This aim of this work is to provide part of the basis for the study of a widely misunderstood people of Ancient Greece, the Aitolians. It is the people of any society who are its constituents, and only when we know who they were and what they did can that society be properly investigated.
By accumulating a list of all known Aitolians, their origins, parentage, their place in the society, and any other details discoverable, it is possible to reconstitute Aitolian families, and to study various sections and aspects of their society.
The prosopography and the studies based on it form part of the essential background for the author's history of The League of the Aitolians (published by Brill earlier in 1999), and they also form a contribution to the study of the society which was Ancient Greece.