The
Suda or
Souda is a massive 10th-century
Byzantine encyclopedia of the
ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic
lexicon, written in
Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers. The derivation is probably from the Byzantine Greek word
souda, meaning "fortress" or "stronghold," with the alternate name,
Suidas, stemming from an error made by
Eustathius, who mistook the author's name for the title.