Liddell & Scott: The History, Methodology, and Languages of the World’s Leading Lexicon of Ancient Greek, edited by Christopher Stray, Michael Clarke and Joshua T. Katz (Oxford University Press 2019), hardback, pp xviii + 453, £90.00, ISBN 9780198810803
This expensive tome is notable for the fascinating range of its content, and whether you are a classical dilettante or a hard-core research scholar there will be something within these 450 pages to engage your interest. It has its origins in a 2013 Oxford conference, and is a staggering accumulation of thorough and impressive scholarship from its twenty-one illustrious contributors. There is a bibliography extending to 29 pages, a general index and an index verborum.
‘Iconic’ is an overworked adjective these days, but it can certainly be applied to the status of what those of us in the business refer to simply as ‘LSJ’.
A Victorian creation, its first edition of 1843 was the first of nine in all, new supplements in 1968 and 1996, edited by Sir Henry Stuart Jones, incorporating developments in linguistics (e.g. the decipherment of Linear B), semantics, lexicography and papyrology. An abridged edition (‘Little Liddell’), last revised in 1901, is still in print, as is An Intermediate Lexicon (‘Middle Liddell’), which, based on the seventh edition of 1882, appeared in 1889 but has never been revised.
The frontispiece is a photograph of page one of the first edition, and exemplifies two features considered innovative at the time: head-words in bold type, and glosses in English rather than Latin; themes developed further in the book.
Spare a thought for the little-known James Donnegan, the Irish physician whose 1826 A New Greek and English Lexicon; Principally on the Plan of the Greek and German Lexicon of Schneider was the British market leader prior to L&S. Donnegan’s fourth edition was published in 1842, the year before L&S appeared. Apparently a denunciation of Donnegan’s work was suppressed from the preface of the first edition of L&S, which itself was derived from F. Passow’s Handwörterbuch der griechischen Sprache (1st ed. 1819-24, 4th ed. 1831).
L&S, and Wordsworth’s Greek Grammar, being expensive volumes which enjoyed healthy sales, proved highly remunerative to Oxford University Press and the respective authors. Liddell, we learn, used some of his royalties to install a staircase in the Deanery at Christ Church, which is called the Lexicon Staircase.
The text is divided into four: Part 1 History and Constitution of the Lexicon; Part 2 Periods and Genres of Evidence; Part 3 Methodology and Problems; Part 4. Comparisons in Time and Space.
In a nutshell: L&S became a literary and cultural phenomenon, and Christopher Stray plots the history of this. Its use of English exemplifies the need for constant revision (e.g. ‘huckster’/ ‘higgler’ for κάπηλος). Seven strands of the use of Latin are explored, one of which, obscenity, has its own chapter (sens. obsc., for sensu obsceno, apparently occurs 91 times in the text). L&S’ treatment of etymologies is ‘haphazard’ (Chapter 5, p.95), and there are omissions and inconsistencies in the Mycenaean material in the Revised Supplement (Chapter 6, New Evidence). Hesiod, Plato (‘the lexicographer’s darling’) and medical vocabulary each have their own chapters, their authors painstakingly reviewing the treatment of their subjects through successive editions. Although Liddell and Scott were both ordained priests, the treatment of New Testament Greek is ‘superficial, shoddy, and shambolic’ (p.180). Philomen Probert demonstrates that the adoption of Attic as the default dialect is not as straightforward as it seems, and the latter chapters focus on lexicographical aspects and analyse the status quo and possible directions for the future in this electronic age. Earlier (p. 122-3) we learn of Chadwick’s principle that ‘the efficiency of a dictionary is equal to its usefulness divided by its weight…’, and that the weight variable is less significant these days thanks to online digital dictionaries and databases.
The book is a treasure trove for those wanting to delve deeper into specific lexical entries, for which the index verborum, which includes Mycenaean, is a godsend. You will find extensive discussions of μῆτις, γε, βάπτω, the distinctions between βούλομαι and ἐθέλω, and much more.
The current state of our ancient Greek dictionaries is the fascinating subject of Chapter 20. ‘The most comprehensive work is the ongoing DGE [Diccionario griego-español, Madrid, 1980], and it can be judged to be an excellent replacement for LSJ’ (p. 393). It has been published as far as the letter epsilon, I believe; so don’t hold your breath. The most exciting current prospect is the imminent publication of The Cambridge Greek Lexicon (by J. Diggle et al.), optimistically cited as ‘(2019)’ in the current volume, but now destined, according to Amazon, for June 2020 (further details at https://www.classics.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/glp ).
This review cannot do justice to its subject. There is certainly no shortage of learned criticism here, but not enough for most of us to dispose of our copies in favour of anything else. I personally am a fan of Montanari’s user-friendly The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek (2015). But when all is said and done, LSJ remains ‘a work of remarkably high quality’, which ‘has no serious rival and is unlikely ever to have one’ (p. 341). And if it’s good enough for Martin L. West, it’s good enough for me.
