Kwan Ting Chan wrote:
p.s. Still trying to work out which work the 1849 was referring to.
That one was William Smith's [[Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology]], which accounts for 500+ of our biographies of figures from classical antiquity (and most of that only in the 'A's!), many of them unedited. The original articles are a good summary of consensus opinion at the time, but a lot has been revised since then, sometimes pretty radically---perhaps surprising given that the people were already dead nearly 2000 years, but there have been discoveries of new manuscripts are archaeological sites, new readings and cross-referencing of existing manuscripts, changing opinion on authenticity and dating, etc. Most of this is relatively harmless, but it does result in us repeating a number of traditional histories that are now considered incorrect, not to mention placing people in the wrong century or location.
-Mark