I came across a reference to Burnet’s Oxford Plato Lexicon in the memoir that begins his posthumously published Essays and Addresses. Looking for more information, I discovered this very neat article by Graham Whitaker that traces the history of this great, never-completed, project:
That was… depressing.
It seems tragic that so much work has disappeared with a trace. I have been reading Burnet’s notes to Euthyphro/Apology/Crito, and am learning a lot. I am also seeing about getting a copy of his notes to Phaedro and the Platonic Scholia. The lexicon would have been impressive, I’m sure. Maybe the slips will turn up in an attic somewhere someday.
Still, looking at all of the mechanical work involved, this sort of lexicon work should be so much easier in this day and age. I’ve thought a little bit about what a digital dictionary project would look like. There are some neat things that you could do as far as presentation, if you were just thinking about a wikipedia-style spruce up of the LSJ, for example. Or something could be done with NLP-style context-tagging, if one were trying to produce a next-generation sort of lexicon.
As you peruse the Platonic Scholia, could you post any links to interesting material you find? I have been interested in this area for a while.
The closest thing I could find to Platonic Scholia is from commentaries such as Olympiadorus’ and Damascius’ commentary on the Phaedo as well as Proclus’ on the Alcibiades.
It’s rather sparse on Euthyphro and the Apology, though I see that the Symposium has many notes. Here is a poem introducing ΠΑΙΔΩΝ
Εἴ με Πλάτων οὐ γράψε, δύω ἐγένοντο Πλάτωνες·
Σωκρατικῶν ὀάρων ἄνθεα πάντα φέρω.
ἀλλὰ νόθον με τέλεσσε Παναίτιος· ὅς ῥ᾽ ἐτέλεσσε
καὶ ψυχὴν θνητήν, κἀμὲ νόθον †τελέσαι.
If Plato did not write me, then two Platos lived,
I bear every blossom of Socratic conversations
but Panaetius reckoned me a bastard, who reckoned
not only the soul to be mortal, but is also to have reckoned me a bastard.