English-speaking students of Homer start with C.'s A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect (hereafter Lexicon), and those who stay in the game keep it on hand throughout their careers. Blackie and Son Ltd published Lexicon in 1924, but the University of Oklahoma Press has ensured its survival, issuing a ‘new edition’ in 1963 and keeping it in print since then. By contrast, C.'s Homeric Proper and Place Names (hereafter Names), published by Blackie and Son in 1931, fell by the wayside. Last time I checked, WorldCat listed only 99 libraries as owning the volume (compared with 503 for Lexicon), and I could not find a copy for sale online. Note, then, the hint in this new volume's title: ‘Expanded Edition’. Names has been corralled and added to the back of Lexicon. J.H. Dee provides eleven corrigenda for the pair. Everyone now has a good excuse to replace his or her Lexicon, and students especially will want to upgrade.

The more familiar Lexicon prompts little comment. Professionals bent on providing their own translations of Homeric passages consult other tomes, such as LSJ or Lexikon des frühgriechishen Epos. But readers, be they sophomores or tenured, who aim to move quickly through large chunks of Homer rely on Lexicon because it demystifies everything. Regarding the 1924 publication, A. Shewan smirked, ‘What student of Homer requires to be told what parts of what verbs ἔβην and ἰών are?’ (CR 38 [1924], 208). Shewan was complaining about the absence of proper names and suggesting the sort of items that could have been omitted to make room. I, for one, am happy that whoever needs to can review the root aorist of bainō and the participial forms of eimi easily and without embarrassment. To be sure, non-essential extras remain, such as the lengthy appendix on conditional sentences and temporal clauses, which still looks like nothing so much as a graphic representation of a nightmare.

The more elusive Names merits greater attention. It contains proper nouns as well as adjectives (e.g. Aigyptios ¹ and Thēbaios ²), and it does not discriminate based on narrative status. Ithakē is here as is Hermionē ², ‘A town in the realm of Diomedes’. Helenē has her entry but so do each of Hector's nine victims at Il. 11.301–3 (Asaios, Autonoos ¹, Opitēs, etc.). Patronymics range from Nestoridēs to Klutidēs ¹, one of Hector's victims in Iliad 11. Names also clearly disambiguates. Odysseus' faithful servant Dolios, he of the six sons, differs from Dolios, the father of the faithless servants Melanthios and Melantho. The Ēetiōn who is Andromache's father differs from the Ēetiōn who ransoms Lykaon. The Trōes can be ‘the Trojans’ or ‘The general body fighting on the Trojan side’, but C. also points to passages in which they are to be distinguished from ‘the allies’, from ‘the Dardanians’, from ‘the Dardanians and allies’, from ‘the Lycians’, from ‘the Lycians and Dardanians’ and from ‘the Leleges’.

Names helps one deal with Homer's minor characters and less familiar peoples and places. Othryoneus, for instance, is ‘From Cabesus. Sought Cassandra in marriage, promising to expel the Greeks. S. [= slain by] Idomeneus’. This biography prepares a student for Il. 13.361–82: the narrator describes Othryoneus' deal with Priam, and Idomeneus subsequently mocks him for it. We also get a handy guide to where else a minor character pops up. After Helen observes that she can see neither Castor nor Polydeuces on the Trojan plain (Il. 3.236–42), the narrator comments ‘the life-producing earth covered them already’ (3.243). C.'s entry for Castor reminds us that the Odyssey details how the brothers live on alternate days (11.302–4).

Two of Names' prominent components are of less utility. C. lists the epithets that go with a noun. These lists may be a starting point for an impromptu classroom discussion, but any serious work requires J.H. Dee's own studies of the epithets. C. also provides for ‘the more important persons … an analysis of his or her chief doings and sayings, with references to the passages where these are mentioned’ (p. 449). The more significant a character is, the less valuable this cataloguing. For a character like Sarpedon, it may have its uses: the Lykian is especially prominent in Iliad 16, but C. does not let us forget the final reference to Sarpedon when ‘Achilles sets down his [Sarpedon's] armour as a prize Ψ [= Iliad 23] 800’. Yet for characters like Hector, Odysseus and Zeus, I have trouble seeing what one could do with C.'s inevitably partial lists of their words and deeds.

Two factors make Names less helpful than it could have been. In contrast to Lexicon, Names only gives the nominative case; it does not provide a complete vocabulary entry. For instance, the lemma for the third-declension noun Telamon, Aias and Teukros' father, is Telamōn. The lemma for a third-declension noun meaning ‘An assembly …’ is agōn, -ōnos, ho. Nor does C. systematically provide English equivalents. Individual characters' names are never rendered in English. Peoples and places are handled inconsistently. The entry for Paphlagones begins, ‘The Paphlagonians’, but Leleges simply states, ‘The inhabitants of Pedasus’. Thrēikē begins ‘Thrace’, but ‘Thebes’ or ‘Thebe’ is not to be found in the entries for Thēbai ¹, Thēbē ¹; Thēbai ²; and Thēbē ², Thēbai ³. The student first encountering the concatenation that is Ōgygiē receives no assistance. With these decisions, C. broke from precedent. One can compare Names with two nineteenth-century dictionaries that include proper and place names: G.C. Crusius's A Complete Greek and English Lexicon of the Poems of Homer and the Homeridae (H. Smith published the English version in 1844 and T.K. Arnold published a new edition of that translation in 1871; it is freely accessible via Google books) and G. Autenrieth's Wörterbuch zu den homerischen Gedichten (the 1891 edition of R.P. Keep and I. Flagg's English translation is freely accessible via Perseus). Note, for example, the three dictionaries' entries for Thyestes:

Crusius:

Autenrieth:

Cunliffe:

I observe again the absence in C. of a full vocabulary entry and of an English equivalent. Both would have been good to have.

I appreciate none the less C.'s decision to forgo the additional commentary that Crusius provides – H. Ebeling's Lexicon Homericum (1880 and 1885) offers even more – and to restrict his entries to what the Homeric poems record. After all, both Lexicon and Names are the result of exhaustive engagement with the most basic components of the epics – their words – and thus embody Aristarchus' imperative to interpret Homer from Homer.