The publication of this volume alongside our Database of Greek and Latin Epic Speech is a major milestone for the DICES-project (Digital Initiative for Classics: Epic Speeches) which we want to mark by briefly looking back at the trajectory that brought us to this point.
The work presented here would not have been possible without the vision and the tireless efforts of Simone Finkman, who conceived the original idea for DICES, contributed much of the initial speech data, and gave countless hours to organizing and encouraging the team and contributors. Simone steered the project successfully past all initial obstacles towards its first milestones: the panel at the FIEC conference in London 2019, funding for the development of our database (SSHRC 2021) and related student research projects (Hermes 2022); the co-authored article in DSH announcing the database prototype (Forstall, Finkmann and Verhelst 2022) and finally the gathering of our interdisciplinary group of expert test users in Rostock (Digital Approaches to Direct Speech Representation in Greek and Latin Epic, June–July 2022). As the project has grown and evolved since then, she has continued to provide valued advice and support. We dedicate this volume to her with gratitude and pride.
DICES is foundationally a collaborative effort, and we are immensely grateful to the members of the Epic Speeches Network, the contributors to this volume, for their exceptional spirit of cooperation and dialogue. Some of them supported the project already in the phase of its conception, but most of our members joined after the call for participants in 2021 and met for the first time at the Rostock Workshop in 2022. We had decided from the start to organize not one, but two work-in-progress workshops at different stages of the project: the first, shortly after the release of a test version of the database, for pitching research ideas, brainstorming on the methods, and DH training sessions for using the database and ancillary software; the second, one year later, at Mt. Allison University (May–June 2023, Sackville, Canada) to discuss pre-circulated drafts, fine-tune methodological issues and evaluate the results. Obviously, we had hoped this arrangement would result in fruitful exchanges, but the team spirit that could be felt during and after the workshops exceeded all our expectations. We have rarely seen such generosity in terms of sharing expertise across disciplines, constructive peer feedback and mutual support between highly established and early career scholars. We wholeheartedly want to thank our contributors for their willingness to act as project internal reviewers for each other’s papers and for regularly reaching out to us and each other for advice throughout the process. Special thanks go to Elizabeth Minchin, who volunteered to proofread the English of all non-native speakers who contributed to the volume.
Less visible in this book, but equally vital to our project’s success was our collaboration with students based in Germany, Canada, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands, who joined the team in various phases of the project as research assistants, interns and junior researchers: they collated and revised data for the database, worked on the code, assisted in organizing both workshops, and wrote BA and MA theses on the result of their personal research using the DICES database. They are too many to name all of them individually, but we do want to emphasize the exceptional contributions of Jule Andreeßen, Merle Kallet, Friederike Münch, three (by now former) students at Rostock University who won a Hermes Student Research grant at the University of Rostock for their work with DICES, still under the guidance of Simone; and also our international intern, Sara Didriksen (formerly at Aarhus University, Denmark). The four of them presented their student research projects using DICES at our Mt. Allison workshop and thoroughly impressed the international audience. Finally, our editorial assistant Isla Bergen (Mt. Allison University, Canada) provided invaluable support during the preparation of the final manuscript.
Apart from our authors and student assistants, we also have to thank a number of external partners. With Greta Hawes and Scott Smith (MANTO project) and Gregory Crane (Perseus Digital Library) we explored the options for integrating DICES into the existing Linked Open Data Network. We much appreciated their collegial spirit and their presentations at our first, resp. second workshop. We want to extend special thanks to Karsten Labahn and Robert Stephan for hosting the first versions of the database. Much appreciation also for the financial, administrative and support staff at both Rostock University and Mt. Allison University for managing our project’s budgets and valued support before and during both workshops. Finally, we much appreciated the assistance of Mirjam Elbers, Giulia Moriconi and Wai Min Kan at Brill (now De Gruyter-Brill) from the first book proposal to the proofs and production. We are grateful to our families, our partners and children, for their patience and support during this rewarding but intensive collaborative project.
Christopher Forstall and Berenice Verhelst
June 2025