Book excerpt: The ancient Greeks had a spectacular civilization which was involved in every art and science. Approximately 3,000 names have come down to us of key personalities that contributed to this culture. We have the work of only one-quarter of these and fragments of the work of the remainder. This book describes the known work of 704 of these ancient personalities. There are many books that give the lives of the more famous of these ancient Greeks. There are a number of biographical dictionaries that give one line descriptions of many more of these ancients. This book, though, is an attempt to describe the major points about all ancient Greek personalties of which anything is known. It is a handy encyclopedia in which one can quickly find the salient features of any ancient Greek personality. Each article in this book has the following order: The personality's name is stated. This is followed by his birth and death years or whatever of these can be approximated. The first sentence of the text gives the areas in which the personality was active. Then there is a description of whatever is known about the character and life of the personality. The article concludes with the material or intellectual accomplishments of the personality.