# Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit. Detecting Latin Allusions to Ancient Greek Literature

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.12008 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12008/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Aug 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10683/) (2019)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Cross-lingual Representation Learning at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02116/) (2019)
- [MPNet: Masked and Permuted Pre-training for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.09297/) (2020)
- [Making Monolingual Sentence Embeddings Multilingual using Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.09813/) (2020)
- [Latin BERT: A Contextual Language Model for Classical Philology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.10053/) (2020)
- [Exploring Large Language Models for Classical Philology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13698/) (2023)
- [On the Feasibility of Automated Detection of Allusive Text Reuse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02973/) (2019)
- [BERT in Plutarch's Shadows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05673/) (2022)
- [LatinCy: Synthetic Trained Pipelines for Latin NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04365/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Loci Similes: A Benchmark for Extracting Intertextualities in Latin Literature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.07533/) (2026)
- [Detecting Sexual Content at the Sentence Level in First Millennium Latin Texts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14974/) (2023)
- [From transcription to semantic corpus analysis: unsupervised learning of sentence representations for ancient languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.24542/) (2026)
- [Beyond Similarity: Grounded Agentic Extraction and Expert-Adjudicated Evaluation of Intertextuality in Classical Chinese Histories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.27595/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Intertextual allusions hold a pivotal role in Classical Philology, with Latin authors frequently referencing Ancient Greek texts. Until now, the automatic identification of these intertextual references has been constrained to monolingual approaches, seeking parallels solely within Latin or Greek texts. In this study, we introduce SPhilBERTa, a trilingual Sentence-RoBERTa model tailored for Classical Philology, which excels at cross-lingual semantic comprehension and identification of identical sentences across Ancient Greek, Latin, and English. We generate new training data by automatically translating English texts into Ancient Greek. Further, we present a case study, demonstrating SPhilBERTa's capability to facilitate automated detection of intertextual parallels. Our models and resources are available at https://github.com/Heidelberg-NLP/ancient-language-models.