Information AboutSuda |
|
Little is known of the compilation of this work, except that it must have been before Eustathius ( 12th Century , who frequently quotes it. Under the heading " Adam " the author of the lexicon (which a prefatory note states to be "by Suidas") gives a brief Chronology of the world, ending with the death of the emperor John Zimisces ( 975 ), and under Constantinople his successors Basil II and Constantine VIII are mentioned. It would thus appear that the Suda was compiled in the latter part of the 10th Century . Passages referring to Michael Psellus (end of the 11th Century ) are considered later interpolations. The lexicon is arranged alphabetically with some slight deviations, letters and combinations of letters having the same sound being placed together. It thus partakes of the nature of both a Dictionary and an encyclopaedia. It includes numerous quotations from ancient writers; the Scholiast s on Aristophanes , Homer , Sophocles and Thucydides are also much used. The biographical notices, the author tells us, are condensed from the ''Onomatologion'' or ''Pinax'' of Hesychius Of Miletus ; other sources were the excerpts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus , the chronicle of Georgius Monachus , the biographies of Diogenes Laërtius and the works of Athenaeus and Philostratus . The work deals with Biblical as well as Pagan subjects, from which it is inferred that the writer was a Christian . A prefatory note gives a list of dictionaries from which the lexical portion was compiled, together with the names of their authors. Although the work is uncritical and probably much interpolated, and the value of the articles is very unequal, it contains much information on ancient history and life. The Suda was critically edited by the Danish scholar Ada Adler (Leipzig, 1928 - 1938 ). Most of the Suda was lost during the Crusader sacking of Constantinople and the Ottoman pillage of the city in 1453 . Suidas's lexicon is somewhere between a grammatical dictionary and an encyclopedia in the modern sense. He explains the source, derivation, and meaning of words according to the (Georgios Monachos) for the Byzantine age. The lexicon is arranged, not quite alphabetically, but according to a system (formerly common in many languages) called Antistoichia ; namely the letters follow phonetically, in order of sound (of course in the pronunciation of Suidas's time, which is the same as modern Greek). So for instance alpha-iota comes after epsilon; epsilon-iota, eta-iota come together after zeta, omega after omicron, and so on. The system is not difficult to learn and remember, but in some modern editions (Bekker) the work is rearranged alphabetically. External link
|