Accessibility navigation


The history of bilingual dictionaries reconsidered: an ancient fragment related to pseudo-Philoxenus (P.Vars. 6) and its significance

Dickey, E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4272-4803 (2021) The history of bilingual dictionaries reconsidered: an ancient fragment related to pseudo-Philoxenus (P.Vars. 6) and its significance. Classical Quarterly, 71 (1). pp. 359-378. ISSN 1471-6844

[img]
Preview
Text (Open Access) - Published Version
· Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
· Please see our End User Agreement before downloading.

348kB
[img] Text - Accepted Version
· Restricted to Repository staff only

579kB

It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from this work. See Guidance on citing.

To link to this item DOI: 10.1017/S0009838821000343

Abstract/Summary

This article identifies a papyrus in Warsaw, P.Vars. 6, as a fragment of the large Latin–Greek glossary known as Ps.-Philoxenus. That glossary, published in volume II of G. Goetz's Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum on the basis of a ninth-century manuscript, is by far the most important of the bilingual glossaries surviving from antiquity, being derived from lost works of Roman scholarship and preserving valuable information about rare and archaic Latin words. It has long been considered a product of the sixth century a.d., but the papyrus dates to c.200, and internal evidence indicates that the glossary itself must be substantially older than that copy. The Ps.-Philoxenus glossary is therefore not a creation of Late Antiquity but of the Early Empire or perhaps even the Republic. Large bilingual glossaries in alphabetical order must have existed far earlier than has hitherto been believed.

Item Type:Article
Refereed:Yes
Divisions:Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Humanities > Classics
ID Code:85699
Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

University Staff: Request a correction | Centaur Editors: Update this record

Page navigation