Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/101

 DICTIONARY 93 ro, and occasionally into three and even four vertical columns, in which complicated ideo- graphic or monographic signs are explained in the more simple and phonetic syllabary of the time. Dictionaries, though not approach- ing the modern arrangement so closely as do these Assyrian tablets, were also in use in very ancient times among the Chinese and Japanese. The Greeks and Romans appear not to have employed dictionaries in learning foreign lan- guages, but uniformly to have availed them- selves of conversation with foreigners. Nor have any early attempts at Greek lexicogra- phy been preserved. The oldest extant Greek dictionary is by Apollonius of Alexandria, a contemporary of Augustus, whose " Homeric Lexicon" (Af? 'QfuipiKat), though much in- terpolated, has been of value in modern times in interpreting the idioms of the Iliad and Odyssey. Erotianus, a Greek writer in the reign of Nero, made a glossary of all the learn- ed words found in Hippocrates. Subsequent Greek dictionaries were the Onomasticon of Julius Pollux (about A. D. 177), containing explanations of the most important words relating to various prominent subjects, the ar- rangement being topical instead of alphabeti- cal; the dictionary ('E/cAoy^) of Attic words and phrases, by Phrynichus, an Arabian or Bithynian, who lived under Marcus Aurelius ; the dictionary of the words that occur in Plato, by Timaeus the sophist, probably of the 3d cen- tury, which, though brief, contains the best explanations of terms that have come down from the ancient grammarians ; a lost universal lexicon by Diogenianus of Heraclea, which is often quoted by Hesychius and Suidas, and which was abridged from an elaborate work by Pamphilus, also lost ; the dictionary to the works of ten Attic orators, by Valerius Harpo- cration, of unknown date, compiled from works now lost, and of the highest importance for its explanations of legal and political terms, and its accounts of persons and things mentioned in the Attic orations ; the comprehensive Greek dic- tionary of Hesychius, an Alexandrian gramma- rian of the 4th century, which, though much disfigured and interpolated in its present form, is a vast accumulation of most heterogeneous materials, and has been a principal source of our knowledge of the Greek language and of many ancient customs; the lexicon (Aefewv Zwaycj}^) attributed to Photius, patriarch of Constantinople (died about 890) ; and the Greek lexicon ascribed to Suidas, of unknown date, first quoted in the 12th century, contain- ing both common and proper names alphabeti- cally arranged, and valuable for the literary history of antiquity, and for its citations from ancient authors, as well as for its explanation of words. The first Roman lexicographer was M. Terentius Varro, the friend of Cicero; but his work, entitled De Lingua Latina, is rather a voluminous treatise on the etymol- ogy and peculiar uses of words than a dic- tionary ; only fragments have been preserved. The elaborate work of Verrius Flaccus, in the earlier part of the 1st century, entitled De Significatu Verborum, is lost; but it was the basis of a valuable compilation by Pompeius Festus, in the 3d or 4th century, entitled De Significatione Verborum, which was abridged by Paulus Diaconus in the 8th century. Only one imperfect copy of the work of Festus is preserved. The words are classified alphabeti- cally according to the initial letter of each, but the order of the subsequent letters is not ob- served. The information which it contains has been of great importance on many obscure points connected with antiquities, mythology, and grammar. Near the middle of the llth century Papias of Lombardy compiled a Latin dictionary from the glossaries of the 6th and 7th centuries. An indication of progressive learning in Italy in the 13th century was the Catholicon of Giovanni Balbi, a Genoese monk, consisting of a Latin grammar followed by a copious dictionary. The work is in Latin, forms a volume of great bulk, was written about 1286, and is now celebrated as a rare typo- graphical curiosity, its first edition having been printed by Gutenberg in 1460. The Cornucopia, of Perotti, bishop of Siponto, printed in 1489, was a copious commentary on Martial, followed by an alphabetical index of words, and was of much service to subsequent compilers. The first edition of Calepino's Latin dictionary ap- peared at Reggio in 1502. At first only a Latin lexicon, additions of the corresponding Italian, Greek, German, &c., words were successively made, till it was extended (Basel, 1590-1627) to eleven languages. The French give the name calepin to any voluminous compilation. An epoch in Latin lexicography was made by the publication of Robert Stephens's Thesaurus Lingua Latin (1532 ; 3d enlarged ed., 1543), which attempted to exhibit the proper use of words, not only in all the anomalies of idiom, but in every minute variation of sense. The most noted of subsequent Latin dictionaries is the Lexicon totius Latinitatis of Facciolati and Forcellini (Padua, 1771 ; 3d ed., 1831), in which every word is accompanied by its Italian and its Greek correlative, and which illustrates every meaning by examples from the classical authors. An English edition, edited by James Bailey, was published in London in 1828. Sir Thomas Elyot was the author of the first Latin-English dictionary (London, 1538), beyond the mere vocabularies of school boys. He was a dis- tinguished scholar, and a friend of Sir Thomas More ; his work reached the third edition in 1545. The largest similar work that had pre- ceded it was the Orbis Vocabulorum, printed by Wynkin de Worde in 1500 (5th ed., 1518), which by successive improvements became the popular Latin-English dictionary of Ainsworth (1736, and many subsequent editions, of which the latest is the London quarto edition edited by John Carey, LL. D. ; abridgment by Thomas Morell, D. D., Philadelphia, 1863). The most eminent Latin lexicographers since Forcellini