Book and Sword

Some academic books overcome such obstacles that they should be accompanied by trumpets and parades when they come out. Two volumes published by Walter de Gruyter in 2005 and 2009 completed an edition of Hesychius’ lexicon which was begun in 1914 and carried on through two world wars, shortages of money, economic crises, the closing of the original publisher, the death of the original editor, and the illness of his replacement. This edition, in turn, was the descendant of one published in Venice as early as 1514. The editor, M. Musevius, wrote his corrections on top of the original text before lending the manuscript to the printer, and that turned out to be unfortunate because his manuscript was the last one in existence. The manuscript, in turn, had been made circa 1430 and was linked to Hesychius’ own work in the fifth or sixth century by a long process of copying, condensing, and interpolating. The purpose of a scholarly edition is to publish a text which is as close to what Hesychius actually wrote as possible, with a few comments on sources, especially controversial entries, and related texts.