Musisque Deoque. Un archivio digitale di poesia latina

[First posted in AWOL 8 September 2012, updated 28 August 2025]

Musisque Deoque. Un archivio digitale di poesia latina

The Research Project Musisque Deoque. A digital archive of Latin poetry, from its origins to the Italian Renaissance was established at the end of 2005 with the main goal of creating a singular database of Latin poetry, supported by a critical and exegetical electronic apparatus. At present, main collections of classical texts have been transferred onto digital device while resources, mostly online, allow quick lexical searches. In most cases, however, search engine inquiry only provides results key-words inside a fix and ‘authoritarian’ text. Musisque Deoque set out to overcome this limitation, making it possible to find not only the forms chosen and reported by the reference edition, but also the variants presented in the apparatus and selected under the responsibility of a 'digital editor'. The MQDQ archive is a collaborative project developed through the contributions of dozens of scholars, both Italian and international, supported by PRIN grants in 2005, 2007, and 2011. Over time, it has evolved into a true ‘galaxy’ of resources, culminating in the launch of a dedicated initiative in 2019: MQDQ Galaxy, which focuses specifically on the maintenance, expansion, and enhancement of the archive and its associated functions. Today, this 'galaxy' comprises multiple text corpora, including the original MQDQ,  Carmina Latina Epigraphica,  Musa Medievalis (integrated in 2025),  Italian Poetry in Latin,   Hellenica. It is further enriched by specialised tools, such as Pedecerto for metrical analysis and advanced functions for identifying verbal and supra-verbal rhythmic co-occurrences. Since 2023, a new feature has enabled integrated searching across all corpora, allowing users to explore the reception and transformation of ancient poetry across an unbroken chronological arc from antiquity to the Renaissance in innovative ways. Search Co-occurrences Indices Metrical typology Epigraphica The team