Hesychius of Alexandria: Lexicon (Α–Ο)

This is the first part of the Lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria, covering the letters Alpha to Omicron. Hesychius was a grammarian who probably lived in the fifth or sixth century AD. His dictionary, the largest surviving ancient Greek lexicon, explains tens of thousands of rare and difficult words, drawn from poetry, from the Greek dialects and from technical and everyday usage. It survives in a single fifteenth-century manuscript.

Hesychius is an indispensable source for the Greek language. Many of his entries record words found nowhere else, dialect forms and quotations from lost authors, so modern lexicographers, dialectologists and editors of poetry constantly depend on him. Even in its abridged and corrupted state, the Lexicon preserves the work of generations of earlier Greek scholars.