L. Berkowitz- Canon of Greek Authors

Steven Craig Miller scmiller at plantnet.com
Tue Jan 9 08:11:24 EST 2001


To: Clayton Stirling Bartholomew,

Re: Thesaurus Linguae Graecae Canon of Greek Authors and Works

<< Could one of the TLG users help me out with this? Is this a useful book 
even if you do NOT have a license to TLG? >>

I'm not a TLG user, but I own the book. I can't say that I've found it all 
that useful, but it is a list of Greek authors. For example:

Under Plato, one will find:

0059 Plato Phil.
5-4 B.C.: Atheniensis
[[ I now omit two lines. ]]
001 Euthyphro, ed. J. Burnet, Platonis opera, vol. 1.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1000 (repr. 1967): St
1.2a-16a.
Cod: 5,464 : Phil., Dialog.

The number "0059" is the TLG author number. This Plato was given the 
epithet "Phil" for philosopher (there are other authors with the name 
Plato). "5-4 BC" tells you that the author lived during the 5th and 4th 
centuries. The next item, "Atheniensis" is his Geographical Epithet. "001" 
indicates that this is the first out of 42 entries for Plato. The number 
after "Cod" gives their estimate of how many words are in this text. This 
work is classified as "Phil" and "Dialog." That should give you some idea 
what is in this book.

More than anything else, this book impressed upon me that there were a lot 
more Greek authors than I had ever dreamed. The major part of this book is 
406 pages of entries like the one above. If you ever needed information 
about an obscure Greek author, and where one might start looking for his or 
her published text, this would be a good resource to consult. Or, if you're 
like myself, just curious about the number of Greek authors from antiquity, 
it is an interesting work to browse through. If one could get it on the 
cheep, it might be worth getting for one's personal library. But IMO one 
should go to the library and take a look at it before paying full price. It 
has been so long now that I can't remember, but I wouldn't be surprised if 
I paid full price for it. But then I'm an unreformed biblioholic -- I 
wouldn't suggest anyone to follow my behavior.

-Steven Craig Miller
Alton, Illinois (USA)
Old e-mail address: scmiller at plantnet.com
New e-mail address: stevencraigmiller at home.com






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