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'.
MQDQ is a large collaborative project, born from PRIN funding (2005 and 2007) and then developed over the years thanks
to new initiatives and the contribution of dozens of scholars, both Italian and foreign.
To date, MQDQ has become a great "galaxy", composed of several text archives
(Carmina Latina Epigraphica,
Italian Poetry in Latin,
Hellenica),
and enriched by specialised query functions, such as the metrical analyses offered by
Pedecerto
and the search for verbal and rhythmic supraverbal co-occurrences.
In 2023, a new function was added: it allows integrated searching within the Musisque Deoque and Poeti d’Italia corpora of texts,
making it possible to investigate, in new way, the legacy of ancient poetry within Latin versification produced
in Italy between the 14th and 16th centuries.
In 2019, the MQDQ Galaxy
project was created:
it aims to develop the archives and associated functions, to update users on the latest acquisitions, and to collect
proposals for collaboration.
contact: 