Investigator:
Jeffrey Rusten, Classics
Collection Type:
Arts & Sciences
Year:
2019
Friedrich Ast’s 1833-8 lexicon to Plato in 3 volumes (1833-8, 2000 pages, almost 10,000 individual word-articles and more than 60,000 quotations in Greek) was unusual in treating every word in Plato (even the most common particles and conjunctions which are usually omitted), and offering full definitions (in Latin) based on his own Latin translation and commentary; it is still in print today.
This Lexicon’s digitization will enable it to be corrected by comparison to a modern digital Plato text, linked by hypertext to the complete set of Platonic Greek words, and augmented (from recent databases of ancient Greek) with classifications by word families, semantic categories, frequency lists by dialogue, modern bibliography and even illustrations. Its website will also be the basis for further scholarly work, and serve as the platform (after the model of recently appeared pilot project of a Thucydidean lexicon) for a long-term project to replace Ast’s articles gradually with modern ones in English, based on updated lexicographic guidelines.