SUDA (Gr. Σουίδα). - A common name, dating back to Eustathius in his commentary on Homer (1175), for the supposed compiler of a Lexicon, composed around A.D. 1000: in reality it is the Hellenized form of the Thessalian Σοῦδα, cited in various codices and by Stephanus, a 12th-century commentator on Aristotle (Comment. in Arist. Gr., XXI, 2, Berlin 1885, p. 285, 18). Suda, moreover, would be not the name of the compiler, of whom no information whatsoever is known, but the title of the collection (Stephanus says «ἐν τῇ Σοῦδα», and cod. Paris, 2625, of the 13th century, in the proem of the Lexicon bears written above «Ἡ Σοῦδα [sc. βίβλος]»), which would have the meaning of "Vademecum".
The Lexicon, which comprises about 30,000 entries, is the most extensive Greek collection of its kind that has come down to us, and it is of a general character, including not only grammatical and etymological data, but also historical, geographical, scientific, biographical and literary information. The sources, rather than in the eleven authors indicated by the compiler at the beginning of his "encyclopedia", are to be sought in other lexicons (Harpocration), in the scholiastic compilations (on Homer, Sophocles, Herodotus, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Gregory of Nazianzus), in the Proverbs of pseudo-Dionysius, in the Lives of Diogenes Laertius and in those of the comic poets derived from Athenaeus, in the Byzantine Chronicles, in the commentaries on Aristotle, etc. Although carried out with a scarcity of method, the Lexicon is precious, in spite of errors and confusions, for the abundance of information, especially in regard to literary history, geography and customs. The words are arranged in alphabetical order, taking into account, however, the particular pronunciation of the period.
