The apparatus
Editions of old texts carry a note on how the editor worked. This is that note for a small modern companion. Revised 2026-10-26.
Texts used
Thirteen pages are on the source list. They fall into three groups:
| Group | Works | Read in |
|---|---|---|
| Ancient lives and histories | Suetonius on Julius Caesar (English and Latin), Plutarch’s Caesar and Brutus, Cassius Dio book 44 | Loeb translations of 1913 to 1919 on Bill Thayer’s LacusCurtius pages at the University of Chicago, which declare them public domain |
| Later literature | Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Dante’s Inferno | The Folger Shakespeare edition and Project Gutenberg’s text of the play; Longfellow’s Dante on Project Gutenberg |
| Language and background | Latin second-declension forms, the Greek word teknon, essays on the play | Allen and Greenough via Dickinson College Commentaries, Liddell and Scott via Tufts University’s Perseus Digital Library, three Folger Shakespeare Library pages |
Quotation websites, encyclopedia digests and blogs are never the basis of a statement.
Quoting
Because the subject is itself a quotation, the readings quote, but briefly. Ancient and Elizabethan wording comes only from the public-domain translations and editions in the table; the handful of phrases from modern essays and reference works are credited to whoever wrote or published them. Old English stays old, “thou” and “doth” included, with the translator’s own spelling. Where a source runs a line on across a dash, only one side of the dash is quoted. If two translators disagree, as with the Greek words Caesar is said to have spoken to Brutus, both renderings appear side by side.
Hearsay
The ancient writers often mark a story as secondhand: “some have written”, “it is said”, “some have added”. Those markers are kept, and a story so marked is never promoted to fact. Omens, dreams and prophecies are reported as things the writers record, with no claim that they happened. Where the ancient accounts differ, each version is given with its author.
The guide’s own words
Everything outside quotation marks is the guide’s paraphrase or analysis. A few points rest on no cited source and are presented as the guide’s own: the gloss of Latin et as “and”, “also” or “even”, since the dictionary entry for it could not be fetched; the gloss of tradiderunt quidam as “some have handed down”, printed beside the translator’s wording; the plain-English definition of parricide; and interpretive remarks such as how the Latin line compresses a hedged story.
Verification
A script visited each of the thirteen pages once on 2026-10-26, and all of them loaded. It then looked for all 103 quotations on the site, as exact strings after evening out entities, curly quotes and dashes, and for 45 factual patterns. Every quotation and every pattern was found. The site’s tests also fail if any page carries a quotation that is not on that verified list. Each reading carries this date as its last review against sources.
Its limits
Matching proves the quoted words are present. Whether the paraphrase around them is fair is a separate question, and nobody has compared the two by hand. No human editor, classicist or Shakespeare scholar has reviewed the readings.
Standing and money
The guide has no tie to the Folger Shakespeare Library, the University of Chicago, Tufts University, Dickinson College, Project Gutenberg or any other body whose texts it draws on. It advertises nothing and points readers to no particular edition, product or course. Texts are named rather than linked for the time being; if links come later, they will serve readers, and a paid one would say so.
Drafting
An AI system produced the readings from the texts listed above. No independent human editor has reviewed them since. The illustrations are hand-written SVG drawings, invented for these pages; no real object, building or artwork appears in them.
Since that visit
The thirteen pages were visited on that one day, 2026-10-26, and no return visit is planned. An online edition can be emended or renumbered, so a line reference or quotation here may no longer match what its source page shows today. When the two differ, trust the edition as its publisher now presents it. Nobody can write in yet, so a slip in a reading could stay unnoticed. Should a reading ever be corrected, the correction will carry its date on that reading.