ENCYCLORZEDIA (Gk. eytwaoratiiita, en kyklopaidein, a barbarous derivative of the Greek phrase eyrvKXes raL6Eta, (ukyklios puidcia, cir cular. complete education). Originally, the entire group of studies which every free-born Greek youth was required to complete in prepara tion for active life; the liberal curriculum. In this sense the Greek phrase was adopted by the Romans. Its signification, however, was early widened, both in Greek and Roman usage, to in clude systematic study of, or instruction in, all the branches of learning—of the entire 'circle' of the arts and sciences, or of a special group of them; and this remained its dominant mean ing until a comparatively recent time. At pres ent it survives only in the technical use of the word in systenmtie theology and philosophy to designate the investigation of the relations of the various special subjects which those disciplines include. With this idea of 'eneyclie' education was also soon associated the notion of collecting the materials of such instruction into a single work, in which the contents and relations of the various arts and sciences should systematically be expounded. Attempts to produce books of this kind were made at an early date, though the name 'encyclopidia' was not given to them until the sixteenth century. This is now its common appli ea t ion.
What has been said of the origin of the word explains also the distinguishing characteristic of the earliest encyclopedias. They were trea tises or groups of connected treatises adapted for vont inuous reading and study, and not mere rep ertories of They were designed to serve rather as all-comprehensive text-books than as works of ref-rence in the modern sense of that And their substance corresponded to their form, for they contained, for the most part. simply the more or less extensive accumula tions of learning made by their authors indi• vidually, and bore HO resemblance 10 the products of cooperative scholarship which the enterprise of the modern publisher has uncle familiar. This type of encyclopedia, with various modifications, prevailed for many centuries, and has not yet t i rely been :11):111110fied. The first. is to have been eompiled by Speusippus (died my. 339), a disciple of Plato, but of his work in this line nothing is known. the Romans, Marcus Terent Varro (died about me. 27) was the first of the euoye1op:rdists, and his Disci ptinarnm Libri I V. ( \rine Itouks of Studies) exem plifies well the above explained connection of the encyclopedia with the liberal eurrieulum. It was an mevelayedin of the liberal arts—grammar, dialect ie, diet orie, geomet ry, a rithinetip, must rology, 11111sie, medicine, and architecture in nine books, each devoted to one of these special subjects. His Antiquitates kerum Humumt•um et Divi narunz, in forty-one books, dealing with Roman antiquities, civil and religious. was of a similar character. Neither of these works has survived. The famous Historin Natu•alis of Pliny the Elder (.v.o. 23-79), the earliest of the encyclo pedic compilations of antiquity which we pos sess. approaches nearer to modern works of the kind in material, but in form does not differ es sentially from its predecessors. It is an en cyclopedia of natural science, considered espe cially with reference to human life, and, accord ingly. including geography. medicine, and the history of art. The topics treated in its thirty seven books comprise the mathematical and physical description of the world, anthropology and human physiology, zoi.ilogy, comparative anat omy and physiology, botany (including agricul ture and horticulture), medicinal zoology, and mineralogy (together with the use of the metals and of precious stones in the arts). It is a mass of facts, often ill digested, collected from a large variety of sources, and is an inexhaustible store house of information. .About four and a half centuries later _Martinmas Capella, a native of North friea—probably of Carthage—composed an encyclopedia of the seven liberal arts, which in the Middle Ages was extensively used as a text-book in the schools, and which departs even further than those above mentioned from the modern ideal. It is partly in prose and partly M verse, resembling in this the So tura Menippea of Varro and the Satyrieon of Petronius; hence the names Saturn and gatyrieon have been given to it. Saturn (satire) personified is also rep resented by the author as having inspired the work. Its theme is the marriage of Mercury with a very learned maiden' (doctissima virgo), Philologia (philology), on the advice of Apollo, and the various forms of learning (personified) are introduced in the bridegroom's train. Though once highly esteemed, it is now- notable chiefly from the fact that in it the revolution of the planets Mercury and Venus about the sun, and not about the earth, is asserted in a passage which may have suggested to Copernicus his theory of planetary motions. A work in twenty hooks ( un ished ) entitled Etym Wog /arum (Originum) Libel XV., with a similar aim, was compiled by Isidore, Bishop of Seville (about 570-630). It deals with the seven liberal arts,
medicine, animals, the earth, Old Testament antiquities, etc.. and was long deservedly held in high repute. The tenth hook, which is etymo logical in contents, is arranged alphabetically. Isido•e's encyclopedia was rearranged in twenty two books, and otInu-wise edited in the ninth een ur•. under the title ne l'nirerso Libri XXII., sire Llymologiarum Opus (also known as De :Valera Dr Origine Iecrum, etc.), by another elesiast iv, Itabanus (or McInnis ( c.776 S56), A re hbishop of Mainz. IV111e11 of Isidore's mate in] was omitted, and Italia MIS'S work as a whole shows no advance beyond that of his predecessor. From about the middle of the eleventh century dates a short eneyelopmdie work in written in the form of ques tions and answers. by Michael Conslantimis Peel los the yonliger (born 1020. died after 1105), en' it 1,(1 AtoacKaNto rarro8ar4. It treats of divinity, natural history, and various special topics. A more important. Greek work, prob ably of a somewhat earlier date (though it contains quotations from Fsellus whick may be original), is the dictionary that bears the name of Suidas, about whom nothing is known. This is a lexicon, in general alpha betically arranged; but it contains, besides defi nitions of terms, a good deal of biographical, geographical, and historical information. thus suggesting an important characteristic of the modern encyclopedia, and also foreshadowing the encyclopedic dictionary of a very recent time. It is an uncritical compilation, but is still very im portant as a source of information about the lit eratures and languages of antiquity. A number of valuable critical editions of it have been issued. But the most important of all these early encyclo pedias is the great Ilibliotheea Mundi, or Spceu lvm, Majus, or Speculum, Triples (as it is vari ously entitled in the manuscripts) of Vincent of Beauvais, a Dominican friar of the thirteenth century. It is a product of indefatigable labor and vast erudition, and sums up the learning of its time. It consists of three parts: Speculum Naturals, in thirty-two books, consisting of an account of the creation and the material world, under a great variety of topics; Speculum Doc trinelc, in seventeen books, comprising language (with a dictionary of considerable length), gram mar, logic, rhetoric, theology, physics, etc.; and Speculum Eistoriale, in thirty-one books, consist ing of a history of the world from the creation down, with a prophetic forecast of the future, which covers the end of the world (placed in A.D. 2376), the reign of Antichrist, the Last Judg ment. and the renewal of all things. To these a fourth part, Speculum, Morale, was added by an other hand. The author entitled his work Specu lum (mirror) because, as he said, it reflects everything in the visible and invisible worlds which is worthy of notice—as, indeed, it fairly does for its age. It is professedly a compilation from earlier literature, and is especially valuable for its references to authors. From this time on encyclopedic works of this ancient, discur sive and pedagogical character become more and more numerous, but only the following need be mentioned: Between 1260 and 1267 Brunetto Latini (1230-94), a native of Florence, wrote in French Li lirrcs don treso•, a summary of the various departments of philosophy, in the wide sense then assigned to the word. It con sists of three books, of which the first treats of the Creation, the history of the Old and New Testaments, primitive governments, natural sci ence, and natural history: the second of morals, consisting mainly of translations from the Ethics of Aristotle and a popular work called the Moralities of the Philosophers; and the third of instruction in rhetoric and of civil govern ment as practiced in the Italian States of that period. This third book is particularly interest ing, and the entire work is still valuable in many ways. It was printed in 1474, and several times reprinted. A critical edition of it. by a special commission, was designed by Napoleon I., but the plan was not carried out. In 1559 was pub lished the Encyclopmdia sru Orbis Diseiplinarum tune Saerarum tom. Profanarum of Paul Scalich a survey of the entire circle of science, sacred and profane. notably as the first book to which the title 'encyclopedia' was given. In 1630 appeared the Encyclopmdin Septeln Twirls fishnet of Jo hann Heinrich Alstcd (1588-1638). in seven vol uses (divided into thirty-five books), designed to be a methodical summary of all the seiences, and which, though falling far short of its aim, merited the high reputation which it long en joyed. The second volume contains lists of 'Hebrew. :Syriac, :\ rabic. Greek, and Latin words defined in Latin. Lastly, the most extraordinary example of the ancient type is La science univer sellc (160) of Juan Alapon, an encyclopedic poem designed to fill ten volumes of 20,000 lines each, but incomplete.