"For Attic phrase in Plato let them seek,
I poach in Suidas for unlicens'd Greek."
-- Alexander Pope, The Dunciad 4.227-8

The translations and annotations in the Suda On Line are covered by a Creative Commons 'Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.' For the details of this license please see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/

Unicode (UTF-8) with pre-combined diacriticals display option now available; also a list of lexicographic terminology in the Suda. Please see our help page.

"What's going on here? I've found some errors in these translations!" Is that what you're thinking? The Suda On Line is not only a place where you can find translations of Suda entries, it is also a place where you can see the business of translation and annotation going on right before your eyes. Read about our editorial policies and our system of distinguishing draft entries from edited ones; or do something about those errors yourself: register as a contributor! Ada would have liked that.

A revised version of the SOL became available June 23, 2000. Read about the new searches and other features in this collaborative system, and, if you want, further details on what we've been doing. If you haven't visited in a while, please be sure to check out our help resources. As ever, we welcome your comments -- but please note that if you believe particular entries could stand improvement, we prefer that you register as an editor and make your contribution directly!

Is your hunger for classical knowledge insatiable? There's a lot in the Suda about Greek and Roman science and medicine. Did you know that Democritus was omniscient? Or that Akesias was a very bad name for a proctologist? Curious what disease Erasistratos cured King Antiochus of? Or why Empedokles surrounded Akragas with the skin of an ass?

Ok, if you're not in a scientific mood, learn how Apollo prevented the oracles of the Chaldean Sibyl from being understood by hoi polloi. Read all about the annoyingly just Aristides, Philoxenos the tune-bender, who was the most courageous literary critic in history, the captivating Ammonianus (for donkeys, at least), and Chrysippus, the philosopher who left 'em laughing.

The Suda is a massive 10^th century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, derived from the scholia to critical editions of canonical works and from compilations by yet earlier authors. The purpose of the Suda On Line is to open up this stronghold of information by means of a freely accessible, keyword-searchable, XML-encoded database with translations, annotations, bibliography, and automatically generated links to a number of other important electronic resources. We believe that greater accessibility of this material should facilitate a good variety of new research.    (Read more)

We wish to acknowledge support from the UK Center for Computational Sciences, which provided us with a graduate student Research Assistant for the academic years 2001-2002 and 1999-2000 and has also funded travel for presentations about our work at conferences in Maui (1999) and Glasgow (2000).

  Register

• You may register as a translator or editor, and join a growing list of scholars worldwide who are contributing to the project. Anyone proficient in ancient Greek is welcome to apply.
• Or register yourself as a guest and get access to advanced searches, the choice of a default Greek font for your display, a look at the full roster of participants, and a listing of the assigned, translated, and vetted entries so far.
• If you'd rather not register at all, but you still want temporary access to those additional features just cited, simply enter the login name "guest" and the password "sol" in the Login ID and Password boxes above (both are case-sensitive).

  Guidelines for Contributors

• Guidelines for Translators
• Guidelines for Editors

  Questions or comments?

• Send e-mail directly to the project managers
• or subscribe to our general Suda listserv by either of the following methods:
  1. Point your browser to http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/suda.html and follow the directions
  2. Or send an email to listserv@lsv.uky.edu with the message: subscribe suda [yourname]
  3. note that the suda list has a web archive
• Please report any problems to Ross Scaife.

  Other Useful Resources

• We've added a Help Section recently, which provides several forms of assistance...
• Una selezione di titoli utili per un approccio storico e storiografico al lessico Suda
• Key to transliteration and the TLG Beta Code (partial)
• The Greek system of numbers
• All of the c. 32,000 headwords in the Suda
• More about this project

  Related Web Sites

• Byzantine Studies : a basic bibliography (really more than that)
• Netserf: The Internet Connection for Medieval Resources
• For a good example of the scholarly detective work made possible by the Suda, see Robert Lamberton's BMCR review of Polymnia Athanassiadi (ed.), Damascius. The Philosophical History

Last changed: February 4, 2001