ABSTRACT
For ancient historians, the main challenge in undertaking Historical Network Research lies in combining two seemingly disconnected areas: social network analysis, as a quantitative research tool dependent on algorithms and complicated calculations, has to be related to traditional interpretative hermeneutics of historical research. The resultant network will follow a strictly binary coding: if a relationship conforming to the criteria laid out earlier is attested in the sources, a social relationship will be coded as an undirected and unweighted tie between two nodes. Equally possible in theory but impractical in application would be the use of linguistic cues, such as those Adam Schor has put at the center of his own reconstructed network. In looking at the networks resultant from the coding used for the relationships defined earlier, the problems just described become immediately obvious. As an intermediate step in attempting to reconstruct a whole network, network graphs for all individually coded types of beneficia were drawn up.
