An encyclopedia or encyclopædia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries that are arranged alphabetically by article name or by thematic categories, or else are hyperlinked and searchable. Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most dictionaries. Generally speaking, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information concerning the subject named in the article's title; this is unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information about words, such as their etymology, meaning, pronunciation, use, and grammatical forms.
The Levant is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of West Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is equivalent to Cyprus and a stretch of land bordering the Mediterranean Sea in western Asia: i.e. the historical region of Syria, which includes present-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian territories and most of Turkey southwest of the middle Euphrates. Its overwhelming characteristic is that it represents the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia. In its widest historical sense, the Levant included all of the Eastern Mediterranean with its islands; that is, it included all of the countries along the Eastern Mediterranean shores, extending from Greece to Cyrenaica in eastern Libya.
Plutarch was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, and Moralia, a collection of essays and speeches. Upon becoming a Roman citizen, he was possibly named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus.
The Septuagint, sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy, and often abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
In Greek mythology, Erebus, or Erebos, is the personification of darkness. In Hesiod's Theogony, he is the offspring of Chaos, and the father of Aether and Hemera (Day) by Nyx (Night); in other Greek cosmogonies, he is the father of Aether, Eros, and Metis, or the first ruler of the gods. In genealogies given by Roman authors, he begets a large progeny of personifications upon Nox, while in an Orphic theogony he is the offspring of Chronos (Time). The name "Erebus" is also used to refer either to the darkness of the Underworld, the Underworld itself, or the region through which souls pass to reach Hades, and can sometimes be used as a synonym for Tartarus or Hades.
In ancient Greek religion, Nemesis, also called Rhamnousia or Rhamnusia, was the goddess who personifies retribution for the sin of hubris: arrogance before the gods.
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek, Dark Ages, the Archaic or Epic period, and the Classical period.
The Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD) is generally considered "the best one-volume dictionary on antiquity," an encyclopædic work in English consisting of articles relating to classical antiquity and its civilizations. It was first published in 1949, edited by Max Cary with the assistance of H. J. Rose, H. P. Harvey, and Alexander Souter. A second edition followed in 1970 (OCD2), edited by Nicholas G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, and a third edition in 1996 (OCD3), edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. A revised third edition was released in 2003, which is nearly identical to the previous third edition. A fourth edition was published in 2012 (OCD4), edited by Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth, and Esther Eidinow. In 2016, a fully digital edition launched online, edited by Sander Goldberg (2013–2017) and Tim Whitmarsh (2018–present). Continuously updated on a monthly basis, this edition incorporates all 6,300 entries from OCD4 as well as newly commissioned entries, and features multimedia content and freely accessible maps of the ancient world.
The Deipnosophistae is an early 3rd-century AD Greek work by the Greek author Athenaeus of Naucratis. It is a long work of literary, historical, and antiquarian references set in Rome at a series of banquets held by the protagonist Publius Livius Larensis for an assembly of grammarians, lexicographers, jurists, musicians, and hangers-on.
Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, known, especially in English, as Constantine P. Cavafy and often published as C. P. Cavafy, was a Greek poet, journalist, and civil servant from Alexandria. His work, as one translator put it, "holds the historical and the erotic in a single embrace."
LacusCurtius is a website specializing in ancient Rome, currently hosted on a server at the University of Chicago. It went online on August 26, 1997; in July 2021 it had "3707 webpages, 765 photos, 772 drawings & engravings, 120 plans, 139 maps." The site is the creation of William P. Thayer.
A Greek–English Lexicon, often referred to as Liddell & Scott or Liddell–Scott–Jones (LSJ), is a standard lexicographical work of the Ancient Greek language originally edited by Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones, and Roderick McKenzie and published in 1843 by the Oxford University Press.
The Jewish War or Judean War, also referred to in English as The Wars of the Jews, is a book written by Josephus, a first-century Roman-Jewish historian. It has been described by Steve Mason as "perhaps the most influential non-biblical text of Western history".
Hecataeus of Abdera or of Teos, was a Greek historian who flourished in the 4th century BC. Though none of his works survive, his writings are attested by later authors in various fragments, in particular his Aegyptica, a work on the society and culture of the Egyptians, and his On the Hyperboreans. He is one of the authors whose fragments were collected in Felix Jacoby's Fragmente der griechischen Historiker.
In modern English, the nouns vates and ovate (, ), are used as technical terms for ancient Celtic bards, prophets and philosophers. The terms correspond to a Proto-Celtic word which can be reconstructed as *wātis. They are sometimes also used as English equivalents to later Celtic terms such as Irish fáith "prophet, seer".
Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, commonly abbreviated FGrHist or FGrH, is a collection by Felix Jacoby of the works of those ancient Greek historians whose works have been lost, but of which we have citations, extracts or summaries. It is mainly founded on Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Müller's previous Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (1841–1870).
Dimitris Lyacos is a contemporary Greek poet and playwright. He is the author of the Poena Damni trilogy. Lyacos's work is characterised by its genre-defying form and the avant-garde combination of themes from literary tradition with elements from ritual, religion, philosophy and anthropology.
In Greek mythology, Oizys, or Oizus, is the personification of pain or distress. In Hesiod's Theogony, Oizys is one of the offspring of Nyx (Night), produced without the assistance of a father. According to the Roman authors Cicero and Hyginus, "Miseria" (Misery) is one of the offspring of the Nox and Erebus. Oizys has no distinct mythology of her own.
Lucius Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor was a Greek scholar who was enslaved by the Romans during the Mithridatic War and taken to Rome as a tutor. After his release, he continued to live in Italy as a Roman citizen. He was so productive as a writer that he earned the surname Polyhistor. The majority of his writings are now lost, but the fragments that remain shed valuable light on antiquarian and eastern Mediterranean subjects. Among his works were historical and geographical accounts of nearly all the countries of the ancient world, and the book Upon the Jews which excerpted many works which might otherwise be unknown.
Archias of Alexandria was a man of ancient Egypt who worked as a grammarian. He probably lived about the time of the Roman emperor Augustus, as we know he was the teacher of Marcus Mettius Epaphroditus, a grammarian of the 1st century CE. Little of his works remain; what fragments there are indicate his interest in grammar and etymology.
