Eurykleia
Available
Director
- Sandra Boehringer
Description
From the about page on Hypotheses (accessed 2020-01-14):
The Eurykleia database will gather data about ancient women whose name appear in Greek and Latin documentation. The database will not include mythical characters, but only reals persons (or supposed to be real in ancient sources). The chronological and geographical scopes are wide: the investigation concerns Ancient Greek and Roman worlds (8th BCE- 5th CE). The database will give access to documents transmitted in manuscripts and other media (papyri, inscriptions on stone, metal, ceramic, coins). Among them, several are still unpublished. The information collected in this database will take into account the documentary specificities (materiality of the document, documentary uses, interferences with images on the document, reception, points of view…) and the various discursive contexts and practices. Created in accordance with the standards of digital languages, the website will use the stable identifiers of referenced international portals in order to enable reuse of the data. In giving access to a large body of documentation concerning women and women’s acts in Greek and Roman Antiquity, Eurykleia will give visibility to this part of ancient societies that has been kept outside the dominant narrative of the past. The website will provide a scientific basis for the development of largely unknown portraits of women. It will help scholars to question the gender determination of individuals, identified by their personal names (all women), compared to other social determinations (age, status, origin, wealth, etc) in order to make possible further comparisons with men engaged in the same functions or actions. Far from being a prosopographical catalogue, a dictionary of biographies, or a lexicon of personal names, the interactive Eurykleia is an innovative tool for students and scholars both in the field of classics and gender studies.