Persons of Ancient Athens
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Acknowledgments
Princeton
The Athenians project began in Princeton with the massive card files accumulated by B. D. Meritt, with the assistance of G. A. Stamires and J. A. Notopoulos. I had the privilege of working with these files at the Institute for Advanced Study during the years 1969-72 and, subsequently, in many summer visits made possible through the kindness of Professors Homer A. Thompson and Christian Habicht, while Lucy Shoe Meritt encouraged our efforts and gave much practical help.
Athens
I have spent as much time as possible working on the project in Athens, recording new epigraphical information. There I owe a debt to many directors (including the current one, Jennifer Neils) and staff of the American School of Classical Studies; I am very much obliged to the Epigraphical Museum and its directors Drs. Dina Delmousou, Maria Lagogianni-Georgakarakou, and Athanasios Themos; and I am immensely grateful for my on-going close relationship with the Agora Excavations, under the direction first of Professor Homer A. Thompson, then Professor T. Leslie Shear, Jr, and in particular John McK. Camp, and for the kindness of Agora staff, Craig Mauzy, Poly Demoulini, and Sylvie Dumont. Among the other people in Athens who have helped the project, Angelos Matthaiou, David and Jan Jordan, and Leslie Threatte stand out, but much of the help I have received from others, such as Kevin Clinton, Jack Cargill, Jaime Curbera, Dan Geagan, Merle Langdon, and Mark Munn, originated in these visits to Greece and the Agora. My debt to Eugene Vanderpool cannot be overstated.
Toronto
When the photocopying of the card files was complete, the project moved to Toronto. Grant money was forthcoming from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (though SSHRCC was at first not at all in favour of computers: they insisted on printed volumes, and got them), while equipment and other funding was provided by the Packard Humanities Institute and by CAIL Systems Limited of Markham, Ontario (who provided terminals with a special chip in them containing the Greek alphabet).
At the University of Toronto, the Computer Systems Research Institute (formerly Group) of the University of Toronto provided us with access to their "mainframe" (how much less powerful those Vax computers were than the ordinary laptop today!) through the kindness of C. C. Gotlieb and Professor D. C. Tsichritzis; much-needed assistance with software and programming was provided by computing science students John Hogg, Ivor Ladd, and John Kornatowski. Since then John and Njai Kornatowski and Ivor Ladd have gone on to create a highly successful enterprise marketing their EMPRESS database system to businesses across the world; together with Srdjan Holovac, Ivy Wong, and Alexander Kornatowski, they have continued to support their original test project throughout the years with database updates and web access.
Later, the Centre for Computing in the Humanities gave the Athenians project a home, thanks to Professor I. Lancashire and Dr. Chris Leowski, and we received considerable help on the computing side from Adam Iles and Dan Derkach; other assistance with programming came from Douglas Orr and Philippa Matheson, who was then, and is now, a main stay of the project. Many Chairs of the Department of Classics (most recently Victoria Wohl) have supported the project, including adding computer costs into the departmental budget, while Victoria College gave us numerous research grants and, for many years, an office and accounting services. Others, in Toronto and elsewhere, like Eric Czapo and Meg Miller, Dugald Matheson, Wallace McLeod, John Morgan, Debra Nails, Douglas Olson, Tim Perry, Erkki Sironen, Ian Storey, Ian Tessier, Malcolm Wallace, and Geoffrey Woodhead, gave assistance, academic and moral.
While a large part of the data entry was done in the first instance by the Traill family, the people who have helped with data entry and reference verification over the past 45 or so years are legion. They include: Susan Alexander, Victor Bakich, Marielle Balanaser, Catherine Bate, Joseph Cheng, Anne and John Cook, Letticia Cosbert, Seth Estrin, Abigail Ferstman, Frances Forrester, Roxanne Gentilcore, Elias Georgakopoulos, Laszlo Herczeg, Christina Ichim, Caroline Jageman, Nigel Kennell, Alice Kourtesi, Neb Lečić, Clarence Leung, Myron McShane, Zoe Misiewicz, Pamela Ocampo, Gaia Remorowski, Peter Rukavina, Leslie Schear, Ksenija Spasic, Sean Stewart, Adam Thom, Matthew Trafford, Lutizia Trovato, Maresa Tulipano, Joshua Zung. Many were students at the University of Toronto, some were members of the Research Opportunities Program. Others came to the project through the Mentorship Program for high school students.
Most recently, between 2010 and 2020 the Athenians project received technical support from the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University under Professors Nick Cercone and Aijun An, and Drs. Xiangdong An, Jian-guo Wang, Xiaohui Yu. Graduate students Aaron Boda, Yifan Li, Dan Reynolds, and Clark Yin, worked on the project, also secretary Laura Zeno.