Why we built Living Notitia
It began not as a software project, but as an attempt to solve a reading problem.
The Notitia Dignitatum is available online as transcribed Latin text and as images of manuscripts. Both are valuable, but neither makes it easy to answer many of the questions that arise once the document is read closely.
What larger command does this unit belong to?
Does the same place occur elsewhere?
Are similar units concentrated in one part of the Empire?
Does a tribunus here serve under a dux or a comes?
The information is present in the Notitia, but scattered across headings, subordinate lists, repeated formulas and geographical references. The reader has to reconstruct the relationships mentally.
The method
Living Notitia starts from a simple principle: the Latin text is the source, and it should remain visible throughout the analysis.
The project does not replace the source with a modern database. It reconstructs enough of the document's internal hierarchy to make relationships visible. Modern place names, coordinates, English rendering and semantic classifications are added as separate layers.
A deliberately restrained approach
The application does not attempt automatically to decide what the Notitia means. It exposes relationships already present in the document and gives the reader better ways to inspect, compare and question them.
Interpretation remains with the reader.
Project and source credits
Project concept, research and development: Olof Hesselmark.
AI assistance: OpenAI ChatGPT, used as a research dialogue partner and for translation support, data work, interface design and software development.
Latin textual basis: Otto Seeck's 1876 edition of the Notitia Dignitatum, with the digital transcription prepared by Halstein Sjølie and made available through The Latin Library.
Manuscript imagery: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, MS. Canon. Misc. 378.
Ancient geography: Pleiades. Interactive mapping uses Leaflet and OpenStreetMap base-map data.
Roman Empire map on the home page: Mandrak / Wikimedia Commons, public domain.