Texts

The text most widely used is the Oxford Classical Text (Monro and Allen 1920 for the Iliad, Allen 1917–19 for the Odyssey), but it is widely agreed that this is deficient (see e.g. Pasquali 1952; Tachinoslis 1984; Janko 1990; N. G. Wilson 1990: 316. The most important new edition of the Iliad is that of M. L. West (1998–2000), supplemented by his companion volume (M. L. West 2001b). West's magnificent work provides the reader with more accurate and up-to-date information than any previous edition (especially on the papyri, but also on ancient quotations and testimonia, where West builds on the work of Ludwich). For the Odyssey there is P. von der Mühll's edition (1945). H. van Thiel has provided editions of both epics (van Thiel 1991, 1996); his texts are based firmly on the medieval manuscript tradition, setting aside readings from papyri and ancient citations.

Commentaries

The most important change in the period since J. B. Hainsworth's 1969 Survey is that we now have modern commentaries on the whole of Homer's text. Previous work, some of it now over a century old, retains some value (esp. Leaf 1900–2 on the Iliad, for his clarity of presentation and firm grammatical grasp; also Stanford 1959 on the Odyssey, a sympathetic work though often very brief and selective in annotation); but the new Cambridge Iliad (Kirk 1985, 1990; Hainsworth 1993; Janko 1992; M. W. Edwards 1991; N. J. Richardson 1993) and the Oxford Odyssey (Heubeck, West, and Hainsworth 1988; Heubeck and Hoekstra 1990; Russo 1992) must now be regarded as standard. For students a good reading text is M. M. Willcock's two-volume Iliad (Willcock 1978, 1984).

The Iliad commentary is distinguished by its fine introductory essays, and it has been suggested that a list of these would be helpful to students.

• Vol. 1 (Kirk 1985): The methods and aims of the commentary; The making of the Iliad, preliminary considerations; The structural elements of Homeric verse; Aristarchus and the scholia; The first four books of the Iliad in context.

• (Note also the long general treatment of the Catalogue of Ships, effectively an independent essay.)

• Vol. 2 (Kirk 1990): The Homeric gods: prior considerations (covers oriental influence and cultic ‘realities); Typical motifs and themes; The speech-element in the Iliad; History and fiction in the Iliad.

• Vol. 3 (Hainsworth 1993): Formulas (a long and authoritative treatment); The Iliad as heroic poetry.

• Vol. 4 (Janko 1992): The gods in Homer: further considerations; The origins and evolution of the epic diction; The text and transmission of the Iliad.

• Vol. 5 (Edwards 1991): The narrator and the audience; Composition by theme; Similes; Style.

• Vol. 6 (Richardson 1993): Structure and themes; Two special problems (book division and the end of the Iliad in relation to the Odyssey); Homer and his ancient critics.

In addition, all but the first volume provides at least brief introductions to each book (in volume 1 the final part of the introduction serves this purpose). The final volume has a consolidated index of Greek words, but not of other topics. It would be otiose to say much about the relative merits of the various volumes, when such riches are presented in each; I merely note my agreement with those reviewers who find Janko's volume particularly acute and independent, while Edwards perhaps holds the balance most admirably between technical observation and literary sensitivity.

In general the Odyssey commentary is less successful and less well integrated. There are general essays of the kind described above only in volume 1 (A. Heubeck, ‘General Introduction’; J. B. Hainsworth, ‘The Epic Dialect’; and S. West, ‘The Transmission of the Text’ – all, as one would expect, of high quality). Volume 2, by A. Heubeck and A. Hoekstra, includes a short introduction to the wanderings by the former and an essay by the latter mainly concerned with the poetic dialect. In volume 3, J. Russo gives a general introduction to Books 17–20, and the other contributors (M. Fernadez-Galiano and A. Heubeck) provide short introductions to each of the last four books. There is less cross-referencing and editorial coordination in the project. The effect is peculiar when one passes from Fernandez-Galiano's account of Books 21–22 (severely analyst in tendency) to that of Heubeck on Books 23–24 (unitarian to a fault), and although commentators must of course be allowed to express their views, there is in this case insufficient space given to contrary opinions. The final volume includes cumulative indexes both of words and of subjects. For all of this devoted work generations of scholars and students will be grateful.

Commentaries on individual books continue to appear. The special merits of C. W. Macleod's edition of Iliad 24 (Macleod 1982), with its long and sensitive introduction dealing with the poem as a whole, are well known. On a similar scale is J. Griffin's edition of Iliad 9 (Griffin 1995); note also S. Pulleyn on Iliad 1 (Pulleyn 2001). The Cambridge series has also issued volumes on Iliad 6 (Graziosi and Haubold 2010) and 22 (de Jong 2012), and on Odyssey 6–8 (Garvie 1994), 17–18 (Steiner 2010), and 19–20 (R. B. Rutherford 1992). More basic but helpful for the student are J. T. Hooker's edition of Iliad 3 (Hooker 1991), C. H. Wilson's of Iliad 8 and 9 (C. H. Wilson 1996) and J. Watson's of Odyssey 6 and 7 (Watson 2002, a revision of a much older edition). Further volumes are in preparation.

Kelly 2007b, on Iliad 8, is a work in a different category: enormously detailed and technical, not a book for the beginner. De Jong 2001 is a narratological commentary on the whole of the Odyssey: many insights, but probably not to be used without a more traditional commentary to hand. A very different undertaking is the massive project initiated by J. Latacz and a number of collaborators (Latacz et al. 2000–, in progress), a magisterial text and German commentary on the whole Iliad. When completed this will be an edition even more ambitious than the Cambridge series, and it makes slow and unpredictable progress (thus far volumes on Books 1–3, 6, 19, and 24 have appeared); but any specialist will need to make much use of the work.

Besides the more traditional commentaries, there are smaller and more modest ‘companions’ designed for those studying the poems in translation: e.g. Willcock 1976, Postlethwaite 2000, Jones 2003, all on the Iliad; Jones 1988 on the Odyssey.

Translations

Translations of Homer become ever more numerous and, with the decline in wide knowledge of Greek, more important. Alexander Pope's versions, edited by Maynard Mack in volumes 7–10 of the Twickenham Pope edition (Pope 1967a, 1967b), are dazzling and rhetorical, best read alongside a more faithful version. Those by Lang, Leaf, and Myers 1882 (Iliad) and by Butcher and Lang 1879 (Odyssey), which adopted an archaic prose style in imitation of the King James Bible, are now probably hard to enjoy reading, though they have a certain dignity. Equally archaic though less distinguished are the old Loeb editions by A. T. Murray (1919, 1924–5): his Odyssey has now been modernized by G. E. Dimock (A. T. Murray 1995); W. F. Wyatt has performed a similar service for the Iliad (A. T. Murray 1999). The old Penguin Classics by E. V. Rieu were enormously popular but excessively informal: his Odyssey (Rieu 1946) has been revised and on the whole improved by Peter Jones (1991), and the Iliad (Rieu 1950) completely replaced by Hammond 1987 (an admirable prose version). An excellent prose Odyssey is the rendering by W. Shewring (1980). The most widely used verse translation is by Richmond Lattimore (Iliad 1951, Odyssey 1965), using a long line which approximates to the rhythm of the hexameter, and translating accurately but occasionally awkwardly. His Iliad has been revised and re-issued with a new introduction by R. Martin (2011), though it is a pity that he has dropped Lattimore's own introduction. Other modern verse translations include those by Robert Fitzgerald (Odyssey 1961, Iliad 1974), Robert Fagles (Iliad 1990, Odyssey 1996), Stanley Lombardo (Iliad 1997, Odyssey 2000), and Anthony Verity (Iliad 2010). Christopher Logue's Patrocleia (1962) was the first and best of a series of very bold adaptations of parts of the Iliad into free verse in a modern and cynical mode; while sometimes brilliant, they have also been much criticized (Ezra Pound's adaptations of Propertius are in some ways a parallel case).

Higham and Bowra 1938 contains renderings of fifty-six memorable passages by various translators, and an essay by Higham on the challenge facing the translator of Greek poetry. A more recent anthology is Poole and Maule 1995 (pp. 3–64 on Homer). But pride of place should go to the splendid anthology Homer in English (G. Steiner 1996): it is shocking that this has been allowed to go out of print.

Matthew Arnold's classic essay ‘On Translating Homer’, originally published in 1861 and often reprinted, is still well worth reading. More recent discussions of the problems include: Mason 1972, a polemical but serious study; Shewring's ‘epilogue’ to his translation of the Odyssey (Shewring 1980: 299–330); Silk 1987: 46–54; A. Parry 1989: 39–49 (originally a review published in 1960); Lloyd-Jones 1991 (a review of Fagles' version with extensive comparisons).

Lexica, etc.

The magisterial Lexicon des frühgriechischen Epos (Göttingen 1955–2010) has now finally reached completion. Cunliffe 1924 remains extremely useful for easy consultation; Autenrieth 1960 (originally 1877!) is a lesser alternative.

Concordances prepared by computer have been published by J. Tebben 1994 (Odyssey) and 1998 (Iliad); these are keyed to Van Thiel's texts. The older manmade works by G. Prendergast (1875, revised 1962), and H. Dunbar (1880), although they omit some of the commonest words, are sufficiently comprehensive for most purposes. Online resources will doubtless be of increasing importance: e.g. the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae database, at http://www.tlg.uci.edu, and the Homer Multitext Project at http://www.homermultitext.org. References to websites soon go out of date, but Dué 2011 provides some guidance, and ten minutes' search online will reveal more.