Linked Data, Fragmented Knowledge: Towards a Digital Quellenkritik of Verrius Flaccus’ Lexicon De uerborum significatu

This article explores the potential of Wikidata to support philological research into ancient lexicography, taking as a case study the Latin lexicographer Verrius Flaccus and his text De uerborum significatu (Q42188615). The lemmatically organized, encapsulated knowledge of ancient lexicographers, with frequent references to identifiable historical people, places, and phenomena as well as frequent citations of lost ancient texts, lends itself particularly well to representation as structured data within the Wikidata knowledge base. A more concerted effort to integrate ancient lexicographers’ findings into Wikidata would improve Wikidata’s coverage of poorly represented humanities topics and explore its potential as a publication venue to reach a multilingual, non-specialist audience. At the same time, linking lexicographical entries thematically with Wikidata concepts would enable new source-critical insights into the composition of ancient lexicographical texts by making the body of ancient scholarship searchable in SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL), potentially revealing intertextual correspondences.