Photius, ἀναλφάβητος and Atticist Lexica

Photius’ lexicon contains an entry on the rare adjective ἀναλφάβητος ‘illiterate, ignorant’ that cites Phrynichus Atticista. Based on this testimony, the whole passage has been edited as fr. 19 of Phrynichus’ Praeparatio sophistica. The central aim of this article is to demonstrate that Photius conflates material which comes from Phrynichus and one other source, hypothetically identified with the anonymous Antiatticist lexicon, which preserves an abridged lemma on ἀναλφάβητος and which Photius employed in the compilation of other entries of his lexicon. As a further corollary, the article also explores the possibility that the work in which Phrynichus dealt with the suitability of ἀναλφάβητος was not the Praeparatio sophistica, but his more polemical work, the Eclogue. This hypothesis requires challenging some common assumptions concerning the transmission of Atticist lexicography in the Byzantine age, chiefly the assumption that material from the Eclogue did not circulate in Byzantine learned circles before the fourteenth century A.D.