Version 1.1 of my Index to Roscher’s Lexicon of Mythology (https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.11113694), published on 11 August 2024, counts 15,489 entries in the main series, including a few I had previously overlooked. More importantly, this version includes results of my culling of Wikidata IDs from the German Wikipedia (see Part 1) to link each Roscher entry to the appropriate Wikidata item (and by this, to Wikipedia’s various language editions and other databases. 2,380 out of 15,489 entries are now annotated with Wikidata IDs. Now, what about the 13,109 unmatched entries?
The unsurprising answer is: To go through the Index row by row from A to Z and slowly but surely add the missing entries. This is a long-term project, and realistically one I cannot take on alone. But even progressing at a slow pace, it may prove useful.
As of the writing of this blogpost, I have increased the number of matches to 2,695. That is not much in barely over a week, but the slow pace is due to a deliberate process: I take this opportunity to check and improve Wikidata’s data on mythological entities. I add English and German descriptions, labels and basic information to each item I check, I create set indices for homonyms, I cross-check Pauly-Wissowa’s articles to assess data quality in Roscher’s Lexicon. I also create new items for mythical entities which do not yet exist but are found in either Pauly-Wissowa or Roscher.
After cross-checking the first 650 Roscher entries (Aba through Alos), I found that Pauly-Wissowa has, in many cases, superior information insofar it gives more context for the sources cited, is more complete or more discerning in their treatment of sources. This had already been noted by late 19th century reviewers, but it bears repeating.
Occasionally, Roscher also has items which Pauly-Wissowa missed or ignored. What is most apparent, though, is that Georg Wissowa (an early contributor to Roscher’s Lexicon since 1884 and editor of Pauly-Wissowa from 1891) made extensive use of Roscher’s Lexicon and had his contributors take every opportunity to improve upon it. On the other hand, it demonstrates the importance of Roscher’s Lexicon, which was in itself a substantial improvement on previous mythological encyclopedias. Without Roscher, Pauly-Wissowa would have had a hard time giving such accurate information in this subject area.
Close attention should be paid to the fact that Wissowa employed different (and in many cases, better trained) authors for mythological subjects, many of which had been students of himself or Wilamowitz. The names of Emil Aust, Erich Bethe, Ferdinand Dümmler, Jakob Escher-Bürkli, Botho Graef, Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen, Ulrich Hoefer, Max Ihm, Otto Jessen, Otto Kern, Georg Knaack, Otto Rossbach, Bruno Sauer, Eduard Thraemer, Johannes Toepffer, Karl Tümpel, Richard Wagner, Otto Waser, Georg Wentzel, and Konrad Wernicke might still be familiar today to specialists of mythology (or rather, mythography). Richard Wagner especially was a boon for Pauly-Wissowa, as he had made the tremendous find of the Vatican Epitome of Apollodorus in the 1880s, which immensely furthered our knowledge of Greek mythology. Many mythical names found only in this epitome are missing from Roscher but found in Pauly-Wissowa.
Lastly, a point on Wikidata’s mythological data. Since late July 2024 I have created 160 new data items on mythological characters (or sets of them), epithets, patronymics, deities and so on. These largely concern mythical personnel missing from the supposedly all-encompassing Wikipediasphere. Most of the missing characters are mentioned only once in Greek or Latin literature, most of them in Vergil’s Aeneid, Ps.-Hyginus’ Fabulae, Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica or Nonnus’ Dionysiaca. While I regard these names as “mythological characters” for the purposes of my project, one could argue that they are ad hoc inventions of the poets and thus literary, and not mythical, characters. The distinction may seem arbitrary, but it really points to the heart of the question of what is to be regarded as mythos, and what as poíesis.