3. Suda

Suda On Line and the Digital Suda projects

SunoikisisDC Digital Classics and Byzantine Studies: Session 3

Date: Monday April 22, 2024. 16:00-17:30 BST = 17:00-18:30 CEST.

Convenors: Monica Berti (Universität Leipzig), Gabriel Bodard (University of London)

Youtube link: youtu.be/6xhUZG8yCyY

Slides: Google Slides

Outline

This session discusses two major projects relating to the Byzantine encyclopaedia Suda, along with other work around crowdsourcing, translating, and annotating ancient lexica. We introduce the Suda Online project, which has since 1998 been collecting collaborative translations of this 30,000-entry work, and has inspired and enabled many related projects through its commitment to open content and scholarship. The second part of the session presents current work for annotating the text of the Suda (Adler edition) to extract Named Entities and bibliographic references to ancient authors and works. Reasons for annotating the Suda are shown through concrete examples in ancient Greek and in their English translations.

Required readings

• Robert Browning. 2016. "Suda." Oxford Classical Dictionary. Available: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.6112.
• Stephanos Matthaios 2003. "Suda: The Character and Dynamics of an Encyclopedic Byzantine Dictionary". Paper presented at The Lexicography of Greek Culture, Ancient, Medieval and Modern; the Contemporary Encyclopedic Lexica Conference, Thessaloniki, November 22, 2003. Available: https://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/files/document/conference-2003/012MatthaiosEn.pdf
• Glenn W. Most. 2023. "A 10th-Century CE Byzantine Encyclopedia and Lexicon. Suda, Letter Sigma." In Glenn W. Most, Dagmar Schäfer & Mårten Söderblom Saarela (ed.), Plurilingualism in Traditional Eurasian Scholarship. Pp. 264–273. Available: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004527256_024.
• Barry Baldwin. 2006. "Aspects of the Suda." Byzantion 76: 11–31. Available: http://www.jstor.org/stable/44173321.

Further readings

• Almas B. & Beaulieu M. 2016. "The Perseids Platform: Scholarship for all!." In: Romanello M. & Bodard G (eds.), Digital Classics Outside the Echo-Chamber. London: Ubiquity Press. Pp. 171–186. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bat.j
• Valentine Asciutti & Stuart Dunn. 2013. "Connecting the Classics: A Case Study of Collective Intelligence in Classical Studies." In Stuart Dunn & Simon Mahony (ed.), The Digital Classicist 2013. Available: https://doi.org/10.14296/917.9781905670802.
• Ryan Baumann. 2013. "The Son of Suda On-Line." In S. Dunn & S. Mahony (ed.), The Digital Classicist 2013. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. University of London Press. Available: http://hdl.handle.net/10161/8414.
• Anne Mahoney. 2009. "Tachypaedia Byzantina: The Suda On Line as Collaborative Encyclopedia." In G. Crane & M. Terras (ed.), Changing the Center of Gravity: Transforming Classical Studies Through Cyberinfrastructure. Digital Humanities Quarterly 3.1. Available: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/1/000025/000025.html.

Resources

• Suda Online
• Digital Classicist Wiki|Suda Online
• ToposText|Suda Encyclopedia
• Suda in the Scaife Viewer
• Harpocration Online
• Digital Harpocration
• Josh Sosin, "Harpocration Online", Duke University Library
• Catalog of authors in Harpocration
• Photios Online
• SOSOL ("Son of Suda Online"—a spiritual descendant of SOL)

Exercise

1. Using the Suda Online (in English translation or, if you are brave, in the original Greek) look for an entry that is about a person (historical or otherwise). How much does Suda tell us about this person?
2. See if this entry is included in the ToposText page for Suda (and if not, find another one!). Follow the link to the Wikidata entry for this person. What do we learn there?
   • (NB the CTS URN which links to Perseus is broken. Correct link here.)
3. Look in the Harpokration and Photios projects; does your Suda entry also appear in those lexica? How different are the entries? (E.g. “Abaris” appears in all three.)
4. Now look at the page images of the Suda at SLUB. Can you find your entry in there? How hard is it to find? What is not in the printed text that has been added in the various digital editions? What is in the book that the editions don’t give you? (NB the apparatus criticus hidden in the page images.)
5. What other information might you add to an annotated version of your entry (in an ideal world)?