THE LANGUAGE OF POETRY IN ANCIENT LEXICOGRAPHIC MATERIALS: PINDAR AND THE LEXICON OF SUDA

One of the distinctive features in the works by the researchers of verbal expression in antiquity is the use of excerpts from poetic language/poetry texts when treating the language and style of prose. It is well known that poetry as a form of verbal expression enjoyed a special role in ancient cultures and traditions of education. This is why it is important to evaluate the role of quotations from or references to the language of poetry in the ideas and arguments of ancient theoreticians of language or – in the case of this article – in lexicographic material as an arsenal of the facts of language. The corpus of Greek texts yields considerable material whose research crystallises separate, generally typical, functions of quotations from poetry or references to them. Undoubtedly, one of the greatest figures of ancient Greek poetry is Pindar (5th century B.C.), and the most important lexicographic source of ancient culture and the Greek language in the early Byzantine period is the 10th-century Suda Lexicon. Their interrelation is the object of interest in this article.