Suda

thumb|First page of an early printed edition of the Suda The Suda or Souda (; ; ) is a large 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soudas () or Souidas (). It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers.

==Title== The exact spelling of the title is disputed. The transmitted title (paradosis) is "Suida", which is also attested in Eustathius' commentary on Homer's epic poems; several conjectures have been made, both defending it and trying to correct it in "Suda". Paul Maas advocated for the spelling, connecting it to the Latin verb , the second-person singular imperative of , "to sweat". Franz Dölger also defended , tracing its origins back to Byzantine military lexicon (, "ditch, trench", then "fortress"). Henri Grégoire, starting from a critique to Dölger's interpretation, defended a proposal advanced by one of his pupils, and explained the word as the acrostic of , "Collection of names (words) by different learned men", or alternatively , "Collection of lexicographical material in alphabetical order". This suggestion was also supported by French Hellenist and Byzantinist Alphonse Dain. Silvio Giuseppe Mercati wrote on the matter twice: firstly in an article appeared in the academic journal Byzantion, and later in an expanded version of the same. He suggested a link with the Neo-Latin substantive ("guide"), transliterated in Greek as and later miswritten as . This interpretation was strongly criticized by Dölger, who also refused to publish Mercati's first article in the Byzantinische Zeitschrift; on the other hand, Giuseppe Schirò supported it. Bertrand Hemmerdinger interpreted Σουΐδας as a Doric genitive.