Ebook: A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Quotations, Proverbs, Maxims and Mottos, Classical and Mediaeval

George Bell and Sons, 1891. 622 pages.A Dictionary of Latin Quotations more copious, correct, and complete than any hitherto published had long been a cherished idea of the publisher, and awaited onlytime and circumstance for its development. Finding in the present editor a gentleman well qualified both by reading and industry to carry out his views, he placed the materials in his hands, and these with large additions, the fruit of further researches, are now laid before the reader.The present collection differs from its predecessors in being limited exclusively to Latin and Greek quotations, the publisher intending, at a later period, to give French, Italian, Spanish, and German, in a separate volume. This arrangement has enabled him to nearly quadruple the number of Latin quotations given heretofore, and to extend the number of Greek from about twenty to upwards of five hundred; amounting in all to an aggregate of more than eight thousand.The translations are throughout either new or carefully revised, and as literal as is consistent with neatness and point. It would have been easy to moke many of them more epigrammatic, but it was thought better to leave this to the reader's own taste.Authorities are adjoined wherever it has been found possible to discover them, and in a vast many instances they appear for the first time in a Dictionary of Quotations. Many of the nonsensical commentaries have been dispensed with, as in almost every instance, where the translation is correct, the quotation is more intelligible without them. Our only fear is that we have adopted
too many.One new, and it is hoped valuable, feature in the present volume, is the marking of the metrical quantities, which has been done in all cases where their absence might lead to mispronunciation. A quotation, however appropriate, would entirely lose its effect with those who are best able to appreciate its force, if blemished by false delivery. It has been thought unnecessary to
mark the final e, because, as the classical reader will know, it is never silent.