Summary

Souda (from Ancient Greek: Σοῦδα

The Souda is a dictionary that provides definitions of rare ancient Greek words and complex grammatical forms. It is also an encyclopedia of people, places and institutions. The sources it uses are often biblical or ancient, and it provides little information on the Byzantine era. Ignored in the Middle Ages, the work was produced in the Byzantine Empire. It was first published in Europe in 1499, in Milan, as the Lexicon græcum.

This massive work, with a million and a half words, includes 31,342 entries covering historical, biographical and lexicographical data. Entries are arranged according to both an alphabetical and phonetic system: diphthongs are listed after single vowels. Thus αι

It's a compilation of compilations, using biographies, bibliographies and other information on pagan and Christian writers, most of which have disappeared: the scholies on Aristophanes, Sophocles and Thucydides have been very useful. Biographical notes often come, by the author's own admission, from the Onomatologion or Pinax of Hesychius of Miletus (6th century). Other extensively used sources include the Excerpta of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the Chronicle of George the Monk, the biographies of Diogenes Laërce, and the works of Athenaeus and Philostratus.

Single author or collective work

For some, Suidas - or Souidas - is a late ninth-century compiler known only by the work of the Souda, which would therefore have virtually the same name as him: Souda, Suidas, Suida, as we would say today the "Bayle", the "du Cange", the "Larousse" or the "Littré". An erroneous preface note, an erudite conjecture by Eustathius of Thessalonica, has long led to the belief that the Souda was the work of a single author called Souidas. Ange Politien, a Florentine scholar of the late 15th century, considered this name to be merely hypothetical. Politien's opinion is supported by the fact that no one can say in which country Suidas lived, or even when, and that the work is written in several styles.

If Souidas did exist, he is considered to be a Greek lexicographer of the late 9th century. This scholar is said to have written a first draft that was modified and expanded by successive copyists.

For others, it is a compilation by a group of scholars, corrected and expanded by successive copyists up to the time of its first printing.

Dates

When it was rediscovered in Renaissance Italy, dates ranging from the reign of Augustus to the 14th century were evoked. Uncertainty about the date of its composition persisted into the 19th century: "it is believed to have flourished during the reign of the Byzantine emperor, Alexis I Comnenus".

The work is now dated to the end of the 10th century. The approximate date of the work's composition can be deduced from its contents: under the article "Adam", the lexicon's author gives a brief chronology of world history, ending with the death of Emperor John I Tzimiskès (976), while the article "Constantinople" mentions his successors Basil II and Constantine VIII: the question is whether this is not a later interpolation than the original text.

Before its official rediscovery in the Renaissance, however, the work had circulated in medieval England, as Robert Grossetête (1175-1253) translated substantial passages in a notebook for his personal use.

Origin of the name

There are several possible etymologies for the name Suidas or Souda. In 1998, Bertrand Hemmerdinger considered Suidas to be the name of the creator or editorial director of the lexicon's group of compilers.

Another interpretation explains the title as an acronym formed from the letters of Sunagogè onomastikès ulès di alphabeton, "gathering of onomastic material according to the alphabet", or "according to different men", which could also mean "alphabetical lexicon or biographical lexicon" or with diaphorôn andrôn: "classification according to different historians or different authors".

Finally, Byzantine Greek also refers to "fortress", and Latin to guida and sudarium ("shroud") via late Greek soudarion.

Reviews and comments

This compilation of compilations is something of an inextricable jumble: a dictionary of words intertwines with a dictionary of things; articles on the interpretation of words alternate with articles on the lives of illustrious figures; it can even become disconcerting when an article on Aristotle is followed by an article against Aristotle, as if they were different characters. On the other hand, it can become very interesting as biographical notes and quotations are added.

The facts it relates are not always accurate, but works on Greek antiquity very often cite this source. It was a very popular work and, for this reason, many manuscripts or extracts have been preserved. Later authors such as Eustathius of Thessalonica, John Zonaras, Constantine Lascaris and Maximus the Greek also made extensive use of it.

If the author has simply copied the compilation of scholars of his time, he has done so without criticism or personal judgment. If successive copyists have added error upon error in duplicating this handwritten work, this compilation contains a vast number of facts, details and quotations from authors that are found nowhere else and would have been lost forever if such a work had not existed. Erasmus frequently quoted and commented on the Souda in his Adages (1508-1536).

After Küster, many scholars set about restoring or explaining passages from the Soudas. Jakob Gronovius, a famous, excessive and quarrelsome scholar, argued with Küster about this work.

Several Hellenists have extracted and commented on various passages: Étienne Bergler, Lambert Bos, Theodore Hase, professor of theology in Bremen; in Michaud, Louis Valkenaer is also quoted.

The Recueil de l'ancienne Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres has collected corrections to the Souda made by Abbé Sellier and Baron de Sainte-Croix.

J.L. Schultze published Specimen observationum miscellanearum in Suidam, cum prolusione critica de glossarii a Suida denominati indole et pretio, Halle, 1761, in-4°.

John Toup's Corrections sur la Suidas (Emendationes in Suidam), London, 1760, 1764, 1775, 3 vols. in-8°, made him well known to scholars.

Chardon de la Rochette, after clarifying some of Suidas's articles in the Magasin encyclopédique (1812), published them in his Mélanges de critique, t. 1, p. 92.

Jean Chrétien Gottlieb Ernesti has extracted from the lexicons of Suidas and Favorinus all the passages relating to ancient cults, and published them with notes, under the title Glossae sacrae.

The Leiden public library holds an etymological lexicon attributed by Gronove to Suidas, which successively belonged to Henri Estienne, Goldast and Vessies.

Sources

1. Suda
2. Souda
3. a et b Gallica
4. a b et c Blair 2010, p. 24.
5. Dictionnaire historique de Feller
6. Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne
7. ^ Unii autori trimit redactarea lucrării la sfârșitul secolului al IX-lea.
8. ^ a b Stelian Brezeanu, O istorie a Bizanțului, Editura Meronia, București, 2005, p.188
9. ^ Gaisford Thomas, ed., (1834), Suidae Lexicon, 3 vols.
10. ^ It is worth noticing that Adler's edition maintains the spelling Suida/Σουΐδα (as Gaisford's and Bekker's editions did), in continuity with the manuscripts, but modern scholarship prefers Suda/Σούδα.
11. ^ a b Nuovo, Claudia (2022). "Un'ultima teichotaphromachia per il lessico Suda". Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik. 72: 421–426.
12. ^ Maas, Paul (1932). "Der Titel des "Suidas"". Byzantinische Zeitschrift. 32 (1): 1. doi:10.1515/byzs.1932.32.1.1. S2CID 191333687 – via De Gruyter.
13. ^ Dölger, Franz (1936). Der Titel der sogenannten Suidaslexicons. Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Abteilung. Jahrgang 1936. Heft 6. München: Bayerische Akademie des Wissenschaften.
14. Gaisford, Thomas, ed., (1853) (Suidae lexicon: Graecè et Latinè Архивная копия от 18 августа 2020 на Wayback Machine, Volume 1, Part 1, page XXXIX (in Greek and Latin)