Cambridge Greek Lexicon is a milestone in the history of Classics

In a landmark moment for scholarly publishing, Cambridge University Press has published the most innovative new dictionary of Ancient Greek in almost 200 years.

A monumental piece of scholarship and lexicography, the Cambridge Greek Lexicon is set to become instantly indispensable for Classics students as well as an important reference work for scholars.

It is the result of 23 years’ work by a team from the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge, led by Editor-in-Chief, Professor James Diggle of Queens' College. The dictionary provides fresh definitions and translations in contemporary English, gleaned from the Herculean task of re-reading most of Ancient Greek literature, from its foundations in Homer, right through to the early second century AD.

Aided by online databases that made this huge corpus more easily accessible and searchable, the team pored over every word, working steadily through the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet to build up a clear, modern and accessible guide to the meanings of Ancient Greek words and their development in different contexts and authors.

The project, which began in 1997, was the brainchild of the renowned scholar, John Chadwick. The initial plan was to revise the Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon of Liddell and Scott, first published in 1889. An abridged version of a lexicon published in 1843, it has never been revised, but remains the lexicon most commonly used by students in English schools and universities. It was hoped that the project might be completed by a single editor within five years.

Prof James Diggle was then chair of the project's advisory committee. He said: "Soon after work began it became clear that it was not possible to revise the Intermediate Lexicon; it was too antiquated in concept, design and content. It was better to start afresh by compiling a new lexicon.

“We didn’t realise at the time the magnitude of the task, and it was only because of advances in technology that we were able to take it on. With the help of two online databases, the Perseus Digital Library and later the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, we undertook the ambitious task of reading again most of Greek literature. We then had to appoint additional editorial staff and raise a huge amount of financial support.

“It took us over 20 years because we decided that if we were going to do it we must do it thoroughly."

That attention to detail also extended to the Press and the typesetters, who took immense care to ensure that consulting the Lexicon would be an easy and pleasurable experience, right down to a specially-created text design.

Prof Diggle and his fellow editors inputted their entries for the Lexicon in xml, using a complex system of more than 100 digital tags to ensure each element was automatically rendered in the correct format. This also allowed for a constant feedback loop between the editors, the Press and the typesetters, with proofs reviewed and corrected, and the style and content honed as work progressed.

The finished, two-volume Lexicon features around 37,000 Greek words drawn from the writings of around 90 different authors and set out in over 1,500 pages.

Prof Diggle said: “At the outset of the project I undertook to read everything which the editors wrote. I soon realised that if we were ever to finish I had better start to write entries myself, and for the last 15 years or more I was fully occupied with it and did little else – it took over my life.

“While I was delighted to see the final printed volumes, the moment of greatest relief and joy was when I was able to sign off the very, very final proofs and say to the Press ‘It’s finished. You can print it’. You can’t imagine what it was like, to realise that we had finally got there; I literally wept with joy.”

The Cambridge Greek Lexicon takes a fundamentally different approach to its Victorian predecessor. While entries in the Liddell and Scott lexicon usually start with a word’s earliest appearance in the literature, the Cambridge team realised this might not give its original, or root, meaning. Instead, they begin their entries with that root meaning and then in numbered sections trace the word’s development in different contexts.

Opening summaries help ease the reader into the longer entries, setting out the order of what is to follow, while different fonts signpost the way, helping the reader to distinguish between definitions, translations, and other material, such as grammatical constructions. The use of modern day language also helps to make clear meanings obscured by antiquated verbiage and by Victorian attempts at modesty when defining lewder words and phrases. “We spare no blushes,” said Prof Diggle.

Professor Robin Osborne, Chair of the Faculty of Classics, said: “The Faculty takes enormous pride in this dictionary and in the way Cambridge University Press have aided us and produced it. It’s a beautiful piece of book making.”

He added: “We invested in the Lexicon to make a contribution to the teaching of Greek overt he next century. This puts into the hands of students a resource that will enable them access to Ancient Greek more securely and easily.

“It is hugely important that we continue to engage with the literature of Ancient Greece, not as texts frozen in a past world, but which engage with the world in which we live. There’s been continual engagement with them since antiquity, so we are also engaging with that history, which is the history of European thought.”

Michael Sharp, the Lexicon’s Publisher at the Press, said: “The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is one of the most important Classics books we have ever published. It represents a milestone in the history of Classics, and in the history of the University of Cambridge and of Cambridge University Press. I am elated, relieved and immensely proud of the part the Press has played in supporting this project.

“It’s a colossal achievement and one that will last, I would like to say for all time, whatever that means, but I think that even if Cambridge University Press were to one day disappear this lexicon would still be in use.