Synopsis
Praised by playwright Arthur Miller as "a delight for anyone with any curiosity about the roots of our Western culture" and by Booklist as "the single most heavily used book on classical studies," The Oxford Classical Dictionary is without doubt the definitive single-volume resource on ancient Greece and Rome. Now this redoubtable classic is available in electronic form on CD-ROM.
Here are over six thousand A to Z entries, ranging from long articles to biographies to brief identifications. Readers can find information on virtually any aspect of the classical world—athletics, bee-keeping, botany, magic, Roman law, philosophy, religious rites, postal service, slavery, navigation, and the reckoning of time. And with the OCD on CD-ROM, readers can find this information in seconds.
Both the thousand-page volume and the CD-ROM are available as a package, with the CD included in a sleeve in the inside back cover of the book. Together they make an unparalleled resource for anyone interested in Greece or Rome.
Library Journal
First published in 1949, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD) has become the standard, authoritative, one-volume reference in Greco-Roman studies available in English. This new edition revises the 1996 third edition quite extensively. Of the 6250 entries-updated both to reflect the latest scholarship and to improve style and clarity-1000 are entirely new, an average of one on every other page. The scope is interdisciplinary, including coverage of ancient religion, culture, science, and economics, as well as the more expected pieces on history, philosophy, mythology, and philology. Articles on such topics as abortion, dentistry, gynecology, motherhood, imperialism, and race reflect the influence of modern cultural studies. Edited by Hornblower (classics & ancient history, Univ. Coll., London) and Spawforth (ancient history, Univ. of Newcastle upon Tyne), who solicited contributions from leading scholars worldwide, the entries are of value to specialists but accessible to general readers and indeed a pleasure to browse. To facilitate accessibility, names are given in their Latin spelling, though the Greek is provided where relevant. Essential for both public and academic libraries and for those who wish to be current in the classics.-T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, GA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.