Byzantine grammarians, lexicographers, and philologists showed litde interest in the development of their own living language. The most conspicuous exception is Eustathios of Thessalonike who, in his commentaries on Homer, often quotes contemporary vernacular forms or words in order to explain Homeric vocabulary or facts. As for lexicographers, one can find valuable material in the Souda (especially concerning technical terminology) as well as in Pseudo-Zonaras, in the Etymologicum Gudianum and in some others.
Modern lexicography of medieval Greek began in the seventeenth century with Meursius and Du Cange. Although the latter took into account many then unpublished texts from Paris manuscripts, his Glossarium (1688) has long since become outdated, both through the flood of new editions which have appeared in the meantime and by errors of various kinds. Much assistance can still be had from the Paris edition of Stephanus’ Thesaurus graecae linguae (1572) (Hase and others 1831-65), whose scope was widened from ancient Greek to reach the fifteenth century although it did not deal with vernacular vocabulary. Sophocles’ Lexikon
Of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (1870) owes a great deal to this ThesauruSy although Sophocles took an important step towards modernizing quotations by using Migne’s Patrologia Graeca, A valuable supplement to these standard lexica appeared in 1888 (Koumanoudes), which, however, functions as a mere index as it hardly ever provides a translation or comment on the lemma.
When we come to the twentieth century, it was England that first made important contributions to Greek lexicography by including many Byzantine texts (up to the sixth century) in the new edition of Liddell and Scott (1925-40, Supplement 1996), and then by treating patristic Greek in particular, up to Theodore of Stoudios at the beginning of the ninth century (Lampe 1961-8). A much greater project is the Greek-Spanish Dictionary (Adrados and others 1980-) where, apart from the necessary modernizing and a quantitative improvement in the number of quotations and the inclusion of selected proper names, a major error has been avoided— pagan and Christian vocabulary of the first to sixth centuries is no longer treated separately. While the completion of this huge task will take many more decades, a very important, complete bibliographical companion appeared in 1998 (Colera and Somolinos).
However, the main task of treating actual Byzantine vocabulary still remained to be done. This time it was Greece itself that produced the excellent philologist and pioneering demoticist E. Kriaras who undertook the creation of a dictionary for vernacular literature (1969- ), two-thirds of which have now been completed (see also Kazazes and Karanastases 2001). Thus it became clear that the large gap between Liddell and Scott, Lampe, and Kriaras (with regard to the quantity of texts to be worked through) had to be covered by a new intermediate lexicon (Trapp 1994- ; = LBG): on completion, this new dictionary should become an indispensable tool for Byzantine studies. It takes as its base Liddell and Scott and Lampe, and therefore does not record words that are attested twice or more in these works. The main emphasis is laid on texts written from the ninth to the beginning of the thirteenth centuries; vernacular texts of the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, which are fully treated by Kriaras, have not been taken into account. The collection of material has been completed with the help of the TLG (see below) as well as the older printed lexica already mentioned, a fact that has made it possible to remedy many deficiencies in Liddell and Scott and above all in Lampe. Special attention has been paid to early hagiography (fourth to eighth centuries), which has been treated in a rather miserly fashion in the Patristic Lexicon. Additional material from (mainly Paris) manuscripts has been taken from the unpublished collection of Emmanuel Miller. In cases where a word occurs very frequently the number of references is restricted to the early periods, especially if it is well attested in the TLG. At the end of each lemma references are given to other dictionaries, if possible, as well as to selected specialist literature. All additions and corrections that come to the editor’s attention are being collected but will not be dealt with until the project
Is completed, in order not to lose time (thus following a very different process from Kriaras’s lexicon).
After the idea of creating a new printed Thesaurus linguae graecae, following the pattern of the Thesaurus linguae latinae then in progress, had been dropped nearly one hundred years ago because the relevant material would be nearly eight times as great, more than sixty years passed before a computer data bank, rather than a regular lexicon, was created (TIG). The TLG was first produced in several CD-Rom versions, which gradually widened in scope until it now covers not only all ancient and most patristic authors but also all the important Byzantine historians as well as some other medieval texts. Since 2001 hundreds of further Byzantine editions have been added, but they are accessible only from the Internet (with the great disadvantage of being too expensive for ordinary academics). This data bank, of course, is even more useful, especially for Byzantinists, for finding new words, tracking down quotations and parallels from the most important authors, correcting and completing editions, etc. But we must not forget that, in its present form, the TLG does not eliminate the need to consult printed texts with their critical apparatus. An important supplement to this indispensable electronic tool is another CD-Rom containing Greek Documentary Texts (1991-6, containing editions of inscriptions and papyri up to c.1995). Although the major part of its material concerns antiquity, nevertheless some early and middle Byzantine inscriptions, and even some seals, are taken into account—not forgetting the very important papyri of the seventh to the beginning of the ninth century, mostly written during the period of Arab rule in Egypt. As the latter sources have been totally excluded from Liddell and Scott and its Supplement, their new and rare vocabulary has had to be included in the new LBG. In addition to using the CD of Documentary Texts papyrologists, and also any Greek philologist, should look up the Internet where once a year
D. Hagedorn offers an updated list of words taken from new publications, thus supplementing the dictionary of Greek papyri founded by Preisigke and continued by Kiessling, Rupprecht, and others in the form of indexes (1925-2000) (see also 1.2.11 Papyrology).
One might think that the creation of printed concordances which took place, in particular after the Second World War, in Europe as well as in the USA, would come to an end in the near future. However, new examples are still appearing, of which the most important is the Thesaurus Patrum Graecorum (1990- ). This project, which takes its raw material from the TLG, has the following advantages: the emendation of relevant editions, the listing of rare or problematic words, exhaustive discussion of proper names, full lemmatization, and the production of word-statistics. The only doubtful aspect is the use of microfiches containing the concordances proper (replacing the printed versions). Surely the average user would prefer to go directly to the TLG rather than having to obtain an additional piece of mechanical equipment?
World History
