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Some 1,000 Greek place-names are listed, defined, and located. Includes rivers, towns, mountains, regions, seas, islands, and other topographical features. Each is briefly described first for purposes of setting; then follows an account of its founding, lineage of the ruling houses, associated heroic events, migrations, festivals, and principal deities. Existing ruins associated with myth are described, while a guide to personae enables any mythological "being" to be traced through the main body of the work to all places with which that figure was identified. Annotation(c) 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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CHOICE Review

Bell's dictionary of place-names has been published as a companion to his Dictionary of Classical Mythology: Symbols, Attributes, and Associations (CH, Dec '82). In the introduction, the author states the book's purpose as "the enhancement of mythological interest by putting the hundreds of small and large legends and cycles into geographical context." Coverage is limited to "the political boundaries of modern Greece," an arbitrary decision taken by the author to prevent the book from becoming "unwieldy." Ancient names are listed in their Latin spellings with the modern name, when the location is known, in parentheses. The roughly 1,000 entries provide detailed accounts of mythological events concerned with specific locales; and as a result, there is some repetition in the case of stories that unfolded in more than one place. Specific references to standard sources, such as Pausanias and Apollodorus, are cited. To assist the reader, the author has provided a listing of "Modern place-names associated with ancient locations," and a "Guide to personae" containing the names of mythological figures and the locales with which they are connected. The convenience of the latter is lessened in the case of long entries, e.g., Athens (18 pages), Thebes (10), Argos (8), and Sparta (6). These and other entries might have been trimmed, since the author frequently gives information on monuments that have no direct connection with Greek mythology. A serious weakness is the lack of any map in the volume. In his brief bibliography, the author lists cartographic resources, but far more helpful would have been a series of maps, keyed to the entries, showing the sites whose location is known. Public and scholastic libraries, high school through upper-division undergraduate level. -J. H. Kaimowitz, Trinity College (CT)