The first volume was published by August Pauly in 1839. Pauly died in 1845, his work unfinished; Christian Waltz and Wilhelm Teuffel completed it in 1852. This first edition comprised six volumes. A second edition was worked on from 1861 and 1866, but never finished. In 1890 Georg Wissowa started on a new and more ambitious edition. He expected to be done in 10 years, but the last of its 83 volumes did not appear until 1978, and the index volume came out in 1980.