Hesychius of Alexandria

hesychius of alexandria, Alexandrian Greek lexicographer probably of the fourth or fifth century. Little is known about his background. He is sometimes described in later sources as a pagan. To the world of scholarship, he is known solely through his monumental Greek dictionary, in which he dealt with the varied Greek dialects and incorporated a vocabulary of patristic letters, notably that of Saint cyril I, patriarch of Alexandria. However, his work is based on the second-century Greek dictionary of Diogenianus of Heraclea as well as the work of a number of other Greek lexicographers. His compilation has survived in a mutilated fifteenth-century manuscript preserved at Venice (National Marcan Library, no. 622) and edited by J. Alberti in the eighteenth century and M. Schmidt in the nineteenth century.