Full citation – Référence complète:
Veronica, G. “Nihil sub sole satis novum. Esperimenti precoci d’intelligenza artificiale”. Živa Antika / Antiquité Vivante 75.1-2 (2025), pp. 305–324.

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Abstract. – Although the Greeks and Romans had no knowledge of modern computers, some of their intellectual practices show striking parallels with later computational methods. In the third century CE, the grammarian Nonius Marcellus created a vast lexical compendium that functioned much like a database, allowing him to extract material systematically for his research. Several centuries earlier, the sophist Alcidamas (fifth–fourth century BCE) imagined giving voice to the dead, a thought experiment that anticipates by many centuries certain ambitions now associated with artificial intelligence. This article examines these examples as early indications of computational and technological thinking in classical antiquity.
Key words. – Nonius, Homer and Hesiod, artificial intelligence, database, algorithm