Jacoby Online
User Guide“Jacoby Online is an incredible resource, invaluable not only for ancient historians, but also forresearchers working in all areas of antiquity. It is a testament to Jacoby’s enduring brilliance that hismagnum opus continues to inspire so much good work in so many scholars across the world.”- Matt Simonton, Society for Classical Studies, December 2017

User Guide - Jacoby Online

Brill’s Jacoby Online is one of the most authoritative resources for the study of ancient Greek
historians whose work is preserved incompletely, i.e. in fragments. It is an indispensable tool for
scholars in classical studies, philologists and ancient historians.
Jacoby Online consists of five sections, all related to the original Die Fragmente der GriechischenHistoriker (FGrH I-III) by Felix Jacoby (1876–1959). By the time of his death, Jacoby had covered
856 historians in fifteen print volumes and three different areas: (I) genealogy and mythography,(II) history, and (III) local history and ethnography. The original work is included in Jacoby Online
as Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker Part I-III.

user guide1Work resumed in the 1990’s on two remaining areas that were scheduled but never finished by
Jacoby: (IV) biography and antiquarian literature and (V) historical geography. These remaining
areas are a work in progress and are published by Brill as separate sections: Die Fragmente derGriechischen Historiker IV (currently about 20% published) and Die Fragmente der GriechischenHistoriker V (expected to be complete in 2019). Both sections are published in print as well.

jacoby online

A new online edition of the original Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker (I-III) wasannounced in 2005, with updated Greek texts, facing English translations, biographical essays, aswell as new commentaries on the last 248 historians not included by Jacoby in FGrH I-III.
This section is published as Brill’s New Jacoby (BNJ, expected to be complete in 2019). Finally, there
is also a Brill’s New Jacoby Second Edition (BNJ2), started in 2016 and scheduled to be complete in2026. BNJ2 contains an apparatus criticus, a discussion of the provenance of each fragment whererelevant, further revised commentaries and updated bibliographies.
Brill’s Jacoby online thus consists of the following five sections:- Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker Part I-III- Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker Part IV- Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker Part V- Brill’s New Jacoby- Brill’s New Jacoby Second Edition

User Guide - Jacoby Online

Jacoby Online Help
This help file explains to the user of Brill’s Jacoby Online the various methods of navigating andsearching the work, as well as the specific structure of the entries and the metadata.

Navigating Brill’s Jacoby Online
The homepage of Jacoby Online contains links to the five sections mentioned above.

user guide2jacoby online

User Guide - Jacoby Online

It also contains a search bar at the top of the page to search within the entire Jacoby Online.
Here you can search for a Jacoby name, number or specific term:

Clicking on one of the links in the overview (for example: Brill’s New Jacoby) will take you tothe homepage of that specific section of Jacoby Online. At the top of each part’s homepage, there
is another search bar where you can search for a Jacoby name or number or specific term.
It performs a full text search for any sequence in Latin or (unaccented) Greek script.

user guide

Below the introductory text is a menu with four tabs:

3

Here is what they contain:jacoby online

Historians
Prelims
Historians by number
Historians by publication year

An alphabetical overview of all entries in this Jacoby section
Notes for the reader, a list of subjects covered and the Jacoby
Online Help instructions
Overview of all historians by Jacoby number
Overview of historians covered by Jacoby Online in order ofpublication year

User Guide - Jacoby Online

In Brill’s New Jacoby, if we look at the entry for Myrsilos of Methymna (477), we are taken to theentry text:

user guide4

When the text fragment contains a mention of a name (and/or work) or a biographical item, itis called a Testimonium. These testimonies are numbered T1 etcetera. When the text fragment
contains an actual citation or a summary, it is called a Fragment, numbered F1 etcetera. In theTable of Contents, the testimonies are listed first, then the fragments.

jacoby online

Author and publication date are mentioned right below the entry name and number. To theright, there is a Table of Contents where the different fragments are listed with their sources.

User Guide - Jacoby Online

Metadata
Under the Article Table of Contents, on the left, are the metadata belonging to the historian.

user guide5
jacoby online

Here is what the metadata fields contain:
Historian:
Number:Attested works:
Historian’s date:
Historical focus:
Place of origin:

Contains the name of the author (or the anonymous text) who is the subject ofthe entry
The Jacoby number
Contains a list of lost works attributed to the entry author in our various
sources, with a link to the particular fragments where the titles are named.
Date of the author (or text)
Contains the Jacoby volume (I-V), section (A-F) and number to which this entry
belongs (in this case volume III, section B).
Origin of the author or text (in this case Methymna).

User Guide - Jacoby Online

Below this general metadata section, the testimonies and fragments themselves start.
Every testimony and fragment has a (red) header containing the entry volume and number, thetype of fragment (T or F) and the fragment number, in this case BNJ 477 T 1.
Headers for entries in Jacoby part IV and V start with FGrHist.
Every fragment has its own set of metadata fields:
Source of the fragment:
Work mentioned:

Textual base:Below the metadata, in two columns, are the original text and translation of the fragment,
followed by a section with Commentary. Sometimes the commentary will be collected below all
the fragments. All words in blue are indexed names of persons, works, geographical places, andsubjects. Clicking on these starts a search for the particular term in the Jacoby volume.

6
jacoby online

Original text and translation

user guide

Source date:
Language:
Subject:

Author, title and place (in this case a lemma in the Suda
encyclopedia), sometimes with additional information, e.g. on theedition used (Adler, in this case)
Titles of any lost work(s) by the entry author mentioned in thisfragment (these same titles are also listed together under Attested
works in the section About this Historian)
Date of the fragment
Language of the fragment
Subject description based on one or more Library of Congress
Subject Headings
Information about the text edition on which the printed text
is based.
Often the author of the entry will have adjusted the text, in whichcase his or her name will be listed. In this case it says Jacoby because
this text was taken from the first FGrHist edition by Felix Jacobyhimself

User Guide - Jacoby Online

Biographical Essay and Bibliography
At the bottom of the entry is a Biographical Essay about the entry author (sometimes this will beat the beginning, depending on the author, in which case it is called Introduction).
Below that is a select Bibliography (sometimes preceded by a list of text editions for the different
authors quoted) and the list of footnotes. Right at the bottom of the page, under the author name,is the name and the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for this Jacoby entry, to be used in citations.

Abbreviations
user guide

7

Jacoby Online uses abbreviations for text editions, reference works, journals, etc. These arestandard and can be found, for instance, in the abbreviations list of Brill’s New Pauly.

Questions?

jacoby online

Please feel free to contact us whenever questions arise while using Jacoby Online.
Sales-nl@brill.com (if you are based in Europe, the Middle East , Africa or Asia Pacific)
Sales-us@brill.com (if you are based in North America, Canada or Latin America).
For editorial questions contact
Mirjam Elbers at elbers@brill.com