Stephanos' work, originally written in
Greek, takes the form of an alphabetical
dictionary or
encyclopedia of geographical
toponymns,
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, the
Ethnica is of enormous value for geographical,
mythological, and
religious information about
ancient 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 cites
Artemidorus,
Polybius,
Aelius Herodianus,
Herodotus,
Thucydides,
Xenophon,
Strabo and other writers. He is the only writer to cite a lost work attributed to
Sophaenetus. The chief fragments remaining of the original work are preserved by
Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos in
De Administrando Imperio, ch. 23 (the article ''
) and De thematibus
, ii. 10 (an account of Sicily); the latter includes a passage from the comic poet Alexis on the Seven Largest Islands
. Another respectable fragment, from the article Δύμη
to the end of Δ'', exists in a manuscript of the
Fonds Coislin, the library formed by
Pierre Séguier. The first modern printed edition of the work was published by the
Aldine Press in Venice in 1502. The complete standard edition is still that of
August 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. == Editions ==