Projects

Dataset of Roman Epics in Early Modern English Translations

The project “Dataset of Roman Epics in Early Modern English Translations” analyses the translation history of the Greco-Roman epics in the early modern period, focusing on the sustainability of translations. The project team collects and analyses the metadata of translations of the 7 extant Roman epics from the Roman Republic until the early Empire: Virgil’s “Aeneis”, Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, Lucan’s “Bellum civile”, Valerius Flaccus’ “Argonautica”, Statius’ “Thebais” and “Achilleis”, and Silius Italicus’ “Punica”. The team collects printed English-language translations from the 15th to the 18th century. The dataset is structured, thus enabling target-oriented and research-oriented digital analyses. Regarding the state of research, the project is establishing a comprehensive data foundation for analysing the translation history of the ancient epics for the first time. The project output will be published in open access on Codeberg and Zenodo, allowing other projects to reuse and adapt the data in the future.

The project is funded by the research fund of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Würzburg. It runs from July 2026 to June 2027.