Salowey Christina A. (ed.) Great lives from history. The ancient world, prehistory-476 C.E.V.1-2

Pasadena, California: Salem Press, 2004. — 565+556 pp.Great Lives from History: The Ancient World, Prehis- tory-476 C.E. is the first in a multivolume series covering the lives of important personages from the ancient world through the twenty-first century. This series is a revision of the 10-volume Dictionary of World Biography series (1998-1999), which was a revision and reordering of Salem Press’s 30-volume Great Lives from History series (1987-1995). The original essays are enhanced by the addition of new entries covering a wider geographical area and including more women, updated bibliographies, succession tables, a new page design, and a section containing maps of various parts of the ancient world.
Great Lives from History: The Ancient World, Prehistory-476 C.E. gathers 260 essays from the Dictionary of World Biography: The Ancient World and adds 65 new biographies, creating a total of 325 essays. The date of 476 c.e., the fall of Rome, was selected by the editors as the cutoff between the ancient world and the Middle Ages. Those lives spanning this cutoff date were included if their life’s work or major accomplishments fell within the period covered by this set.
The articles in this set range from 1,700 to 3,000 words in length (roughly 3 to 6 pages) and follow a standard format. Each article begins with the subject’s name, as best known in the Western world, and an identifier stating the person’s nationality and life role, along with reign dates if the person was a ruler. These are followed by ready-reference listings: a brief statement summarizing the person’s contribution to society and later ages, his or her birth and death dates and places (including both ancient place-names and modem equivalents), other names the person might have used, and his or her areas of achievement. In some of the ready-reference material and in parenthetical material within the text, the following abbreviations have been used: “r.” for “reigned,” “b.” for “bom,” “d.” for “died,” and “fl.” for flourished.
The body of each article is divided into three parts. “Early Life,” the first section, provides facts about the individual’s upbringing and the environment in which he or she was reared, as well as the pronunciation of his or her name, if unusual. The heart of the article is the section entitled “Life’s Work,” which consists of a straightforward account of the period during which the individual’s most significant achievements were made. The concluding section, “Significance,” is not a recapitulation of what has been discussed but rather an overview of the individual’s place in history. Each essay is supplemented by an annotated, evaluative bibliography, a starting point for further research. In addition, each essay is crossreferenced to other essays within the volume as well as to relevant essays in the companion set, Great Events from History: The Ancient World, Prehistory-476 C.E. (2 vols., 2004). Three essays, “Cleomenes,” “Gracchi,” and “Tarquins,” cover 2 or 3 individuals. These essays differ slightly from those covering individuals in terms of format, but otherwise, they contain the same information, including ready-reference materials.
Accompanying the essays are about 170 illustrations (mostly line art and photographs of busts, sculptures, coins, paintings, and drawings depicting the individual) and 40 succession lists, genealogies, and other tables. Nineteen maps of portions of the ancient world appear grouped together for easy reference in the front of each volume.600dpi (текстовой слой, интерактивное оглавление).