This summer, philosophy students at Wellesley College and Tufts University contributed to The Connected Corpus, a new, first-of-its-kind collection of annotated digital philosophical texts by ancient Greek and Roman authors that helps readers understand the connections between their various works. The first installment of the ongoing project, an online annotated edition of Plato’s Republic, was published with funding from the Tufts Springboard program and Wellesley College’s Knapp Social Science Center.
Wellesley student research assistants Stella Chiari ’26, Lauren Kim ’26, and Ozy Odocha ’26 worked on the project with Corinne Gartner, associate professor of philosophy, and Adele Watkins, assistant professor of philosophy. Gartner and Watkins were invited to collaborate on the project in summer 2022 by Christiana Olfert, associate professor of philosophy at Tufts University, who came up with the idea for the shared repository.
The research assistants made connections between Republic and other philosophical texts. They also helped edit and review connections submitted by additional contributors.
As Odocha read Republic and Aristotle’s Politics, she highlighted similarities and differences between certain lines or passages in the texts, and she made notes in the margins to help identify connections. For example, she compared “Socrates’ claim that people with the best nature do the greatest evils when they are brought up badly [to] Aristotle’s statement that when men, the best of animals, are brought up without law or justice, they become the worst of all animals,” she said.
Kim said the process involved identifying thematic or conceptual parallels between texts. “I’d start by reading passages closely and looking for similar philosophical ideas or approaches to topics like human conduct, values, or ethics,” she said. “Sometimes, a connection would emerge through keywords or contrasting views on the same subject, like virtue or justice. Then I’d refine these connections into concise language that conveyed the link clearly and meaningfully.”
“Without a doubt, being a part of this research team and project has improved my confidence as a philosophy major and allowed me to feel more fluent in discussing philosophical ideas.”
While many scholarly commentaries on philosophical texts are available, Gartner said The Connected Corpus is unique because the connections made do not support a particular interpretive view. “There really isn’t anything analogous to this kind of resource out there,” they said. “It has a lot of utility because we’re making connections that people could use in different ways.”
The Connected Corpus aims to provide a more holistic view of the ancient Greek and Roman corpus, or body of work, by suggesting conceptual or logical links that help readers better understand the philosophical landscape of a particular idea, argument, or text.
Watkins said these connections encourage readers to notice the similarities and differences between comments made by various philosophers, which may help students who are new to ancient Greek and Roman philosophy as well as researchers interested in particular subjects.
Kim linked Socrates’ argument in Republic that humans should live a virtuous life because the soul is immortal and actions have lasting consequences to Seneca’s argument in De Ira that humans should live virtuously because life is fleeting and should be lived to the fullest extent.
“Both philosophers discuss the virtues of a good life, but their reasoning differs,” Kim said. Examining those differences, she said, “helps us understand the range of perspectives philosophers held on core concepts.”
Gartner and Watkins are proud of their research assistants for reading challenging primary source material and providing a new perspective on them. “Getting fresh eyes on these texts draws out connections that aren’t obvious to us in the first place,” Watkins said. “So, I don’t think it would be an overstatement to say that the first piece of this project would not have been successful without the Wellesley and Tufts research assistants who have been involved with it, in addition to all of the contributors and other institutions.”
Over the past year, more than 100 contributors from six institutions have found 707 connections between 44 philosophical works.
“One thing we’ve talked about is finding more texts and authors to make connections with contemporary works that draw on or critique Plato’s work,” Gartner said. “It’s never done really, so it’s kind of flexible in that way.”
Odocha said working on The Connected Corpus was rewarding because Gartner, Olfert, and Watkins “truly wanted student input” and encouraged the research assistants to offer feedback.
Chiari agreed. “Not only did I gain familiarity with classic philosophical texts, but I had the opportunity to truly analyze the connections made between the texts and consider distinct philosophical ideas in relation to each other,” she said. “Without a doubt, being a part of this research team and project has improved my confidence as a philosophy major and allowed me to feel more fluent in discussing philosophical ideas.”