Elaine Matthews - Böcker

Within the great diversity of their world, the assertion of origin was essential to the ancient Greeks in defining their sense of who they were and how they distinguished themselves from neighbours and strangers. Each person's name might carry both identity and origin - 'I am' . . . inseparable from 'I come from' . . . Names have surfaced in many guises and locations - on coins and artefacts, embedded within inscriptions and manuscripts - carrying with them evidence even from prehistoric and preliterate times. The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names has already identified more than 200,000 individuals. The contributors to this volume draw on this resource to demonstrate the breadth of scholarly uses to which name evidence can be put. These essays narrate the stories of political and social change revealed by the incidence of personal names and cast a fascinating light upon both the natural and supernatural phenomena which inspired them. This volume offers dramatic illumination of the ways in which the ancient Greeks both created and interpreted their world through the specific language of personal names.

This volume provides an interpretative guide to using a fundamental resource for the study of the ancient Greek world. Personal names are a statement of identity, a personal choice by parents for their child, reflecting their own ancestry and family traditions, and the religious and political values of the society to which they belong. The names of the ancient Greeks, surviving in their tens of thousands in manuscripts and documents, offer a valuable insight into ancient Greek society.The essays collected here examine how the Greeks responded to new environments. It draws out issues of identity as expressed through the choice, formation and adaptation of personal names, not only by Greeks when they came into contact with non-Greeks, but of others in relation to Greeks, for example Egyptians, Persians, Thracians, and Semitic peoples, including the Jewish communities in the diaspora. Grounded in the 'old' world of Greece (in particular, Euboia and Thessaly), the volume also reaches out to the many parts of the ancient world where Greeks travelled, traded and settled, and where the dominant culture before the arrival of the Greeks was not Greek.Reflecting upon the progress of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names project, which has already published the names of over a quarter of a million ancient Greeks, this volume will be of interest to all scholars and students of the language, literature, history, religion, and archaeology of the ancient Greek world.

The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, a major project of the British Academy, offers scholars a fully documented listing of all known personal names from the ancient Greek world. It draws on all the available evidence, primarily inscriptions but also literature, papyri, coins, vases and other artefacts; chronologically it ranges from the earliest times (though excluding Mycenean names) to about AD 600. It has benefited from the collaboration of scholars in many countries. It is intended to form the basis of a wide range of historical, philological, and literary research. The present volume, III.B, contains the onomastic material from Central Greece, comprising Phocis, Locris, Doris, Boeotia with Megara, and Thessaly. It continues the series begun with volume I, The Aegean Islands, Cyprus, and Cyrenaica, volume II, Attica, and volume III.A The Peloponnese, Western Greece, Magna Graecia, and Sicily.

The Lexicon of Greek Personal names, established as a major research project of the British Academy and now funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board and by Greek Foundations, offers scholars a comprehensive listing of all named individuals from the ancient Greek-speaking world. The information needed has been compiled from all written sources, literary, epigraphical, papyrological and numismatic, within a chronological range from the eighth century BC to approximately 600 AD; the geographical limits match the use of Greek language in antiquity, from Asia Minor to the Western Mediterranean, the Black Sea to North Africa. Many scholars have contributed to the achievement of this ambitious research programmeWith the present volume, the project moves into Northern Greece and on to the west and north shores of the Black Sea, extending from the Greek colonial zone into the Balkan hinterland as far as the Danube.The Greek world was highly differentiated in many ways, from the broadest divisions into Aeolic, Ionic and Doric speaking communities, to individual cities with their different social, religious and political patterns. Names follow, and play a part in measuring, these differences, which transcended physical boundaries. The LGPN volumes enable scholars to use fully all the potential of personal names to illuminate all aspects of ancient society.The LGPN volumes provide the basis for further research into all aspects of ancient Greek society, and are used by the classical community worldwide.