Shortly after my review was completed and sent in, Oxford University Press published in January 2016 an online edition of FRHist, and I am very grateful to the editors of JRS for the opportunity to compose an addendum to my review of the print edition.
The volumes appear in the Classics section of the Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) series, and join a number of critical texts and editions already available there. When one calls up an Oxford Classical Text within the series, two windows open, with the text on the left and the apparatus criticus next to it. The reader can scroll down in either window independently of the other. If one consults a commentary (say, Ruth Parkes on Statius, Thebaid 4), one is greeted with four windows, comprising the text, translation, commentary and ‘extras’: additional links most often to the OLD but also sometimes to other relevant Oxford commentaries and monographs that are available in electronic form. (This last column obviously has great potential going forward.) Because one can scroll up and down the individual windows independently, there are also small figures (circle, triangle, diamond) next to each line of the (poetic) text which, when clicked, highlight in the other windows all the relevant material for that line.
For FRHist, each of the three volumes is listed individually, and one may first approach them in this way (although once inside any of the volumes you can search the entire work, and the links themselves move between volumes). If, for example, you need a particular fragment of a particular author, you can start with Volume 2 (which contains both fragments and translations), find your author and fragment, and click on it. That will then open up three windows, with (left to right) the text, the translation and the commentary. (Testimonia have only the first two windows since there is no direct commentary on them; nor could I find for the fragments themselves an apparatus criticus.) There will also be the navigation pane but this can be minimized; once that is done, the width of each column can be manually adjusted. You can also choose which of the columns you want to see. (There are several videos on the OSEO site that demonstrate the features of the online editions.) There are two settings for font size and both offer good readability, but even with the smaller size, those using smaller screens such as a laptop or tablet may wish to use the zoom function of their browser to allow for more words to appear in each window. The navigation itself is straightforward.
Obviously one of the more convenient facets of an online edition is the ability to link within the work itself, whether that be to another fragment, portion of commentary or section of the introduction. These links are well integrated and a random check of a variety of them yielded none that were dead or incorrect. Since links open in the same window, however, users may prefer to open cross-references in new tabs or windows, so as not to have to be using the ‘back’ button constantly.
Another advantage of the online edition is the ability to copy and paste, and this too, I found, works very well. One can also print a fragment and its commentary or download it as a PDF. And there is, of course, the full range of social media if you need to let your friends or Twitter followers know that you've just read an amazing fragment of L. Cincius Alimentus. But of course the greatest advantage is the ability to search through the entire edition, and that in itself justifies this online edition.
All in all, then, this is a wonderful addition to the OSEO series, for which we should be grateful to the publisher.
