Stephanus of Byzantium’s Vocabulary

The text of the Epitome of Stephanus contains no preliminary statement of principle regarding grammatical rules for individual ethnics, and although reference may be made under individual ethnics to regional or local usage, the information is repetitive and simply ad hoc. We are not in a position to say whether that is how the text was left by Stephanus, or whether an opening section or sections were excised by the epitomator(s). There are two recognisable features of the Epitome as a whole: (a) the inclusion in it, with corresponding ‘ethnics’ or a similar term, of a number of items which cannot by their very nature have had a civic role, and thus could not strictly have generated an ἐθνικόν, since they do not belong to that category of names. Alongside these irregular entries, there is another group of linguistic terms (b), which Stephanus uses to express departure from either an analogistic or local form, in such phrases as ‘it should be … ’. This chapter presents a list of some typical examples of the first class of entry; a second list illustrates different principles of linguistic usage recorded by Stephanus for features which have no independent political (including tribal) existence, but are included by him in his text; that is to say, forms which are justified or rejected by him in terms of the rules of ‘ethnic’ usage.