Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
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The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1849, originally published 1844 under a slightly different title) is an encyclopedia/biographical dictionary.
Edited by William Smith, the dictionary spans three volumes and 3,700 pages. It is a classic work of 19th century lexicography. The work is a companion to Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities and Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography.
The work lists thirty-five authors in addition to the editor, who is also an author for some definitions and articles. The authors were classical scholars, primarily from Oxford, Cambridge, the Rugby School, and the University of Bonn, but some were from other institutions.
With respect to biographies, Smith intended to be comprehensive. In the preface, he writes:
- " The biographical articles in this work include the names of all persons of any importance which occur in the Greek and Roman writers, from the earliest times down to the extinction of the Western Empire in the year 476 of our era, and to the extinction of the Eastern Empire by the capture of Constantinople by the turks in the year 1453."
The work is now in the public domain, and is available in several places on the Internet. Together with its high reputation and the relatively slow rate of change of classical scholarship this means that many of its definitions and articles have served as the basis for articles or have been referenced in more recent works, including Robert Graves' The Greek Myths. While still largely accurate when it states something (only rarely has the ancient text cited changed), much is missing, especially more recent discoveries (like Aristotle's Constitution of the Athenians) and epigraphic material; perhaps more seriously, the context in which ancient evidence is viewed has often changed in the intervening century and a half.
