phyle attributions for some demotics, particularly the homonymous pairs of OINAIOS and EC OIOU.
Link.
A selection of relationships appears in the pull-down menu. Selecting a multiple link, such as adopted/adoptive, or uncle/aunt/nephew/niece, will retrieve records with any of the individual links specified.
Kin name.
Kin name is exactly like Name: variant spellings can be found with one search using the special character 'wildcards' given in the Notes on the search form. The Kin name does not include alternate names, Roman tria nomina, extended family etc; these appear in the formatted version after the Kin name but are stored in the database in a comment field; search terms for these Kin modifiers should be entered in Comment (see below).
Id/Activity.
The Notes should be consulted for a table of common abbreviations, expanded in the printed version and in search results, which should be used in searches (e.g., to search for persons with 'casualty' as an Id in the formatted version one should enter {cas} in the Activity field in the search form) -- also for examples showing the use of special character 'wildcards' and the excluder 'not'. Browsing the printed volumes will give an idea of the scope of searchable terms: names of opponents, ships, proxenoi, deities, places where an activity has been carried out, offices held, etc.
Date.
Searches may be limited by using conventional dating formulas (e.g., c Ip = around the first century AD), but the From-To 'window' was specially designed for computer searching. From and To are arbitrary derivations (see the 'Description of Entries' in PAA volumes). Note also the backdating and 'widened windows' for parents, and grandparents, and other pecularities and anomalies in date conversion. When entering dates in From and To, use negative numbers for BC dates, positive for AD.
Comment.
This field represents additional information both about the main person (stored in the NB field in the database) and about the Kin (stored in the Kincom field in the database). It contains headings which can be used as search terms; these headings are omitted or expanded in the formatted version, and the information after the heading is often reformatted to appear with the main field it modifies.
Some modifiers of Kin (which mostly appear in the formatted version after the Kin name) are:
Some headings for the main person are:

Fields in the Search Form: Section 2

Ref.
References should be searched according to the abbreviations which appear in the 'Abbreviations of References' section in the 'Description of Entries' in the printed volumes. The most common are H for Hesperia and II, III etc for volumes of IG, the Corpus of Greek Inscriptions (IG is omitted). References can be excluded in the 'not' field, and the metrical inscriptions can be specified by clicking on the 'In verse' button.
Class.
Like link, class provides a pull-down menu of the different types of inscription or other documents the reference appears in. A general one-word description is given for some categories which also have more specific entries: choosing 'decr' will find all the decrees, 'decr phyle' will limit the selection to phyle decrees. The results may give further detail about, e.g., the category of literature (Class 'lit') to which a given work belongs.
Ref comment.
Like the main comment above, the Ref comment contains searchable headings:
Queries and feedback about the data or organization of the data to:
John Traill (athenian@chass.utoronto.ca).
Web implementation by Philippa M.W. Matheson (amphoras@chass.utoronto.ca).