Suda - Wikipedia Suda From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia For other uses, see Suda (disambiguation) and Souda (disambiguation). First page of an early printed edition of the Suda The Suda or Souda (/ˈsuːdə/; Medieval Greek: Σοῦδα, romanized: Soûda; Latin: Suidae Lexicon)[1] is a large 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soudas (Σούδας) or Souidas (Σουίδας). It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers. The derivation is probably[2] from the Byzantine Greek word souda, meaning "fortress" or "stronghold", with the alternate name, Suidas, stemming from an error made by Eustathius, who mistook the title for the author's name. Contents 1 Content and sources 1.1 Biographical notices 1.2 Lost scholia 2 Organization 3 Background 4 Editions 5 References 6 External links Content and sources[edit] pecus est Suidas, sed pecus aurei velleris [Suidas is cattle, but cattle with a golden fleece] — Lipsius The Suda is somewhere between a grammatical dictionary and an encyclopedia in the modern sense. It explains the source, derivation, and meaning of words according to the philology of its period, using such earlier authorities as Harpocration and Helladios.[3][4] It is a rich source of ancient and Byzantine history and life, although not every article is of equal quality, and it is an "uncritical" compilation.[3] Much of the work is probably interpolated,[3] and passages that refer to Michael Psellos (c. 1017–78) are deemed interpolations which were added in later copies.[3] Biographical notices[edit] This lexicon contains numerous biographical notices on political, ecclesiastical, and literary figures of the Byzantine Empire to the tenth century, those biographical entries being condensations from the works of Hesychius of Miletus, as the author himself avers. Other sources were the encyclopedia of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (912–59) for the figures in ancient history, excerpts of John of Antioch (seventh century) for Roman history, the chronicle of Hamartolus (Georgios Monachos, 9th century) for the Byzantine age.[4][3][6] The biographies of Diogenes Laërtius, and the works of Athenaeus and Philostratus. Other principal sources include a lexicon by "Eudemus," perhaps derived from the work On Rhetorical Language by Eudemus of Argos.[7] Lost scholia[edit] The lexicon copiously draws from scholia to the classics (Homer, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Sophocles, etc.), and for later writers, Polybius, Josephus, the Chronicon Paschale, George Syncellus, George Hamartolus, and so on.[3][4] The Suda quotes or paraphrases these sources at length. Since many of the originals are lost, The Suda serves an invaluable repository of literary history, and this preservation of the "literary history" is more vital than the lexicographical compilation itself, by some estimation.[4] Organization[edit] The lexicon is arranged alphabetically with some slight deviations from common vowel order and place in the Greek alphabet[3] (including at each case the homophonous digraphs, e.g. αι, ει, οι, that had been previously, earlier in the history of Greek, distinct diphthongs or vowels) according to a system (formerly common in many languages) called antistoichia (ἀντιστοιχία); namely the letters follow phonetically in order of sound, in the pronunciation of the tenth century which is similar to that of Modern Greek. The order is: α, β, γ, δ, αι, ε, ζ, ει, η, ι, θ, κ, λ, μ, ν, ξ, ο, ω, π, ρ, σ, τ, οι, υ, φ, χ, ψ[8] In addition, double letters are treated as single for the purposes of collation (as gemination had ceased to be distinctive). The system is not difficult to learn and remember, but some editors—for example, Immanuel Bekker – rearranged the Suda alphabetically. Background[edit] Little is known about the author, named "Suidas" in its prefatory note.[3] He probably lived in the second half of the 10th century, because the death of emperor John I Tzimiskes and his succession by Basil II and Constantine VIII are mentioned in the entry under "Adam" which is appended with a brief chronology of the world.[3] At any rate, the work must have appeared by before the 12th century, since it is frequently quoted from and alluded to by Eustathius who lived from about 1115 AD to about 1195 or 1196.[3] The work deals with biblical as well as pagan subjects, from which it is inferred that the writer was a Christian.[3] The standard printed edition was compiled by Danish classical scholar Ada Adler in the first half of the twentieth century. A modern translation, the Suda On Line, was completed on 21 July 2014.[9] The Suda has a near-contemporaneous Islamic parallel, the Kitab al-Fehrest of Ibn al-Nadim. Compare also the Latin Speculum Maius, authored in the 13th century by Vincent of Beauvais. Editions[edit] Suidas (1834). Gaisford, Thomas; Küster, Ludolf (eds.). Lexicon: post Ludolphum Kusterum ad codices manuscriptos. A - Theta. 1. Typographeo Academico. volume 2 (K - Psi), volume 3 (Rerum et nominum, Glossarum, Scriptorum) Adler, Ada (1928-38) Suidae Lexicon. Reprinted 1967-71, Stuttgart. References[edit] Citations ^ Gaisford Thomas; Küster, Ludolf, edd., (1834), Suidae Lexicon, 3 vols. ^ Bertrand Hemmerdinger, "Suidas, et non la Souda," Bollettino dei classici, 3rd ser. 19 (1998), pp. 31f., defends the name Suidas (Σουΐδας), arguing that the form Σουΐδα/Σοῦδα is a Doric genitive. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Chisholm (1911). ^ a b c d Herbermann (1913). ^ Krumbacher, Karl (1897), Byzantinische Literatur, p. 566, cited by Herbermann (1913) ^ Karl Krumbacher concluded the two main biographical sources were "Constantine VII for ancient history, Hamartolus (Georgios Monarchos) for the Byzantine age".[5] ^ Krumbacher, Karl, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur, pp. 268f. ^ Gaisford, Thomas, ed., (1853) (Suidae lexicon: Graecè et Latinè, Volume 1, Part 1, page XXXIX (in Greek and Latin) ^ "The History of the Suda On Line". stoa.org. Retrieved 10 July 2015. A translation of the last of the Suda’s 31000+ entries was submitted to the database on July 21, 2014 and vetted the next day. Bibliography Abrantes, Miguel Carvalho (2021), Greek Myths in the Suda. KDP.   Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Sūïdas". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. Dickey, Eleanor. Ancient Greek Scholarship: a guide to finding, reading, and understanding scholia, commentaries, lexica, and grammatical treatises, from their beginnings to the Byzantine period. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 9780195312935.   Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Suidas". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Mahoney, Anne. "Tachypaedia Byzantina: The Suda On Line as Collaborative Encyclopedia," Digital Humanities Quarterly 3.1 (2009). External links[edit] Index of the Suda on line Suda On Line. An on-line edition of the Ada Adler edition with ongoing translations and commentary by registered editors. Suda lexicon at the Online Books Page Suda Lexicon in three volumes, Cambridge, 1705; Greek text and Latin translation originally from the private collection of John Adams at the Internet Archive: Vol 1 Vol 2 Vol 3 Authority control General Integrated Authority File VIAF 1 WorldCat (via VIAF) National libraries France (data) United States Other SUDOC (France) 1 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Suda&oldid=1025265748" Categories: 10th-century books 10th century in the Byzantine Empire Byzantine Greek encyclopedias Hidden categories: Articles containing Medieval Greek-language text Articles with short description Short description is different from Wikidata Articles containing Latin-language text Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica Articles incorporating a citation from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia with Wikisource reference Articles incorporating text from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia with Wikisource reference Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Languages Afrikaans العربية Български Brezhoneg Català Čeština Dansk Deutsch Ελληνικά Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Galego 한국어 Հայերեն Bahasa Indonesia Italiano עברית ქართული Latina Latviešu Magyar Nederlands नेपाल भाषा 日本語 Norsk bokmål Occitan Polski Português Română Русский Simple English Slovenčina Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska Türkçe Українська West-Vlams 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 26 May 2021, at 16:55 (UTC). 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