Old languages are far from dead – and knowledge of their subtleties advances by the day
A new two-volume ancient Greek-English lexicon has just been published by Cambridge University. The work of over 20 years, it defines 37,000 words. One might wonder why such a thing might be needed. After all, Liddell and Scott’s Greek dictionary, with its early-20th-century revisions, has served scholars well since 1843. And isn’t ancient Greek a dead language anyway?
By no means. Scholars constantly broaden knowledge of the language. The later 19th century saw a profusion of Greek texts excavated in Egypt, where the dry sands preserved millions of papyrus fragments – not just literature but bills, letters and even magical spells, full of new usages that are still being studied (not all of this is reflected in the new lexicon). In recent decades, the canon has broadened towards the abundant Greek writing produced under the Roman empire – though, since the new dictionary advances only to the second century AD, it, alas, omits much of this material.
