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The New Stylometry: A One-Word Test of Authorship for Greek Writers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

S. Michaelson  and
A.Q. Morton
S. Michaelson
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
A.Q. Morton
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Extract

Stylometry can be defined as the use of numerical methods for the solution of literary problems, most often problems of authorship, integrity, and chronology. As stylometry has been described it seems hardly more than the application of common sense to a literary situation. For example:

It consists in collecting as many peculiarities of style and grammar as possible from these works [the dialogues of Plato], particularly the Laws, which are known, or for good reasons supposed to belong to the author's latest period, and observing the frequency with which these occur in other dialogues. If it is then found, e.g., that one dialogue uses commonly 100 of these, another but 60, it is reasonable to suppose the former to be nearer in time to the Laws, i.e. later.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , May 1972 , pp. 89 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1972

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References

page 89 note 1 Rose, H.J., A Handbook of Greek Literature Distriture (London, 1964), 262Google Scholar, commenting on the work of Lewis Campbell, Oxford, 1897Google Scholar, and Lutoslawski, London, 1897.

page 89 note 2 Wake, W.G., ‘Sentence Length Distributions of Greek Authors’, J. Roy. Stat. Soc. Series A, CXX (1957), 331–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 90 note 1 Morton, A.Q., ‘The Authorship of Greek Prose’, J. Roy. Stat. Soc. Series A, cxxviii (1965), 169–224CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The Integrity of the Pauline Epistles’, Manchester Stat. Soc, March 1965.

page 90 note 2 Michaelson, S. and Morton, A.Q., ‘Last Words’, New Testament Studies, xvii (1971).Google Scholar

page 91 note 1 Dover, K.J., Greek Word Order (Cambridge, 1960), 3f.Google Scholar

page 99 note 1 Dover, K.J., Lysias and the Corpus Lysiacum (University of California, 1968), 137 f.Google Scholar

page 100 note 1 Blass, F., Die Attische Beredsamkeit, iii (1) 55.Google Scholar

page 100 note 2 Levison, M., Morton, A.Q., and Winspear, A.D., ‘The Seventh Letter of Plato’, Mind xxvii (1968), 309–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 100 note 3 Michaelson and Morton, loc. cit.