When M.’s Vocabolario della lingua greca was first published by the Turin-based publishing house Loescher, it was welcomed as a long-needed new tool. Generations of Italian students had used, as their standard Greek–Italian dictionary, the ‘eye-unfriendly’ Vocabolario Greco-Italiano by L. Rocci, first published in 1939. The new dictionary, usually referred to as GI (‘Greco–Italiano’), was greeted as an easier-to-use, less uninviting tool for Greek learners, especially thanks to its modern layout, clear structure and up-to-date target language. M.’s preface to the first edition (1995) clearly set the scene in the school classroom; but if the Greek learner was intended as its ideal user, GI was also considered, from the very beginning, a useful scholarly tool (see, e.g., the reviews by R. Pretagostini in QUCC 55 [1997], 137–40 and M.G. Ciani in Maia 48 [1996], 89–91).

The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek (or GE, ‘Greek–English’) now exports the GI model to the English-speaking world and thus virtually everywhere. An English translation of the third edition of GI, published in 2013, GE also contains corrections and additions, though not stemming from a systematic revision of its Italian counterpart. The editors Nagy, Muellner and Goh stress that their aim is not to provide ‘a translation of the Italian definitions in and of themselves’, but rather ‘an accurate elucidation of each Greek lemma in English’ (p. vii). As we will see, this procedure is apparent in some cases.

GE and GI obviously play in different fields. If GI saw the light of day as a modern school tool in the Rocci-dominated Italian scene, GE will inevitably measure itself against A Greek-English Lexicon by Liddell–Scott–Jones (LSJ), a well-established scholarly dictionary that has long been the standard vocabulary tool for Ancient Greek. In fact, both M. and the editors of the English version, in their respective prefaces to GE, not only explicitly refer to LSJ, but also stress the increasingly felt ‘need for a profound revision of LSJ itself or for a completely new dictionary of Ancient Greek’ (p. v). GE, however, is neither a revision of LSJ nor an entirely new dictionary, and the latter not just for the obvious reason that it is a translation of an existing dictionary, but also because, via GI, it is inevitably indebted to LSJ itself. Nevertheless, GE undoubtedly represents, in many respects, a crucial step forward in the panorama of Greek–English dictionaries.

First and foremost, the layout. In this respect GE is a truly excellent tool, thanks to the deployment of various typographical techniques to enhance usability and readability. The GE page is on three columns, with lemmata outdented and in boldface. The various components of each entry are easy to detect and navigate thanks to the skilful use of different formats. The use of bold for the definitions, in particular, meets the need for immediate recognisability much better than italics, used for example by LSJ. Different meanings are conspicuously signalled by numbers on a black round background and/or letters in square boxes; additional meanings are indicated by double vertical bars, and circles and diamonds are used for notable variant forms and adverbial forms in adjective entries respectively. The overall system is coherent and intuitive, and makes the hierarchical organisation of senses both conceptually transparent and visually recognisable. Moreover, particularly complex entries – such as the verb ϕέρω – are equipped with an initial summary of the various meanings printed on a conspicuous grey background. Looking at the volume tri-dimensionally, one will also notice a simple grey fore-edge index.

Clarity and user-friendliness are key features of GE also when one considers the structure of the entries from a lexicographical viewpoint. The entry τέλε(ι)ος may serve as an example. As already implied in J. Chadwick's discussion of this lemma (Lexicographica Graeca [1996], pp. 266–71), the hierarchical organisation of this word's attested senses is particularly difficult to disentangle, and the somewhat farraginous treatment of the entry in LSJ attests to such difficulty. GE here adopts a lucid, easy-to-navigate solution. It identifies five main semantic areas and swiftly accommodates the various senses within this main division. Thus, for example, the tragic use of the adjective with the noun ψῆϕος (meaning ‘final’ according to LSJ, ‘ratified, unchangeable, irrevocable’ according to GE) is considered, in GE, an additional meaning within the semantic area of ‘accomplished, realised’ as applied to vows and the like. In LSJ this tragic meaning is instead grouped together with a number of epigraphic attestations in which the adjective is interpreted as a dialectal equivalent of κύριος, and said to signify ‘fully constituted, valid’ (of an assembly) and, by extension, ‘authoritative, final’ (of a deliberation). LSJ makes this group of senses and the meaning ‘perfect’ as applied to sacrificial victims and sacrifices two subdivisions of the same section. However, there seems to be no need to postulate a special dialectal use of τέλε(ι)ος, since, as Chadwick has shown, the inscriptional attestations of the meaning ‘fully constituted, valid’ belong with the semantic area of quantitative completeness. It seems therefore reasonable to consider the sense ‘final’ / ‘ratified’ a separate subdivision, and GE’s choice to pair it with the sense ‘accomplished, realised’ appears more convincing.

Another strength of GE – especially in comparison with LSJ – is coverage. This means the inclusion of more entries, more meanings and more attestations. In particular, GE incorporates later Greek vocabulary up to the sixth century, including some patristic material derived mostly from the Patristic Lexicon by G.W.H. Lampe (1961) and notably absent from LSJ. Moreover, GE makes abundant use of papyri and inscriptions, a key source of both new attestations of known words and new vocabulary – and for ‘new’, of course, read ‘post-LSJ’.

GE shows a balanced and cautious approach to the papyrological evidence. For example, it incorporates the entries ἐξαναπηδάω and τετρακύων, two new words preserved in a magical formulary first published in 2003 (P. Oxy. LXVIII 4672, third/fourth century), but cautiously leaves out τετραυλάκτης, a possible but uncertain reading of the same papyrus (ll. 10–11 τ̣ε̣τ̣ρ̣[α]υ̣λάκτ[α]). The coverage of new words from papyri is, however, rather unsystematic. Late words such as μητριότης and πατριότης (‘motherhood’ and ‘fatherhood’), scantily attested in private letters, are not lemmatised, although unquestionable feminine abstracts. The same holds true of new vocabulary attested in inscriptions. Epigraphic absences include not only words of relatively recent discovery, such as the adjective ἀθλοχάρης or ἀθλοχαρής (attested in SEG XLIX 1934, first published in 1999), but also poorly documented compounds that were already included in the Supplement to LSJ (1968), such as ξυλικάριος, or in the Revised Supplement (1996), such as ὀθονιοπράτης. However, a non-born-digital dictionary will inevitably have to compromise between the addition of new vocabulary and attestations on the one hand, and the size of the printed volume on the other. One is reminded of Chadwick's formula for estimating a dictionary's efficiency, which is given by the ratio of usefulness to weight (op. cit., p. 19).

A further interesting feature of GE, inherited from its Italian counterpart, is the incorporation of several proper names – personal and geographical – which, the editors assure us, ‘have been systematically checked and revised for the new edition’ (p. vii). Additions to GI in this regard include the explicit indication of the gender of personal names (to be sure, a piece of information already deducible from the articles added to each lemma), the label ‘myth(ological)’ attached to some proper names as well as occasional accretions in the lists of attestations (e.g. s.v. Βαγώας).

As expected of new dictionaries, GE also does its share of elimination of ghost words by taking into account progress in both linguistics research and editorial work. An example of the former case is the elimination of ἥρυς (or ἡρῦς), which appears in LSJ as a feminine of ἥρως on the grounds of two attestations in Sicilian inscriptions. The Revised Supplement warns that the noun might be a variant spelling of ἡρωίς, but strong cases for a misspelling have been made by V. Pisani and Chadwick (see the summary in Chadwick, op. cit., p. 137, with further bibliography). Other exclusions stem from the consideration of new editions of known papyri, in which earlier readings that had led to the identification of hapax are proved wrong: it is the case of ἀβίατος and ἄθλητος, on which see Montanari, ‘Parole greche. Le vie dai papiri ai dizionari’, in A. Bülow-Jacobsen (ed.), Proceedings of the Twentieth International Congress of Papyrologists. Copenhagen, 23–29 August, 1992 (1994), pp. 81–8.

Finally, a few remarks on the target language. GE’s definitions are in clear, modern American English: outdated words copiously used in LSJ, such as ‘aforetime’ (s.v. πάρος), ‘forthwith’ (ss.vv. αἶψα, αὐτίκα, πρόκα, τάχα etc.), ‘verily’ (ss.vv. ἀμήν, μήν, ναί, ὄντως etc.), are done away with. Moreover, GE’s translations of GI’s Italian are usually very precise. Cases in which the former slightly departs from the latter seem to stem from different interpretations of the Greek examples quoted. The medical attestation of ἀγριαίνω, for example, is translated in GI with ‘essere maligno’ (lit. ‘to be malignant’), in GE with ‘to be inflamed’ (cf. LSJ ‘to be angry or inflamed’), undoubtedly a more accurate rendering of the verb as used in Aretaeus, SD 2.11.4, the attestation quoted (but one may wonder whether ‘to be or become inflamed’ would be more accurate, especially in light of SD 2.11.7 ἀγριαίνει ψαύσεσί τε καὶ ϕαρμάκοισι). Similarly, in the entry τέλε(ι)ος GE renders the meaning attested in Philo's Belopoeica 55 with ‘properly proportioned’, while GI reads ‘a grandezza naturale’, cf. LSJ ‘full-sized’. To be sure, the latter is probably a better translation in that context, especially in light of the opposition between τέλειον and παραδειγμάτιον found throughout the passage, which is indeed an opposition between a full-scale object and its small model (see e.g. E.W. Marsden's translation of 55.19–21 in Greek and Roman Artillery: Technical Treatises [1971], p. 115).

With its user-friendly layout, lucid lexicographical approach, large coverage and up-to-date target language, GE undoubtedly fulfils its promises. The main strength of this dictionary lies in its excellent compromise between coverage and manageability, and in the clarity of both layout and conceptual organisation of the entries. While inheriting from GI its ideal context of use, the classroom, GE, like its Italian counterpart, is also an excellent addition for scholars seeking a well-organised and manageable scientific tool. GE is thus to be warmly welcomed as a fresh new, albeit traditional, voice in Greek–English lexicography.