The ''Suda'' or ''Souda'' (; grc-x-medieval, Σοῦδα, Soûda; la, Suidae Lexicon) 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
Christianity in the Middle Ages covers the history of Christianity from the fall of the Western Roman Empire (). The end of the period is variously defined. Depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman ...
compilers.
Title
The derivation is probably 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.
Paul Maas once ironized by suggesting that the title may be connected to the Latin verb ''suda'', the second-person singular imperative of ''sudāre'', meaning "to sweat", but
Franz Dölger traced its origins back to Byzantine military lexicon (σοῦδα, "ditch, trench", then "fortress").
Silvio Giuseppe Mercati, on the other hand, suggested a link with the Neo-Latin substantive ''guida'' ("guide"), transliterated in Greek as γουίδα.
A more recent theory by Carlo Maria Mazzucchi (
Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
,
Milan) sees the composition of the encyclopedia as a collective work, probably in a school. During the process, the entries (from more than 40 sources) were written down on file cards collected in a fitting receptacle before they were transcribed on quires. That happened before 970, and further entries were then added in the margins. Mazzucchi explains the name Σοῦδα (meaning "ditch") as both an acrostic of Συναγωγὴ ὁνομάτων ὑπὸ διαφὸρων ἁρμοσθεῖσα ("Collection of nouns assembled from different
ources) and a memory of the receptacle that used to contain the file cards. Most likely, the name is the acronym ΣΟΥΙΔΑ = ΣΥΝΤΑΞΙΣ ΟΝΟΜΑΣΤΙΚΗΣ ΥΛΗΣ ΙΔΙΑ ΑΛΦΑΒΗΤΙΚΗΣ (ΣΕΙΡΑΣ): Composition of Named Subjects in (by) Alphabetical (Order). It is clearly stated upfront: ΤΟ ΜΕΝ ΠΑΡΟΝ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ, ΣΟYΙΔΑ. ΟΙ ΔΕ ΣΥΝΤΑΞΑΜΕΝΟΙ ΤΟΥΤΟ ΑΝΔΡΕΣ ΣΟΦΟΙ. (THE PRESENT BOOK, SOYΙDA. THOSE THAT COMPOSED IT WISE MEN). There are eleven wise men listed, along with details of their specific contributions.
Content and sources
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. 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.
Much of the work is probably interpolated, and passages that refer to
Michael Psellos (c. 1017–1078) are deemed
interpolations which were added in later copies.
Biographical notices
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 (reigned 912–959) 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. 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.
Lost scholia
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
George Hamartolos or Hamartolus ( el, ) was a monk at Constantinople under Michael III (842–867) and the author of a chronicle of some importance. Hamartolus is not his name but the epithet he gives to himself in the title of his work: "A compe ...
, and so on. The ''Suda'' quotes or paraphrases these sources at length. Since many of the originals are lost, the ''Suda'' serves as an invaluable repository of literary history, and this preservation of the "literary history" is more vital than the lexicographical compilation itself, by some estimation.
Organization
The lexicon is arranged alphabetically with some slight deviations from common vowel order and place in the Greek alphabet (including at each case the homophonous
digraphs, e.g. , 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'' (); namely the letters follow phonetically in order of sound according the pronunciation of the tenth century, which was similar to
that of Modern Greek. The order is:
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
Little is known about the compiler of the ''Suda''. 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
Constantine VIII Porphyrogenitus ( el, Κωνσταντῖνος Πορφυρογέννητος, ''Kōnstantinos Porphyrogénnetos''; 960 – 11/12 November 1028) was '' de jure'' Byzantine emperor from 962 until his death. He was the youn ...
are mentioned in the entry under "
Adam" which is appended with a brief
chronology
Chronology (from Latin ''chronologia'', from Ancient Greek , ''chrónos'', "time"; and , ''-logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of even ...
of the world. At any rate, the work must have appeared by 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. It has also been stated that the work was a collective work, thus not having had a single author, and that the name which it is known under does not refer to a specific person.
The work deals with
biblical as well as
pagan subjects, from which it is inferred that the writer was a
Christian. In any case, it lacks definite guidelines besides some minor interest in religious matters.
The standard printed edition was compiled by Danish classical scholar
Ada Adler in the first half of the twentieth century. A modern collaborative English translation, the ''Suda On Line,'' was completed on 21 July 2014.
[ See also ]
The ''Suda'' has a near-contemporaneous Islamic parallel, the ''
Kitab al-Fehrest'' of
Ibn al-Nadim. Compare also the Latin ''
Speculum Maius
''Speculum maius'' (greater Mirror) was a major encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, written by Vincent de Beauvais in the 13th century. It was a great compendium of all knowledge of the time. The work seems to have consisted of three parts: the ''Sp ...
'', authored in the 13th century by
Vincent of Beauvais.
Editions
*
vol. 1vol. 2vol. 3
*
vol. 1 (A–Θ)vol. 2 (Κ–Ψ)vol. 3 (Indices)
*
* Reprinted 1967–71, Stuttgart.
References
;Citations
;Bibliography
* Abrantes, Miguel Carvalho (2021)
Greek Myths in the Suda KDP.
*
*
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. .
*
External links
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 lexiconat the
Online Books Page
The Online Books Page is an index of e-text books available on the Internet. It is edited by John Mark Ockerbloom and is hosted by the library of the University of Pennsylvania. The Online Books Page lists over 2 million books and has several fe ...
{{Authority control
10th-century books
10th century in the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Greek encyclopedias