PREFACE.
THE Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, which is here offered to the public, is founded on a work by Dr. Oskar Seyffert, of Berlin, which has deservedly attained a wide circulation in Germany.[1] Dr. Seyffert is already known in England as one of the editors of a philological periodical, entitled the Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift, and as a distinguished Latin scholar, whose name is specially associated with the criticism of Plautus. The departments of classical learning included in his dictionary are the Mythology and Religion, the Literature and Art, and the constitutional and social Antiquities of Greece and Rome. Within the compass of a single volume it comprises all the subjects usually treated in a Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, while it also supplies information on matters of Mythology and Literature which has generally to be looked for in the pages of a Classical Dictionary. Besides separate articles on Greek and Roman divinities, and on the lives and works of the philosophers, the historians, the orators, the poets, and the artists of Greece and Rome, it gives a general and comprehensive view of such subjects as Greek and Roman Religion, Philosophy, History, Rhetoric, Literature, Architecture, Painting, Sculpture, Music, and the Drama. Similarly, in the department of Antiquities, besides separate treatment of subordinate details, it deals with important topics, such as the Boule and Ecclesia, the Comitia and the Senate, Commerce and War, the Houses, the Ships, the Temples, and the Theatres of the ancients.
The original text has been largely supplemented and corrected by Dr. Seyffert himself; and the whole of the translation has been carefully revised and, in many cases, re-written or re-arranged by the editors. The larger part of the letter A (Abacus to Astrology) was translated by Mr. Stallybrass, owing to whose lamented death the remainder of the work was put into other hands. The succeeding articles, from Astrology
- ↑ Lexikon der klassischen Alterthumskunde; Kulturgeschichte der Griechen und Römer; Mythologie und Religion, Litteratur, Kunst, und Alterthümer des Staats- und Privatlebens. (Leipzig: Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, 1882.)
