Aeneas predicts the missing Latin texts

MADRID (EFE).— Aeneas, a new tool based on artificial intelligence (AI), can predict the missing parts of Roman-era Latin inscriptions, date texts, and relate them to others, making the work of historians much more efficient.

The tool, developed by researchers from universities in the United Kingdom, Greece, and Belgium, and Google DeepMind, was presented yesterday in a scientific article published in the journal Nature.

Inscriptions are among the earliest forms of writing, and offer direct insight into the thought, language, and history of ancient civilizations.

Every year, some 1,500 new Latin inscriptions are discovered, providing a valuable source of information about life, culture, and linguistics during the Roman Empire. The problem is that some phrases and words have been lost over time.

Restoring these texts, dating them, and situating them in their place of origin requires historians to place them within a broader linguistic and historical framework, identifying parallels with other texts and comparing inscriptions that share phrases, functions, or geographical locations. However, current digital methods are limited to literal matches and narrow historical contexts.

The task of contextualizing inscriptions is often time-consuming and requires highly specialized research, which requires extensive knowledge of different time periods to perform their work well.

The new Aeneas tool, a generative AI neural network, can predict missing phrases or words in a Latin inscription, even when its length is uncertain.

In addition, it suggests parallels between texts, attributes them to the historical period to which they belonged, and incorporates visual images when analyzing the texts to help resolve what is missing.

Aeneas was able to predict dates with an average accuracy of 13 years based on date ranges known to historians, which were used to test the tool's calculations.

To assess the potential of this technology, the authors launched a collaborative study with 23 historians who used Aeneas in a real-life research setting to evaluate inscriptions dating between the 7th century BC and the 8th century AD.

Historians noted that the contextual results of the inscriptions provided by Aeneas were useful in 90% of cases and increased their confidence in key tasks by 44%.

Text restoration and geographical attribution work yielded better results when historians worked with Aeneas's support than when they did so without the tool or when they simply used it without supplementing it with their own work.

The tool's dexterity has been proven by analyzing the famous Roman inscription "Deeds of the Divine Augustus" (Res Gestae Divi Augusti, in Latin), an inscription that chronicles the life and works of Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor.

The text is a copy of one of his three testamentary documents and was engraved, in accordance with his wishes, on the doorposts of his mausoleum in Rome.

Aeneas is “a transformative tool that can assist historians and broaden our understanding of the past,” the authors emphasize.

Aeneas Astonishment for historians

Aeneas, a new AI tool, makes experts' work more efficient.

"Awesome"

Given the complexity of dating inscriptions, the level of precision is “impressive and extremely promising,” notes Charlotte Tupman, a researcher in ancient history at the University of Exeter (UK), in response to the study.

It should be expanded

Tupman says that "these types of tools can help us decipher much older inscriptions and in other languages."