“Cafca” for the Czech novelist or “Cant” for the Prussian philosopher. The direct transliter-
ation of certain very familiar Greek and Latin names might confuse the casual or novice
reader, though surely not a classicist. Therefore, we use traditional Anglicized Latinized
spellings for the two names “Alexander” and “Gregory” and for these 14 people: Aristotle,
Chrysippus, Epicurus, Euclid, Gale ̄n, He ̄siod, Homer, Plato, Pliny, Plutarch, Ptolemy,
Pythagoras, Thucydide ̄s, and Ze ̄no ̄ of Elea (note macrons); a similar set of 19 exceptions for
locations (many of which, like “Alexander,” are names in common use in English) includes
Alexandria, Antioch, Athens, Babylo ̄n, Carthage, Corinth, Crete, Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia,
Italy, Jerusalem, Libya, Macedon, Oxyrhynchos, Rhodes, Rome, Sicily, Spain, and Tyre.
There is no reason to make this exception for unfamiliar names, whether of people or places,
since they lack any obtrusive “familiar” transliteration. For names of ancient mythological
people and places, we adopt a similar plan, thus, e.g., Achilles, Apollo, Athena, Atropos,
Bacchant, Dionysus, Hade ̄s, Horus, Kronos, Lachesis, Muses, Odysseus, O ̄rio ̄n, Osiris, Ozy-
mandias, Pando ̄ra, Poseido ̄n, Prome ̄theus, Sykeus, Thyestes, and Troy. Historical Greek and
Byzantine figures outside the scope of the encyclopedia, but frequently cited or mentioned
within (such as the historian Dio Cassius or the emperor Justinian or the theologian Clement
of Alexandria), are listed with brief identifications in an index of 33 names (pp. 1037–8).
Transliteration and polyonomy dictate the need for cross-references. All binomial Latin
names (e.g. “Tullius Cicero”) are cross-referenced from cognomen to nomen. Late imperial
Latin names also require cross-references, from the alternate name(s) to the diacritical
name. Most of the Greek transliterations that are more direct (e ̄ for eta and o ̄ for omega, final
-os not -us, and final -o ̄n rather than just -o) do not require any cross-reference, whereas the
transliteration of omicron-upsilon as “ou” rather than as -u (so Euboulos etc.), and the
transliteration of upsilon always as “u” rather than as -y, plus the transliteration of epsilon-
iota as “ei” rather than as -i, does slightly affect the order of the entries in a few cases, all of
which are handled with cross-references. The use of K rather than the Latin C, just as (in
Latin names) the use of I rather than the medieval J (increasingly favored even by conserva-
tive Anglophone scholarship), does noticeably affect the order, which again is handled by
cross-references.
As Roman rule absorbed Greek culture, some Romans took Greek cognomina, and some
Greeks upon receiving Roman citizenship assumed Latin names; the earliest certain cases
appear to be late Republican (1st c. ); cf. Salway 1994. Nearly all such bicultural names in
this work appear to belong to Greek writers and are hence filed under their Greek name
(without assertion as to a primary culture of their bearer), with their Latin name(s) given as an
epithet (Dionusios Cassius, Krito ̄n Statilius, etc.), and cross-referenced. The few Greek
writers who possess no known Greek name are simply filed under their Latin name (Aelianus,
Arrianus, Rufus, Vettius, etc.). There are very few examples of Latin writers possessing both a
Latin and a Greek name – in this work, perhaps only Fauonius Eulogios (filed under his Latin
name). In late antiquity, many names lost their ethnic specificity: for example, Io ̄anne ̄s, once
a Hebrew/Jewish name (Yohannan, as at I Macc. 2.1–2, Iosephus Ant. Iud. 18 [116–119]),
then became a Christian name, and by the 5th c. was in general use (e.g., Io ̄anne ̄s of
Stoboi). Likewise, many Greek names, Gre ̄gorios, Hierokle ̄s, Isido ̄ros, Palladios, Paulos, and
Theodo ̄ros, e.g., became fully Latinized by the 4th or 5th c., whereas Latin names such as
Marcellus and Marcianus/Martianus became fully Hellenized apparently by the 3rd c.
III. Gazetteer, Glossary, Time-Line, and Indices. Many terms used in describing
the work of ancient scientists are Greek (or Latin) terms whose translation raises subtle and
INTRODUCTION