112 The Rev. Dr. Wall on the Nature, Age, and Origin of the 



explained. The work, however, from the nature of its formation, has this 

 advantage in reference to the investigation before us, that it did not admit of 

 being enlarged in successive transcriptions in like manner as those previously 

 considered ; and, consequently, its original extent may be estimated by its present 

 appearance. As far then as the Onomastlcon can be considered as belonging to 

 the class of dictionaries, it affords a safe standard of the progress actually made in 

 the improvement of such books at the time when it was written ; and viewed in 

 this light it tends to confirm the representation I have just given of the subject. 

 The work was composed towards the close of the second century ; and its exact 

 age is fixed by the circumstance of the first book being dedicated to Commodus 

 before he mounted the Imperial throne. Suidas states that Pollux taught at 

 Athens during the reign of this Emperor ; and describes his Onomastlcon as a 

 collection of synonymes, written in ten books.* 



To return now to the class of works whose contents are alphabetically 

 arranged, and bring our inquiry respecting them to its close ; — the oldest col- 

 lection of the kind upon which any dependance can be placed, that, as transmitted 

 to us, it does not greatly differ from the actual production of the author whose 

 name it bears, is that made by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople in the latter 

 part of the ninth century, and which was entitled by him Xe^ecov avvaywyrj. 

 A MS. copy of this in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, which is 

 ascertained to have been written about the end of the twelfth century, was 

 transcribed for the press by the late Dr. Porson ; and an edition from it has been 

 since printed at the expense of the College. The learned world is much indebted 

 to Cambridge for this publication, which is a very interesting one, as we have 

 thereby obtained a copy of what was probably the first work that had justly a 

 claim to the rank of a dictionary, and at all events have through it arrived at a 

 limit to the antiquity of such works. For, as Photius was by far the most able 

 and learned man of his age, the compilation he formed must be supposed superior 

 in point of plan and extent to any preceding one, not excepting the original 

 work of Hesychlus ; yet even with the improvements which it may have received 



* 



noXv8£i'icj)c .... tTraiSeuffE Se ev 'A0//ra(e etti Kofifio^ovTOV ^aaikiwq, koi iriktv- 

 TrjiTi jStoiie eVj) v Koi ri' avvTa^aq fiifiXla Tavra' ^Ovo/iacrriKOV, iv j3(|3Xtoie S^Ka' eoti cc 

 (Tvvayuyfj rwv Sta^opwe Kara row avrov Xtyo/Jiivwv' — 



