By the way, this is something yet to be studied from Slavic perspective.
Hesychius' dictionary:
https://archive.org/details/hesychiialexand00schmgoog/page/n625
https://books.google.rs/books?id=R-...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Hesychius of Alexandria
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Beginning of letter
π, detail of Marc. Gr. 622.
Hesychius' dictionary (Swiss edition, 16th century)
Hesychius of Alexandria (
Greek: Ἡσύχιος ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς,
Hēsychios ho Alexandreus, "Hesychios the Alexandrian") was a
Greek grammarian who, probably in the 5th or 6th century AD,
[1] compiled the richest
lexicon of unusual and obscure
Greek words that has survived, probably by absorbing the works of earlier lexicographers. The work, titled "Alphabetical Collection of All Words" (Συναγωγὴ Πασῶν Λέξεων κατὰ Στοιχεῖον,
Synagōgē Pasōn Lexeōn kata Stoicheion), includes more than 50,000 entries, a copious list of peculiar words, forms and phrases, with an explanation of their meaning, and often with a reference to the author who used them or to the district of
Greece where they were current. Hence, the book is of great value to the student of the
Ancient Greek dialects and in the restoration of the text of the classical authors generally – particularly of such writers as
Aeschylus and
Theocritus, who used many unusual words. Hesychius is important, not only for Greek philology, but also for studying lost languages and obscure dialects (such as
Thracian) and in reconstructing
Proto-Indo-European. Many of the words that are included in this work are not found in surviving ancient Greek texts.
Hesychius' explanations of many epithets and phrases also reveal many important facts about the religion and social life of the ancients.
In a prefatory letter Hesychius mentions that his lexicon is based on that of
Diogenianus (itself extracted from an earlier work by
Pamphilus), but that he has also used similar works by the grammarian
Aristarchus of Samothrace,
Apion,
Heliodorus,
Amerias and others.
Hesychius was probably not a
Christian. Explanations of words from
Gregory Nazianzus and other Christian writers (
glossae sacrae) are later interpolations.
The lexicon survives in one deeply corrupt 15th-century manuscript, which is preserved in the
library of San Marco at Venice, (Marc. Gr. 622, 15th century). The best edition is by
Moriz Wilhelm Constantin Schmidt [
de] (1858–1868), but no complete comparative edition of the manuscript has been published since it was first printed by
Marcus Musurus (at the press of
Aldus Manutius) in Venice, 1514 (reprinted in 1520 and 1521 with modest revisions).
A modern edition has been published under the auspices of the
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in
Copenhagen, begun by
Kurt Latte (vol. 1 published in 1953, vol. 2 posthumously in 1966) and completed by
Peter Allan Hansen and Ian C. Cunningham (vol. 3, 2005, vol. 4, 2009).
References
- E. Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship (2007) p. 88.
External links
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