The ''Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines d'après les textes et les monuments, contenant l'explication des termes qui se rapportent aux mœurs, aux institutions, à la religion, aux arts, aux sciences, au costume, au mobilier, à la guerre, à la marine, aux métiers, aux monnaies, poids et mesures, etc. etc., et en général à la vie publique et privée des anciens'' was a large illustrated

French-language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in No ...

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologie ...

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cu ...

and

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

edited by Charles Victor Daremberg and Edmond Saglio and published in 10 volumes between 1873 and 1919 by the publisher Hachette Livre in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

. Individual entries consisted of (sometimes book-length) articles by prominent classical scholars,

François Lenormant François Lenormant (17 January 1837 – 9 December 1883) was a 19th-century French Hellenist, Assyriologist and archaeologist. Biography Early life Lenormant's father, Charles Lenormant, distinguished as an archaeologist, numismatist and Egypto ...

among them. It aimed to compete directly with the ''Altertumswissenschaft'' of German universities, who were the uncontested masters in the field from 1810 onward. In an 1887 review of the first volume of the ''Dictionnaire'' for ''The Classical Review'', John E. B. Mayor praised the result, saying "No other nation as yet possesses anything approaching to it in beauty and completeness; it is absolutely necessary to every classical library and to every public library frequented by scholars or artists." The ''Dictionnaire'' represented a work of extraordinary volume and was published at a slow pace. It took eleven issuings to finally complete volume 1, which spanned 1,703 pages and only covered through the letter C, in 1886. The first volume included 3,000 illustrations. Each of the eleven parts of the first volume, printed in large

quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

form, was sold for five francs. Some thirty years after it was begun, the ''Dictionnaire'' had only reached the middle of the alphabet. Today the dictionary has value as a legacy work, amongst the other large dictionaries of antiquity that appeared in Europe around the same time: starting in 1893, the Germans published the monumental '' Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft'' in eighty-three volumes; the Italian ''Dizionario epigrafico di antichità romana'' began in 1886; the English also published several dictionaries concerning the fields of

classical antiquity Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ...

, including William Smith's 1,300-page ''

A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities ''A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities'' is an English language encyclopedia first published in 1842. The second, improved and enlarged, edition appeared in 1848, and there were many revised editions up to 1890. The encyclopedia covered la ...

'', first published in 1842. Although the articles are sourced from scholarship in a number of different fields, its contents are no longer up-to-date because of

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

, epigraphical, and

numismatic Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals and related objects. Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also incl ...

discoveries made in the years since the ''Dictionnaires writing. The problems of studies of classical antiquity have also been profoundly renewed in the intervening years thanks to the contributions of

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

and

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

, fields from which specialists in antiquity have integrated the methods.

References

External links

The ''Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines'' online
* ''Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines'', Paris, Librairie Hachette et c.ie, 1873
vol. 1 part 1vol. 1 part 2vol. 2 part 1vol. 2 part 2vol. 3 part 1vol. 3 part 2vol. 4 part 1vol. 4 part 2vol. 5
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dictionnaire des Antiquites Grecques et Romaines Classics publications Ancient Greece Ancient Roman studies Online dictionaries Hachette (publisher) books