Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/15

Rh theological topics, such as the subjects might easily have given rise to, has been carefully avoided.

Care has been taken to separate the mythological articles from those of an historical nature, as a reference to any part of the book will shew. As it is necessary to discriminate between the Greek and Italian Mythology, an account of the Greek divinities is given under their Greek names, and of the Italian divinities under their Latin names, a practice which is universally adopted by the continental writers, which has received the sanction of some of our own scholars, and is moreover of such importance in guarding against endless confusions and mistakes as to require no apology for its introduction into this work. In the treatment of the articles themselves, the mystical school of interpreters has been avoided, and those principles followed which have been developed by Voss, Buttmann, Welcker, K. O. Miiller, Lobeck, and others. Less Space, relatively, has been given to these articles than to any other portion of the work, as it has not been considered necessary to repeat all the fanciful speculations which abound in the later Greek writers and in modern books upon this subject.

The lives of Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, have been treated at considerable length, and an account is given of all their works still extant, or of which there is any record in ancient writers. These articles, it is hoped, will be useful to the artist as well as to the scholar.

Some difficulty has been experienced respecting the admission or rejection of certain names, but the following is the general principle which has been adopted. The names of all persons are inserted, who are mentioned in more than one passage of an ancient writer: but where a name occurs in only a single passage, and nothing more is known of the person than that passage contains, that name is in general omitted. On the other hand, the names of such persons are inserted when they are intimately connected with some great historical event, or there are other persons of the same name with whom they might be confounded.

"When there are several persons of the same name, the articles have been arranged either in chronological or some alphabetical order. The latter plan has been usually adopted, where there are many persons of one name, as in the case of, and others, in which cases a chronological arrangement would stand in the way of ready reference to any particular individual whom the reader might be in search of. In the case of Koman names, the chronological order has, for obvious reasons, been always adopted, and they have been given under the cognomens, and not under the gentile names. There is, however, a separate article devoted to each gens, in which is inserted a list of all the cognomens of that gens.

In a work written by several persons it is almost impossible to obtain exact uniformity of reference to the ancient Writers, but this has been done as far as was possible. Wherever an author is referred to by page, the particular edition used by the writer is generally stated; but of the writers enumerated below, the following Rh