TheEastern Roman Empire during Stephanus' lifetime, with Justinian's conquests in green
Nothing is known about the life of Stephanus, except that he was aGreek grammarian[1] who was active inConstantinople, and lived after the time ofArcadius andHonorius, and before that ofJustinian II. Later writers provide no information about him, but they do note that the work was later reduced to anepitome by a certain Hermolaus, who dedicated his epitome to Justinian; whether the first or second emperor of that name is meant is disputed, but it seems probable that Stephanus flourished inByzantium in the earlier part of the sixth century AD, underJustinian I.[2]
Stephanos' work, originally written inGreek, takes the form of an alphabeticaldictionary orencyclopedia of geographicaltoponymns,ethnonymns etc. It is a vast work, with sometimes hundreds of list entries under each letter of the greek alphabet:Α–Ω.
Even as an epitome, theEthnica is of enormous value for geographical,mythological, andreligious information aboutancient Greece. Nearly every article in the epitome contains a reference to some ancient writer, as an authority for the name of the place. From the surviving fragments, we see that the original contained considerable quotations from ancient authors, besides many interesting particulars, topographical, historical, mythological, and others. Stephanus citesArtemidorus,Polybius,Aelius Herodianus,Herodotus,Thucydides,Xenophon,Strabo and other writers.[27] He is the only writer to cite a lost work attributed toSophaenetus.[28]
The chief fragments remaining of the original work are preserved byConstantine VII Porphyrogennetos inDe Administrando Imperio, ch. 23 (the articleΊβηρίαι δύο) andDe thematibus, ii. 10 (an account ofSicily); the latter includes a passage from the comic poetAlexis on theSeven Largest Islands. Another respectable fragment, from the articleΔύμη to the end ofΔ, exists in a manuscript of theFonds Coislin, the library formed byPierre Séguier.[29]
The first modern printed edition of the work was published by theAldine Press in Venice in 1502. The complete standard edition is still that ofAugust Meineke (1849, reprinted at Graz, 1958), and by convention, references to the text use Meineke's page numbers. A new completely revised edition in German, edited by B. Wyss, C. Zubler, M. Billerbeck, J.F. Gaertner, was published between 2006 and 2017, with a total of 5 volumes.[30]
Guilielmus Xylander, 1568,Στέφανος. Περὶ πόλεων =Stephanus. De urbibus (Basel).
Thomas de Pinedo, 1678,Στέφανος. Περὶ πόλεων =Stephanus. De urbibus (Amsterdam). Contains parallel Latin translation.Google Books
Claudius Salmasius (Claude Saumaise) and Abraham van Berkel, 1688,Στεφάνου Βυζαντίου Ἐθνικὰ κατ' ἐπιτομήν Περὶ πόλεων =Stephani Byzantini Gentilia per epitomen, antehac De urbibus inscripta (Leiden). Contains parallel Latin translation.Google Books
Thomas de Pinedo, 1725,Stephanus de urbibus (Amsterdam).Google Books
Karl Wilhelm Dindorf, 1825,Stephanus Byzantinus. Opera, 4 vols, (Leipzig). Incorporating notes by L. Holsteinius, A. Berkelius, and T. de Pinedo.Google Books
Jeff Hill's footnote: spellings in -NYMN (for instance, TOPONYMN, ETHNONYMN) throughout this Wikipedia article, are very probably misspellings (that is, of TOPONYM, ETHNONYM, and so on) -- jeffjeff dot hillhill at gmail dot com.]
Diller, Aubrey 1938, "The tradition of Stephanus Byzantius",Transactions of the American Philological Association 69: 333–48.
E.H. Bunbury, 1883,History of Ancient Geography (London), vol. i. 102, 135, 169; ii. 669–71.
Holstenius, L., 1684 (posth.),Lucae Holstenii Notae et castigationes postumae in Stephani Byzantii Ethnika, quae vulgo Peri poleōn inscribuntur (Leiden).
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Stephanus Byzantinus".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 880.