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I. Text
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
Extract
Homer speaks to us in a bizarre dialect. Such vocalisms as 
and 
such formations as 
and 
are philological impossibilities; such a word as 
combines the peculiarities of both Aeolic and Ionic speakers of Greek, and could have been heard from the lips of neither; long words such as 
scan only by arbitrary licence, phrases such as 
seem not to scan at all. Yet commentators praise the euphony and onomatopoeia of the verses, and warn us severely that ‘unless readers of Homer are careful to sound every line (for the “inner ear” at least) many very beautiful effects of euphony will be missed’. What reason have we for supposing we hear the authentic voice of Homer ? Bound within the chaste, dark covers of the Clarendon Press, introduced by a solid, unread, praefatio, the regular columns of Greek, unsullied by lacunae or cruces, make Homer appear an unusually undisputed text. Indeed, the major editions likely to come into the hands of readers today differ little. It will be. candid to confess that such credit-worthiness is illusory. The foundations of the Homeric text are among the shakiest of any that have come down to us. I do not suggest that the text was ever the playground of dull redactors or carefree interpolators; I refer to the known or inferable facts of its transmission.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1969
References
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page no 4 note 4 Venetus A preserves the system of accentuation described by Herodian whereby vowel + nasal functions as a sort of diphthong, so ív9á τε, ανδρά μοι, like OTKÓÇ τε.
page no 5 note 1 Only three of Allen’s 188 MSS. fail to read the unmetrical Ικωμαι at 1 414 (a very old reading, known to the ancient grammarians); they read Τκωμι, a vox nihili and an obvious conjecture. Yet we must not suppose a single archetype. A general fluctuation is as rife in the papyri as it is in the medieval manuscripts.
page no 5 note 2 Very recent publications of papyri are scattered in the journals. Those known in the early 1960s are collected by Pack, R.A., Greek and Latin Literary Texts from Greco-Roman Egypt (2nd edn., Ann Arbor, 1965)Google Scholar. For early papyri see Stephanie West, R., The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer (Köln, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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page no 6 note 3 By assuming (1) that the transmission always expanded and never contracted the text, and (2) that the Alexandrians always had manuscript authority G.M. Boiling, Ilias Atheniensium (Amer. Phil. Assoc, 1950), thought to restore a sixth-century Panathenaic text.
page no 6 note 4 Examples in van der Valk, Textual Criticism .61 ff., and Stanford, Sound of Greek.
page no 7 note 1 Bolling, , ‘Wackernagel’s Psilotic Homer’, CPh 41 (1946), 232-3Google Scholar, sees some doubtful traces of a psilotic tradition.
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page no 7 note 3 Evidence in Murray, G., Rise of the Greek Epic (4th edn., Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar, App. i. 346 ff. Goold, G.P., ‘Homer and the Alphabet’, TAPA 91 (1960), 272-91Google Scholar, takes the contrary view.
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page no 8 note 2 With a magico-religious aspect. This aspect, which may be thought vital, is missing from the Homeric side of the comparison.
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page no 9 note 3 ‘Homer as Oral Poet’, HSCP 72 (1968), 1-46.
page no 9 note 4 Kirk, Songs, 274 ff.
page no 10 note 1 See Davison’s report of the experiment at Tübingen, , ‘Bebenaia I’, CR 14 (1964), 14 Google Scholar, and with rather fanciful development in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 6 (1965), 5-28.
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