Nowe Ateny

Nowe Ateny (New Athens) is the abbreviated title of the first Polish-language encyclopedia, authored by the 18th-century Polish priest Benedykt Joachim Chmielowski.

The first part of the full title was: New Athens or the Academy full of all science, divided into subjects and classes, for the wise ones to record, for the idiots to learn, for the politicians to practice, for the melancholics to entertain issued... [note 1] The book uses the Polish language as the main text, and primarily Latin for the in-line references.

Almost every sentence in the book is in-line referenced, frequently in Latin, a lingua franca in Poland among the educated classes as in most of 18th century Central and Western Europe.

Judging from the inclusion of numerous stories, anecdotes, and descriptions of strange phenomena and exotic countries (like China and Japan), the encyclopedia was directed towards a rather popular audience and aimed to arouse readers' curiosity and desire for learning.

Nowe Ateny is the source of a few memorable and amusing "definitions", often quoted in Poland to this day: The humor was probably unintentional by the author.