Content area
Full text
RR 2003/271 Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World Edited by Hubert Cancik and others Managing Editor Christine F. Salazar Brill Leiden and Boston, MA 2002To be complete In 20 vols with an Index ISBN 90 04 12259 1 (set)
Eur160.00/$186.00 for the first volume
Keywords History, Greece, Italy
Review DOI 10.1108/09504120310481246
Encyclopedias have been with us since ancient times, and they reflect their editors' views and their times. Ancient writers such as Aristotle, Varro, and Pliny the elder compiled encyclopedic works. The word "encyclopedia" or "encyclopaedia" is from the Greek (enkyklios paideia, meaning general or well-rounded education). The notion of an encyclopedia's format developed through the centuries. During the eighteenth century, Diderot and other French enlightenment authors laboured on such a work. The guiding principle of these writers was that it was possible to know the world "through human reason and that knowledge of the world could be presented in a coherent, accessible way using the convention of the Roman alphabet as an organizing principle" (Rettig, 1998).
Two types of encyclopedias exist: the general encyclopedia and the specialised encyclopedia. Shores (1976) once commented that the encyclopedia compiler's mission is to "summarize the knowledge most significant to mankind. A comprehensive encyclopedia is the encyclopedist's efforts to 'retrieve' or to summarize information universally significant". Specialized encyclopedias focus on a single topic or academic discipline. Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World is one such encyclopedia.
Before describing characteristics on the New Pauly, it may be instructive to give a brief history of its origins. New Pauly is the latest incarnation of the Realencyclopadie de classischen Altertumswissenschaft. This work dates from the nineteenth century, and its original editor was August Friedrich (von) Pauly (1796-1845). Pauly envisioned a comprehensive encyclopedia of classical studies (i.e. the study of ancient Greece and Rome, and societies and cultures affected by them). Pauly published the first volume of the work in 1839. After Pauly's death, Christian Walz (1802-1857), and Wilhelm Teuffel (1820-- 1878) completed the first edition in six volumes. Although the editors started a second edition, it remained uncompleted. Georg Wissowa (1859-1931) continued the work of his predecessors by starting a new edition, the first volume of which appeared in 1894. Wissowa's successor, Konrat Ziegler (1884-- 1974), continued work...