Final Update in November 2024 with 522.498 new words added.
Editor in Chief: Ian Worthington, "Brill's New Jacoby Online"

We are pleased to feature insights from Professor Ian Worthington, a distinguished scholar in Greek history and oratory. With an extensive body of work, including nine sole-authored books and over 100 articles, Professor Worthington is a leading authority on ancient Greek historiography and rhetoric. Currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of Brill’s New Jacoby, a landmark project that publishes the fragments and critical commentaries of ancient Greek historians, he shares his reflections on the completion of this monumental endeavor and its significance for classical studies.
 

The November update marks the conclusion of Brill’s New Jacoby Online with the publication of "665 Anonymous, On Egypt." How does it feel to reach this milestone after nearly two decades of work?

Ian Worthington: Over two decades actually, as BNJ began in November 2003! I feel an immense sense of pride at overseeing such an important and essential contribution to scholarship on all aspects of antiquity as well as a deep sense of gratitude to Brill for taking on the project and everyone there over the years who has worked with me and supported me, as well as obviously owing a debt of gratitude to the nearly 200 scholars worldwide who prepared entries and recognized its scholarly importance. I thought I would also have a great sense of relief, but not so much as BNJ 2 is underway and will not be completed for several more years, so my time with Jacoby’s fragments is far from over!
 

Could you reflect on the journey of Brill’s New Jacoby from its inception to this final update? What have been some of the most significant moments in the project’s development?

Ian Worthington: It all started early in 2003 when the then Classics editor at Brill, Michiel Klein Swormink, pitched the idea of a new edition of Jacoby’s FGrH I-III to me, and I naively agreed without realizing this would be part of my life for decades! He wanted a formal proposal, which I submitted on 17 November 2003 (I still have it). Our daughter was born on 7 November 2003, so I call BNJ my second daughter as she and it grew up together, though I’d better not say which caused me the most trouble! 

There have been many significant moments – when Brill formally committed to BNJ, when I approached scholars to prepare entries, when the first entries arrived, and of course when the first batch of entries was published. I think this last one, the first publication, was probably the most significant for me as the project finally seemed real. Then over the years as more entries were published the true scholarly value of BNJ became apparent and that was quite a humbling moment. 
 

The completion of Brill’s New Jacoby Online is a monumental scholarly achievement. What do you think are the most important contributions this project has made to the study of ancient Greek historiography?

Ian Worthington: I think BNJ goes far beyond Greek historiography and impacts anyone doing any research on antiquity. I hesitate to use the term ‘historians’ for the fragmentary authors in the collection because many are not historians but writers in other genres. They span all periods from ancient Egypt and the Near East times to late antiquity and a whole range of subjects, such as histories of cities and states, ethnography, biography, genealogy, mythology, science, social, economic, and cultural life, the list goes on. Jacoby’s collection of 856 authors began to appear in the 1920s. It was out of date and he died before writing commentaries on the last 248, therefore the Greek texts needed updating in the light of new ones over the decades and new authors included who were unknown to Jacoby or excluded by him. All this has now been done so BNJ (and BNJ 2) presents the latest texts of the ancient authors, an apparatus criticus, up-to-date critical commentaries, and detailed biographical treatments of the authors, making it the ‚go to‘ resource. Indeed, many entries because of their length (some are 1000-2000 words) have become standard works as if they were published as stand-alone books.

How do you envision scholars engaging with Brill’s New Jacoby Online now that it is complete? Are there any particular research avenues or debates that you expect the completed project to inspire? 

Ian Worthington: BNJ is produced in tandem with two other sets of ancient authors dealing with different topics on which Jacoby was working: FGrH IV under the masterful editorship of Stefan Schorn and Part V under Hans-Joachim Gehrke and Felix Maier. All three projects are now married to become the massively global Jacoby Online . I think the implications of the collections we have and what they are revealing about how the ancients approached history, how they used it for their own means, and how they perceived and understood topics, reveal new takes on ancient historiography and thus how we use our ancient evidence.
 

The inclusion of new historians and fragments previously unknown or excluded by Felix Jacoby has expanded the scope of the project considerably. How have these additions reshaped the landscape of ancient Greek historiography, and what implications do they hold for current research?

Ian Worthington: Anything that is discovered shapes any landscape of course, which makes the emergence of new things especially exciting. New fragments, for example, have added to our existing knowledge – the new palimpsest of Arrian’s ta meta Alexandron (156), for example, enhances our knowledge of the tangled period following Alexander the Great’s death. Likewise, the orator Demades of Athens (227) had only a one-line entry in Jacoby’s collection whereas in BNJ with the addition of many testimonia and many fragments, he boasts 206,791 words, giving us a new understanding of his career, works, and importance. 
 

The collaborative nature of Brill’s New Jacoby involved a global network of scholars. How did this extensive international collaboration shape the project, and what innovations emerged from it?

Ian Worthington: I think BNJ may have had the largest team ever assembled on a project, and BNJ 2 is no different – 182 scholars in 19 countries – something that would never have worked without email and Zoom! Being able to approach eminent scholars in their fields led to their input into what they wanted to do with the ancient authors they took on and at times led us in different directions. Particularly rewarding was that as the network grew I was told of younger scholars who worked on Author X or Author Y who I would not have known about. As we know, the younger generation often has new and provocative ideas so it was a boon to bring them on board and see entries that were different from what Jacoby had done or what I had envisaged. Hence we have an excellent combination of up-and-coming scholars and household names. 

It was also rewarding for me to play a role in the advancement of ECRs in their tenure and promotion applications (at least in the UK, Europe, and USA) in which publishing in BNJ played no small role. (The same applies to senior scholars: one such person at a UK university told me said person’s department got a 5-star ranking in a recent REF helped by said person’s BNJ publications!)
 

Looking back on your time as Editor-in-Chief of Brill’s New Jacoby, what has been the most rewarding aspect of overseeing this project? What do you see as its lasting legacy within the field of classical studies?

Ian Worthington: That’s easy: the people I’ve encountered and worked with, from authors of entries to referees (all entries are refereed) to my fellow FGrH IV and V editors, to the project management team and editors, especially Mirjam Elbers, at Brill, and since 2017, my own department at Macquarie University, whose national and international standing is enhanced by being home to BNJ. Apart from a couple of people in the past 21 years everyone I’ve dealt with has been wonderfully supportive, invested, friendly, enthusiastic, and above all recognizes and understands scholarship. 

I should also do a shout-out to Brill as a publishing house that is not a slave to word counts but interested only in scholarly excellence. Some entries are enormous and could easily be stand-alone books, e.g. Ephorus 70 at 182,629 words; Posidonios 87 at 208,420 words; Theopompus 115 at 181,667 words; Demades 227 at 206,791 words; and our final entry to be published and thus complete BNJ (Anhang 665) at 232,656 words. The entire BNJ totals nearly nine million words and BNJ 2 currently sits at close to six million How many publishers would publish actual books of such lengths? 

As for legacy, ask me in 5-6 years when BNJ 2 is complete!