The Suda or Souda (Medieval Greek: Soda) is a massive 10th-century Byzantine

encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. 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 compilers. The
derivation is probably[1] 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 proper name of the author.
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. There is nothing especially
important about this aspect of the work. It is the articles on literary history that are valuable.
These entries supply details and quotations from authors whose works are otherwise lost. They
use older scholia to the classics (Homer, Thucydides, Sophocles, etc.), and for later writers,
Polybius, Josephus, the Chronicon Paschale, George Syncellus, George Hamartolus, and so on.
This lexicon represents a convenient work of reference for persons who played a part in political,
ecclesiastical, and literary history in the East down to the tenth century. The chief source for this
is the encyclopedia of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (91259), and for Roman history the
excerpts of John of Antioch (fifth century). Krumbacher (Byzantinische Literatur, 566) counts two
main sources of the work: Constantine VII for ancient history, and Hamartolus (Georgios
Monachos) for the Byzantine age.
Organization[edit]
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
formerly common in many languages system that is called , antistoichia; namely the
letters follow phonetically in order of sound, in the pronunciation of the tenth century which is
similar to that of Modern Greek. So alpha-iota () comes after epsilon and the latter after delta;
eta and iota come together after epsilon-iota () and the latter after zeta; omega after omicron
and the latter after chi; finally upsilon after omicron-iota () and the latter after tau.[2] The system
is not difficult to learn and remember, but some editorsfor example, Immanuel Bekker
rearranged the Suda alphabetically.
Background[edit]
Little is known of the compilation of this work, except that it must have taken place before
Eustathius who quoted frequently from it in the 12th century. Under the heading "Adam" the
author of the lexicon (which a prefatory note states to be "by Suidas") gives a brief chronology of
the world, ending with the death of the emperor John I Tzimiskes (975), and the article
"Constantinople" mentions his successors Basil II (9761025) and Constantine VIII (10251028).
It would thus appear that the Suda was compiled in the latter part of the 10th century. Passages
referring to Michael Psellus (end of the 11th century) are considered later interpolations.[citation
needed]
It includes numerous quotations from ancient writers; the scholiasts on Aristophanes, Homer,
Sophocles and Thucydides are also much used. The biographical notices, the author avers, are
condensed from the Onomatologion or Pinax of Hesychius of Miletus; other sources include the
excerpts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the chronicle of Georgius Monachus, the biographies of
Diogenes Laertius 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.[3]
The work deals with biblical as well as pagan subjects, from which it is inferred that the writer was

a Christian. A prefatory note gives a list of dictionaries from which the lexical portion was
compiled, together with the names of their authors. Although the work is uncritical and probably
much interpolated, and the value of its articles is very unequal, the Suda contains much useful
information on ancient history and life. Its quotations from ancient authors make it a useful check
on their manuscript traditions. A modern translation, the Suda On Line, was completed on 21 July
2014.[4]
The Suda has a near-contemporaneous Islamic parallel, the Kitab al-Fehrest of Ibn al-Nadim.
Compare also the Latin Speculum Maius, authored in the 13th century by Vincent of Beauvais.