Iliad 6 is one of the most beautiful, poignant and memorable books of the whole poem. It is the moment at which the Trojans, pressed by the Greeks and shattered by the onslaught of Diomedes, decide to send Hector back into Troy. Whilst Diomedes and Glaucus meet on the battlefield and enact an exchange of armour that represents in miniature the complex ethics of the Homeric honour code, Hector plunges headlong into a world of women.Footnote ¹ In the city of Troy, where the possibility of peace still lingers on the air, Hector meets his mother, Hecuba; his sister-in-law, Helen; and his wife, Andromache. Each woman, in their different way, makes her attempt to persuade him to stay, but it is the encounter with Andromache, Hector's wife and the mother of his son, that makes the real impact.Footnote ² As husband and wife stand on the walls of Troy at the boundary between the battlefield and the peaceful city, the tragic gap between the two worlds of the hero becomes more painfully apparent than ever before. Andromache and her son cannot enter into the world of war. Hector cannot change his commitment to the heroic code. And yet, despite this, for a single moment, as the war rages beneath the walls and the women pray in the temple for the Trojans' safety, the two share a brief smile over their son, Astyanax. For a while, at least, the two worlds of Troy hang in the balance.

To this all-important and poignantly moving book, G. and H. bring their characteristic incisiveness and attention to detail, as well as their unique ability to explain themes at a microscopic level in the fundamentals of vocabulary and style. As B. Heiden commented in his review of their monograph, Homer: the Resonance of Epic, ‘their general thesis … is that the study of Homeric epic is not the study of the poems, but the study of a language and the culturally accepted facts which that language supposedly embodied’ (CR 56 [2006], 3). Who better, then, one might ask, to write a commentary on Homer?

G. and H.'s introduction provides a lucid overview of the key themes and questions in Homeric scholarship. The problem of the poet's identity, the nature of composition, the position of Book 6 within the structure of the Iliad and its relationship to certain key themes – all receive due treatment in clear language with concise, organised references that link them closely into the narrative of Book 6. Occasional – and much more interesting – hints of the authors' interpretative stance filter through the introductory material: a preoccupation, for example, with the ‘tragic irony’ (p. 6) of the characters' lack of knowledge, and an interest in reception: in particular, the connection between the tragic gaps in knowledge so frequently portrayed in Book 6, and later Attic tragedy.

But these are few and far between, and it is on the question of style and composition that G. and H. really come into their own. Not merely in the introduction, but also in the main text of the commentary, technical, stylistic and linguistic features form a major focus of the authors' attention. As such, the volume performs with meticulous precision its self-avowed purpose, ‘suitable for undergraduates at all levels, and students in the upper forms of schools’. It is, in fact, first and foremost, an aid to reading Greek, and it must be emphasised that it achieves with distinction what it sets out to do. Unfamiliar Homeric vocabulary is parsed and explained; particles are rigorously identified; basic stylistic features such as enjambement, ellipsis and alliteration are expertly clarified. Alternative manuscript readings and ancient commentators form an important part of the analysis, and are included with judgement, only as and when they inform the commentary, alongside frequent notes on the historical context of the Homeric and Bronze Age worlds.

At the same time, however, this commentary – expert as it is on the linguistic front – may leave readers wanting a little more. The fascinating exploration in the introduction into the afterlife of the Hector and Andromache episode receives no more treatment in the commentary than a few occasional notes. Again, the emphasis on tension, tragedy and fifth-century b.c. reception that opened the volume only receives a passing reference. The poignancy of Book 6, with its inimitable combination of tenderness and tragedy, is not quite conveyed in the thorough technical analysis of language and plot. One has the feeling that G. and H.'s commentary may be more help in reading the Greek than in reading the Homer.

In a sense, then, whilst G. and H.'s commentary works excellently as an undergraduate-level textbook, and makes for an elegant guide to Homer's style and language, it does not go as far as it could to capture the essence of Book 6: as a poem, not simply a text. It is, in fact, only in a sentence at the end of the acknowledgements that the reader really receives a tantalising glimpse of G. and H.'s reading of Book 6. ‘We wrote most of this commentary in the evenings’, they write, ‘after our children had gone to bed. While they slept upstairs, and we worked on the harrowing narrative of Iliad 6, we felt – more than ever – grateful for peace’ (p. ix). It is here, in this brief sentence, that we really begin to get a handle on how G. and H. understand Book 6: in the exploration of the relationships between husband and wife, parents and children; in the fragility of peace, and the knowledge that things could be other than they are; but most of all, in the ever-present resonance of Iliad Book 6, that spans across language and time, and reaches all of us today – university professors and undergraduate students alike.