Greek Homeric text

[Bert]

I am cruising right along in the Iliad. I'm at line 100 of book 3 and it is starting to get easier.
I only have the first 6 books of the Iliad and none of the Odyssey.
I would like to have all the books of both poems.
What is the best way to get them.
Are they available in one volume?
Thank you.

[annis]

I only have the first 6 books of the Iliad and none of the Odyssey.
I would like to have all the books of both poems.
What is the best way to get them.

How good are your eyes?

Are they available in one volume?

They are not. In fact, all editions of Homer I know of have two books for each poem, requiring a total of four volumes for all of them, with a fifth for the Homerica (the Hymns, The Battle of Mice and Frogs, testamonia, etc.).

If your eyesight is good, for the Iliad I'd recommend M.M. Willcock's edition (easily had these days). It's not too expensive, it has the full Iliad in two volumes, and a commentary that isn't as full as Benner's, but is still quite useful. To keep the price reasonable and the size of the book down, the printing is quite compressed.

For the Odyssey there is Stanford's two volumes, again with text and commentary. I find this easier to read. In my experience it's a little harder to find both volumes.

When you are prepared to go off into the deep end of Homeric Scholarship, I'd recommend West's Teubner Iliad. It's quite current and is based on massive manuscript evidence. The apparatus criticus is thus huge: the first page of the opening of the Iliad has 5 lines of text and the rest of the page is app crit. For most of the book 1/2-3/4 of the page is devoted to Iliad text. The current accademic commentary - which is in reference to the Allen OCT - is in, um, six volumes (Kirk, et al.). I believe someone is working on a new commentary based on West's text, but it will be in German (first volume recently reviewed at BMCR).

I'm still using the OCT Odyssey. I believe there may be a more current Teubner, but I don't know how much work went into it. The standard full commentary is by Heubeck, et al, and weighs in at a more modest 3 volumes. It is also keyed to the OCT.

[psilord]

Or, you could do the Loeb editions. :) Two volumes each for the illiad and the odyssey. And you get a bonus victorian english translation as well (though there is a modern edition for both which uses more modern english).

The only commentary I need is a good dictionary. :)

I dunno, I guess I'm just not into commentaries that much, I suppose I much rather read the work itself and draw my own conclusions.

[Bert]

I only have the first 6 books of the Iliad and none of the Odyssey.
I would like to have all the books of both poems.
What is the best way to get them.

How good are your eyes?

My eyes are not bad but that may mean different things to different folks so I'll give a concrete example.
Yesterday I was looking in Cunliffe at two entries of [face=SPIonic]oi=os[/face]. I cannot see if the breathing mark under the circumflex is smooth or rough.
I can read the rest of the print well enough but a breathing and a circumflex over the same letter is hard to tell in Pharr's book and impossible to tell in Cunliffe.

Thanks for the information you have given.

[GlottalGreekGeek]

I just compared the Greek text in Wilcock and Cunliffe - the greek text in Cunliffe is about 2/3 the size of the text in Wilcock. I do not have the Homer Loebs, but the Loebs I do have use about the same type size.

Sometimes the ink in Wilcock (my edition at least) is somewhat gappy, making it occasionally difficult to distinguish between upsilon and omicron or something along those lines, but I do not find it a big deal to check it against Perseus in these few cases.

[Bert]

I just compared the Greek text in Wilcock and Cunliffe - the greek text in Cunliffe is about 2/3 the size of the text in Wilcock. I do not have the Homer Loebs, but the Loebs I do have use about the same type size.

Sometimes the ink in Wilcock (my edition at least) is somewhat gappy, making it occasionally difficult to distinguish between upsilon and omicron or something along those lines, but I do not find it a big deal to check it against Perseus in these few cases.

Thanks for checking that out for me G-string.
Now I won't be afraid to get Willcock's.

[Bert]

I found Willcock available for something over $200. and some entries for approx $35 with a note that they were not available.
($200 is a little steep for this guy.)

Benner seems more readily available but there was no discription so I don't know how many books it covers.
Anybody know?
I also saw some Willcock-- book 1-6 but no 6-12 etc.

[GlottalGreekGeek]

$200? Wow.

The cover price of my Wilcock is £18. I got a new copy at a local university book store for something like $30. Did Wilcock go out of print behind my back?

EDIT : Amazon has only 2 new copies left, but they have Wilcock's Iliad I-XII for $31 new, and a used copy for $22.25 - from what website did you get that crazy $200 price?

P.S. Benner has Iliad books 1, 3, 9, 18 and 22 in full, as well as excerpts from books 2, 5, 6, 15, 16, 19 and 24. Since Benner's commentary is availible at Perseus, the only reason to buy Benner is to use the self-contained vocabulary in the back.

[mingshey]

If you are okay with online texts
http://www.mikrosapoplous.gr/zpd/iliad_u10.zip
and
http://www.mikrosapoplous.gr/zpd/odyssey.zip
provide msword files for all the books of both poems.

At least I'm satisfied with the hardcopy of these files. Although the look is very humble indeed when it's spring-bound, the letters are very clear and nice.

[Bert]

$200? Wow.

The cover price of my Wilcock is £18. I got a new copy at a local university book store for something like $30. Did Wilcock go out of print behind my back?

EDIT : Amazon has only 2 new copies left, but they have Wilcock's Iliad I-XII for $31 new, and a used copy for $22.25 - from what website did you get that crazy $200 price?

I can't find it again. I think it was $212.00 for a used copy.
On Amazon I can't find any I-XII available. Could you please send me a link to the page?
I did see some entries at different sites that don't specify which books it covers. No description of the content what so ever.

P.S. Benner has Iliad books 1, 3, 9, 18 and 22 in full, as well as excerpts from books 2, 5, 6, 15, 16, 19 and 24. Since Benner's commentary is availible at Perseus, the only reason to buy Benner is to use the self-contained vocabulary in the back.

One more reason would be to not have to run to the computer to check something.
If I see Benner for a good deal sometime I may buy it but for now I am more interested in getting all the books (in Greek.)
I'll go check out mingsey's links.

[Bert]

If you are okay with online texts
http://www.mikrosapoplous.gr/zpd/iliad_u10.zip
and
http://www.mikrosapoplous.gr/zpd/odyssey.zip
provide msword files for all the books of both poems.

At least I'm satisfied with the hardcopy of these files. Although the look is very humble indeed when it's spring-bound, the letters are very clear and nice.

I tried it but I don't have the required font. (Vusillus Old Face.)

Edit: Only book 1 so far has that font. The others I opened use Athena.

Thanks Mingshey.

[GlottalGreekGeek]

I can't find it again. I think it was $212.00 for a used copy.
On Amazon I can't find any I-XII available. Could you please send me a link to the page?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 8&v=glance

[Paul]

I tried it but I don't have the required font. (Vusillus Old Face.)
Edit: Only book 1 so far has that font. The others I opened use Athena.

Hi Bert,

Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but you aren't constrained by the font the author used. Simply open the file in MS Word, select all the text (click and drag or, better, CTRL + a) and then select in MS Word any Unicode font that you do have.

Cordially,

Paul

[Bert]

Thanks Paul. You are right.