SUIDAS.

£65,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Lexicon graecum [Greek]. Editio princeps of the archetypal Greek encyclopaedic dictionary, the largest Greek book to be printed in the 15th century; the sole extant source for many lost texts, the sole bearer of decisive variants for many other texts, and the most comprehensive witness to Byzantine culture and scholarship at the end of the first millennium. Compiled in the late tenth century, the Suda (then known under the personal name "Suidas") is an encyclopaedic Greek lexicon which, "despite its bulk, was often recopied because of its proven value to students of the classics" (Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy, p. 38). It draws extensively on earlier Greek lexica, Homeric and dramatic scholia, the Palatine Anthology, and a wide range of grammatical and historical sources.The Suda entered the Western Renaissance through the editorship of Demetrios Chalcondylas of Athens, the leading Greek scholar in the West and editor of the first printed Homer (1488) and Isocrates. Chalcondylas's 1493 Isocrates had proved a commercial failure, perhaps explaining the curious dialogue between a bookseller and a prospective buyer printed on the opening page here, urging the reader not to be deterred by the price of three gold ducats. By contrast, the Suda was a conspicuous success, repaying Chalcondylas's formidable editorial labour and demonstrating a Western appetite for comprehensive Greek learning, as well as for encyclopaedic lexicography beyond the long-dominant Etymologiae of Isidore.C

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