| --- |
| language: |
| - grc |
| - la |
| - he |
| - en |
| license: cc-by-sa-4.0 |
| task_categories: |
| - sentence-similarity |
| - translation |
| - text-retrieval |
| tags: |
| - ancient-greek |
| - latin |
| - hebrew |
| - classical-languages |
| - cross-lingual |
| - bilingual-pairs |
| - embeddings |
| - perseus |
| - bible |
| size_categories: |
| - 10K<n<100K |
| --- |
| |
| # ancient-aligned |
|
|
| bilingual aligned pairs between ancient languages (greek, latin, hebrew) and english, drawn from classical literature and biblical texts. |
|
|
| ## overview |
|
|
| | | count | |
| |---|---:| |
| | total pairs | 70,381 | |
| | greek-english | 27,421 | |
| | latin-english | 28,248 | |
| | hebrew-english | 14,712 | |
| | perseus works | 168 | |
| | perseus authors | 28 | |
| | bible books | 39 | |
|
|
| ## schema |
|
|
| | column | type | description | |
| |---|---|---| |
| | `id` | string | unique identifier (e.g. `perseus:homer:1.1.1`, `bible:greek:Gen.1.1`) | |
| | `source` | string | `perseus` or `bible` | |
| | `language` | string | `greek`, `latin`, or `hebrew` | |
| | `original` | string | ancient language text | |
| | `english` | string | english translation | |
| | `author` | string | author name (perseus only) | |
| | `work` | string | work title or bible book abbreviation | |
| | `ref` | string | section/verse reference | |
| | `urn` | string | canonical identifier: CTS URN for perseus (e.g. `urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0003.tlg001:1.1.1`), OSIS ref for bible (e.g. `osis:Gen.1.1`) | |
|
|
| ## sources |
|
|
| ### perseus digital library (16,004 pairs) |
|
|
| aligned passages from 168 works by 28 authors in the [perseus digital library](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/), covering classical greek and latin literature. |
|
|
| authors include homer, thucydides, plutarch, cicero, livy, ovid, tacitus, aeschylus, pindar, hippocrates, lucian, julius caesar, pliny the elder, and others. |
|
|
| texts range from 5th century BCE (thucydides, aeschylus) through late antiquity (augustine, bede). |
|
|
| ### bible (54,377 pairs) |
|
|
| verse-level alignments from: |
| - **greek**: SBLGNT (new testament) + swete's septuagint (old testament) |
| - **latin**: clementine vulgate |
| - **hebrew**: leningrad codex (old testament only, 14,712 verses) |
| - **english**: king james version |
|
|
| covers 39 books across old and new testaments. each verse produces separate greek-english, latin-english, and (where available) hebrew-english pairs. |
|
|
| ## preprocessing |
|
|
| - pairs with either side under 20 characters were filtered (47 rows removed: roman numeral headings, single-word fragments) |
| - no deduplication applied (some bible verses appear in multiple books as cross-references) |
| - perseus texts preserve original polytonic greek diacriticals |
| - bible greek preserves editorial marks from SBLGNT |
|
|
| ## intended use |
|
|
| - training and evaluating cross-lingual embedding models |
| - ancient language retrieval and search |
| - machine translation for classical languages |
| - cross-lingual alignment research |
|
|
| ## length distribution (characters, original side) |
|
|
| | source | p10 | p25 | p50 | p75 | p90 | |
| |---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:| |
| | bible:greek | 59 | 75 | 107 | 146 | 185 | |
| | bible:latin | 59 | 74 | 101 | 138 | 172 | |
| | bible:hebrew | 57 | 69 | 103 | 143 | 181 | |
| | perseus:greek | 154 | 225 | 363 | 693 | 1123 | |
| | perseus:latin | 133 | 179 | 225 | 299 | 870 | |
|
|
| ## license |
|
|
| CC BY-SA 4.0. perseus texts are distributed under the same license by the perseus digital library. bible source texts are public domain. |
|
|
| ## citation |
|
|
| if you use this dataset, please cite the perseus digital library: |
|
|
| ``` |
| @misc{perseus, |
| title={Perseus Digital Library}, |
| author={Crane, Gregory R.}, |
| url={http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/}, |
| year={2024} |
| } |
| ``` |
|
|
