van Thiel versus Perseus

[jeidsath]

I thought that this might be interesting to some of the members here.

https://gist.github.com/jeidsath/60104ad158b370de74f6

The above link is a comparison of every line of van Thiel's Iliad and Odyssey that differs from the Perseus texts. The green is van Thiel.

[mwh]

Thanks Joel. Nice. According to the Perseus site its text is the OCT’s. (In the ταρ thread you said it had ταρ at Il.1.93, which surprised me very much indeed. But evidently you were mistaken.)

[jeidsath]

I noticed that as I was curating the files. It is the University of Chicago Perseus site with ταρ. I had been under the mistaken impression that they were using the Tufts texts unmodified. Apparently not.

The Perseus text that I used above was their downloadable text last updated in the early 1990s. It's available: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/opensource/download

The UoC Perseus version with the ταρ changes is here (see Line 65): http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi ... %20Il.%201

The text at the UoC site seems to be almost all Perseus in origin, but someone has clearly made edits. I don't see any documentation on who did them or the scope.

[Hylander]

Joel, now that you have the meter down, you need to start reading the Iliad or the Odyssey--not just reading them aloud, but reading for comprehension. They're not hard once you've read several hundred lines, and as you go you'll acquire the non-Attic forms and the vocabulary. It won't take long before you're reading a hundred or more lines a day.

But by all means read metrically, either aloud or silently. The meter isn't hard to assimilate, and you already know how it works. From time to time you'll stumble over a line, and you'll need to work out the metrics. But don't let that bother you--just plow ahead.

The Homeric poems are the best things in all of ancient Greek (not that there aren't many other wonderful texts), and you're now ready to experience them in the original!

Good luck!

[Hylander]

By the way, it really doesn't matter which text you use: the differences are minimal, and wouldn't impede your enjoyment of engaging with these poems.

[Ahab]

Jeidsath,

If you go down to the section titled "The Greek Texts and English Translations" found by clicking on the link 'Understanding the Chicago Homer' you will see the following:

"We collated the Perseus texts of Homer with the electronic version of Helmut von Thiel's text, and where the texts diverge, we followed that text in most instances. Von Thiel's edition has a marked preference for the readings of the vulgate text, on the sensible ground that this is the text that was read through much of antiquity."

[jeidsath]

@Ahab

Interesting! And not at all true, looking at just the first 100 lines. They adopt 1 of van Thiel's emendations and follow the Perseus OCT for 10. They add two instances of ταρ which are in neither the OCT nor in van Thiel. I didn't bother with a closer comparison.

The only line (from A1-A100) where they follow van Thiel is A54.

[jeidsath]

@Hylander

I do plan to get to know Homer as well as I know the Anabasis. However, this project, which shouldn't take that many more days, is an attempt to mark all vowel length, correption, synizesis, etc. in the text. I find that sort of text to be more approachable as poetry than an unmarked text. I hope that a "reading aloud" text will come out of this, since I do like to make recordings as I go along. I find it far easier to internalize the Greek with a recording. I also think that such a text will be useful to everyone reading Homer.

[jeidsath]

The rough draft is now complete. I need to go through and make some decisions about a number of lines where the vowel length isn't quite determined, but the first run of output is fairly good. It makes it possible to read the text aloud without having to pause on difficult bits of meter. Here is a random selection from Book Α: