You Could Look It Up (43 page)

Estienne needed a title for his wordbook. He could have chosen
dictionarius
or
lexicon
, but he instead followed his lexicographer father, who had settled on a less familiar Greek word:
thesaurus
‘treasure-house’. The
Thesaurus linguae graecae
(
Treasure-House of the Greek Language
) frustrated Estienne endlessly. One of his assistants, Joannes Scapula, stole the page proofs and released a plagiarized
Lexicon græco-latinum
in 1579, forcing Estienne to compete in the marketplace with his own work sold at a discount.
4
Still, the
Thesaurus
is a model of lexicography: its coverage is close to comprehensive, given the knowledge of the day; it lays out multiple senses of words clearly; and it includes plentiful illustrative quotations from a wide range of Greek authors.

As the decades passed, though, more ancient texts were discovered and more meanings were revealed. Estienne was reprinted over and over, often with additions and corrections, but after two hundred years, it was time for someone to redo the job from scratch. The new project came from a German scholar named Johann Gottlob Theaenus Schneider, who published his
Kritisches griechisch–deutsches Handwörterbuch
(
A Concise Critical Greek–German Lexicon
) in 1797–98. Though Schneider’s work is little used today, it deserves credit as the
first Greek lexicon that was more than a repackaged
Thesaurus
. Unlike Estienne, who translated Greek into Latin, Schneider translated it into German, since the most advanced linguistic and classical scholarship in the world was then written in that language.

Another German classicist, Franz Ludwig Carl Friedrich Passow, was appointed in 1807 to a professorship in Greek thanks to a letter from his friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, then putting the finishing touches on the first part of
Faust
. One of his students was the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who boarded in Passow’s house. In 1812 Passow published
Zweck, Anlage, und Ergänzung griechischer Wörterbücher
(
The Purpose, Planning, and Completion of Greek Dictionaries
), in which he insisted lexicographers should strive to show the origin of every word, as well as every shift in the form or the meaning of that word over the centuries, supported with chronologically arranged quotations showing the word in use in actual literature. Earlier lexicographers had included quotations, but their arrangement was not systematic, and they did not appear with dates. Passow strove to be comprehensive in laying out his historical evidence. “Every word,” he wrote, “should be made to tell its own story,”
5
which became a mantra for historically minded philologists in the nineteenth century.

Passow put his principles into action. He used Schneider’s
Handwörterbuch
as the basis of his own, producing the
Handwörterbuch der griechischen Sprache
(
A Concise Dictionary of the Greek Language
, 2 vols., 1819–24). It sports quotations from the whole range of classical Greek literature, and with “semantic bridges,” Passow showed how one basic sense ramified over the centuries into many other senses. This major contribution to what the Germans call
Gräzistik
, or ancient Greek philology, sold well—three editions and more than ten thousand copies by 1827. Those first few editions bore Schneider’s name prominently, but following a tradition in lexicography, the original compiler’s name eventually faded from view. By the fourth edition of 1831, it was no longer
Johann Gottlob Schneiders Handwörterbuch der griechischen Sprache
, but
Handwörterbuch der griechischen Sprache von Franz Passow
.

Passow would in turn get his comeuppance. He is remembered only because someone incorporated his work into an even greater lexicon—the greatest Greek lexicon of them all.

If Henry George Liddell is known at all to the larger world, it is not for his achievement in classical lexicography but for his daughter. Alice Liddell is still one of the most famous girls in the world, even if virtually nobody knows her last name. As a little girl she entranced a young mathematician and photographer, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote several books about the imagined adventures of a girl named Alice under his pen name, Lewis Carroll.

But Henry Liddell deserves to be known in his own right. He was born in 1811 in County Durham to a clerical family with roots in the ancient nobility. An unpublished memoir describes his introduction to classical studies: “On my sixth birthday I was promised a great honour and reward. My father took me up into his study and inducted me into the mysteries of the Eton Latin Grammar. I remember the day, the place, and the fact as clearly as if it were yesterday.” That the future classicist was a great reader, particularly fond of
Robinson Crusoe
,
The Swiss Family Robinson
, and the children’s stories of Maria Edgeworth, is fitting. But despite his love of learning, his time at school was insufferable. “I do not think that any sorrow of youth or manhood,” he recalled, “equalled in intensity and duration the blank and hopeless misery which followed the wrench of transference from a happy home to a school such as that to which received us in the summer of 1819.” He spent seven dismal years at Bishopton Grove, remembering about it nothing but “the sense of desolation, the utter despair, the wish that I could die on the spot.” He was no happier at the famous seventeenth-century Charterhouse School in Surrey: one letter to his father was dated from “Beastly Charterhouse.”
6
He did, however, become friendly with the student who sat next to him, William Makepeace Thackeray.

After thirteen unhappy years, Liddell left for Oxford in 1829. “Never,” he wrote, “did pilgrim departing from an inhospitable mansion shake the dust from off his feet with more hearty satisfaction than I did on quitting the noble foundation” of Charterhouse.
7
His mood picked up when he arrived at Christ Church, Oxford, where he received nearly perfect marks. His first-class honors in classics and mathematics led to his appointment as a tutor at Christ Church in 1836, and he became an
Anglican priest two years later. He held a series of increasingly distinguished titles in the college, in the university, and in the church, rising to be domestic chaplain to Prince Albert himself—the husband of Queen Victoria. (“It is only an
Honorary
appointment,” he wrote to his sister, “i.e. there is no pay. Still it is an honour… . My name is not unknown or unnoticed in high quarters.”)
8

At Christ Church, Liddell met some soon-to-be-big names—William Ewart Gladstone, a future prime minister, was a fellow undergraduate; later, John Ruskin would be among his students, calling him “the only man in Oxford among the masters of my day who knew anything of art.” The most momentous of his contacts, however, was a fellow student, Robert Scott. Liddell and Scott were both born in 1811, and both came from clerical families. Both were also impressive academics, for within months of his arrival at Oxford, Scott was awarded a series of scholarships, and like his colleague he took first-class honors. A distinguished Latin essay won him both a prize and the opportunity to become a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1835, the year in which he, too, was ordained
a priest. Like his fellow lexicographer, Scott held a series of academic and ecclesiastical posts. Despite the similarities, though, Liddell and Scott were not an obvious pair. They were political opposites, with Liddell supporting the Liberals and Scott the Tories. Still they managed to find a modus vivendi, and they began their collaboration in the early 1830s—what Christopher Stray calls “an exemplary case of lexicographical amity.”
9
What led them to begin their lexicon is unclear. It may have been a publisher’s project: Talboys of Oxford may have reached out to them.
10
Others think another tutor at Oxford urged them to work on the book.

“This is what we proposed to ourselves,” they wrote, “viz. to carry on what Passow had begun.” Passow’s fourth edition was the best Greek lexicon on the market, so it made sense that they would base their own work on it. The first plan was simply to translate Passow’s German into English, answering the need for a serious Greek–English dictionary, as the few attempts in English were weak. But they discovered that they needed to go beyond mere translation, and they resolved to out-Passow Passow, making their work an avowedly historical lexicon: “Our Plan has been that marked out and begun by Passow, viz.
to make each Article a History of the usage of the word referred to
.” It was a much larger task than they had expected when they agreed to the project, and finding the time for the work was difficult. Through a decade’s labor, Liddell and Scott “had only spare hours to bestow.”
11
Every evening at seven o’clock, Scott would walk from Balliol, along the Cornmarket and St. Aldate’s, to Christ Church, where the two of them would work together.

Their
Greek–English Lexicon
finally appeared in 1843. Its definitions are sound, and the book gives full expositions of all the subtle shades of meaning. The dictionary is especially strong in providing cross-references from irregular forms to the proper entries. Most important, everything is based on actual literature: Liddell and Scott often provided full quotations from actual Greek literature, from the eleventh century
B.C.E.
into the Hellenistic period. The erudition can be intimidating:

Τρ
πους
,
ποδος
,
ὁ
,
ἡ
, -
πουν
,
τό
, (
τρι
-,
πούς
)
three-footed
,
three-legged
or
with three feet
: and so—I.
measuring three feet
,
τρ
.
τὸ ευρος
, Hdt. 3, 60.—II.
going on three feet
, proverb. of an old man
who leans on a staff,
τρ
ποδας ὁδοὺς στε
χει
, Aesch. Ag. 80; cf.
τριτοβάμων
, and see the Sphinx’s riddle in Argum. Soph. O. T.: hence—2. usu. as subst.,
τρ
πους
,
ὁ
,
a tripod, a three-footed brass kettle
, Il. 18, 344, sq., Od. 8, 434, etc.;
τρ
πους ἐμπυριβήτης
, Il. 23, 702; so,
τρ
.
ἀμφ
πυρος
, Soph. Aj. 1405:—besides these we hear of
τρ
.
ἄπυροι
, vessels
untouched by fire
, which seem to have been of fine workmanship, used only for ornament, Il. 9, 122, 264, cf. 18, 373, sq., Paus. 4, 32, 1. In Hom., tripods are often given as prizes, Il. 11, 700; 23, 264, 485, etc.; also as gifts of honour, Il. 8, 290, Od. 13, 13. In aftertimes, tripods of fine workmanship, bearing inscriptions, were placed as votive gifts in the temples, esp. in that of Apollo at Dephi; these were then called
τρ
.
ἀναθηματικο
,
Δελφικο
, and were sometimes of precious metals, even gold, Hdt. 8, 82, Ar. Plut. 9, Thuc. 1, 132, Paus. 10, 13, 9, cf. Dict. Antiqq.:—hence, a street of Athens adorned with these gifts was called
ο
Τρ
ποδες
, Paus. 1, 20, 1.—III.
any thing with three legs
, generally,
a three-legged table
, etc., Xen. An. 7, 3, 21:—esp.
the stool of the Delphic priestess
, Eur. Ion 91, Or. 163, etc.; proverb,
ὡς ἐκ τρ
ποδος λέγειν
, i. e. authoritatively, Ath. 37 fin.