Eliciting the Ancient Geography from a Digital Library of Latin Texts

Geolat – Geography for Latin Literature is a research project, aimed at making accessible a digital library containing the works of Latin literature (from its origins in 240 BCE to the end of the Roman Empire in 476 CE) through a query interface of geograph-ic/cartographic type representing the geographic knowledge expressed in the Latin texts themselves. A core activity of the project has been the development of the ontology GO!, which describes the geographical knowledge contained in the texts of the library. The ontologically annotated texts will allow for a variety of scientifically relevant uses, apart from the geo-based browsing: for example the production of digital and printed critical editions. The project is under development at Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici of Uni-versità del Piemonte Orientale, and financially supported by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo.