Does anyone know what happened to West’s edition of the Iliad? It doesn’t appear to be available for purchase at any online site.
I know that there were some critical reviews of it when it was first published, but was it really so bad that it would go out of print so soon?
hi, it’s definitely still for sale online as per usual, e.g. on amazon - don’t search for “west iliad”, search for “west ilias”. cheers 
Thanks for the suggestion, but I have tried that.
Amazon itself does not carry it in stock. But it does indicate that the vol. I hardcover is available used for $296.99 from one 3rd party vendor.
While the paperback is listed as ‘Out of print - limited availability’.
The vol. II hardcover is available for $774.03 (one in new condition and one used). There is also one used copy available for $2117.31!
The paperback is only availabe used from 6 vendors ranging in price from $19.95 to $124.80.
I should not have stated in my first post that West’s edition is not at all availabe online. But it is becoming very scarce and I have not heard any news of a reprint soon appeaaring. 
Just a follow up for those who may be interested in West’s edition.
I did manage to find a site that is still selling new copies. It is located here:
https://www.degruyter.com/cont/glob/neutralMbwEn.cfm?rc=36212.
Both volumes are available in paperback.
Nice to find out that I was mistaken in assuming it had gone completely out of print. 
Incidentally, what’s so good/bad about this edition? ML West is an absolutely phenomenal scholar.
It’s an excellent edition. First of all, he has collated a huge number of new papyri, about 700. I think the “controversy” (if there is one) is about it being a bold edition. West’s interpretes the scholia in a new way (the relative role of Aristarchus and Didymus) and has his own ideas about orthography. He isn’t afraid to bracket lines and to transfer them to the critical apparatus. He rejects a “multitext” edition and basically thinks that there was one original Iliad which was written down; he doesn’t believe that all variant readings are of equal value - on the contrary, in each case in principle only one of them can really be original (though probably on this point his critic’s, Gregory Nagy’s, views are more controversial than West’s - though this will not be obvious the casual reader of Nagy’s critique). The issues involved are really quite complicated, so I’m not even trying to get into any detail, and I couldn’t do it anyway. You could start by reading two reviews in the BMCR and West’s reply:
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2000/2000-09-12.html
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2001/2001-06-21.html
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2001/2001-09-06.html
There is also a more favorable review by Richard Janko somewhere… I have also skimmed through West’s “Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad” and some of his and other people’s articles in papers on related subjects.
After all this reading (and despite difficulties it’s passionating, delving deep into the Homeric question), I was left with an even increasing admiration for ML West, a phenomenal scholar indeed… As far as I can say (and I can’t call this an informed judgement ), West’s Iliad is excellent and its critiques are flawed.
Sir, you have done me a great favour.
I’m reading the Iliad in West’s edition. (I’ve read it four times previously in Greek, but I’m not a professional scholar.) While I recognize that West is a great scholar whose knowledge of ancient Greek is unrivalled today and who has made many important contributions to ancient Greek studies, some aspects of his Iliad trouble me.
Specifically, West approaches the editorial task with a very strongly held view of the origins of the Iliad: he believes it was composed in Ionia in writing about 650 BCE by someone who was both a master of the oral tradition and literate. While this is certainly a plausible and defensible theory, it isn’t shared by many scholars, and it strikes me that too little is known about how the Iliad came into being to reach such a definitive conclusion.
Consistent with his ideas about the origin of the Iliad, West edits it treating it like any other ancient text that we know was composed in writing by an identifiable author, such as Thucydides or Plato. West normalizes grammatical forms, based on what he thinks a seventh-century Ionian would have written in light of epigraphic evidence and comparative philology (but doesn’t do this consistently: for example, his text isn’t psilotic and doesn’t Ionicize all the forms that are believed to be Atticisms; a thoroughly consistent text printed as a seventh-century Ionian would have written it would be unreadable today). He introduces conjectures of his own and of other scholars, many of who lived before the nature of oral poetry began to be understood. He brackets lines on the basis of his own ideas about what the supposed author was trying to say. In other words, West’s text is a very personal one that reflects his ideas, which may well be valid, but may subsequently be shown to be wrong.
In my view, a good and useful text of the Iliad would hew more closely to the medieval manuscript tradition, because that is the Iliad we have and we don’t know very much about where or when it came into existence. Information about what scholars think were the original forms of words, to my way of thinking, belongs in a commentary or in a work such as Chantraine. The Homeric poems are unlike other texts, and in my view, a good text of the Iliad would not attempt to substitute editorial judgment for the evidence, i.e., the medieval manuscript tradition, at least not unless absolutely necessary. (I’m not against supplementing the paradosis to a lesser degree by papyri, and, where justified, readings of ancient scholars such as Aristarchus and ancient quotations that resolve genuine problems, but these sources should be used very sparingly because, in the end, despite everything that has been written about the work of the Alexandrians, we just can’t be sure what they were up to: whether they were working from manuscripts or just making things up based on their preconceptions).
It’s possible that a text such as West’s after some time will come to look like one of those 19th or early 20th century texts that translated the Iliad into Aeolic (I’m thinking of Fick) or printed digammas in the probably mistaken assumption that they were pronounced in “Homer’s” day (Van Leeuven), before Parry et al. showed how different linguistic stages could be incorporated into the poem.
That said, West’s critical notes are very scrupulous and complete, so that you can always tell what is in the medieval manuscript tradition by digging in the apparatus. (Van Thiel’s edition, which offers a text more along the lines I would prefer, with minimal editorial intervention, provides a stripped-down apparatus that doesn’t give as much information about the evidence.) But you shouldn’t have to dig in the apparatus to discover the actual evidence.
Basically, you would like to have van Thiel’s conservative text with West’s superior apparatus. I think it’s largely a matter of taste but your opinion is very legitimate.
The main problem with van Thiel’s text is that it doesn’t bracket or otherwise take account of what seem to be post-Aristarchean interpolations. (This has been discussed at least in reviews of his Odyssey by Richard Janko and by Michael Apthorp, as well as Apthorp’s monograph “Manuscript evidence for interpolation in Homer”.)
Anyway, maybe you’d like to join the discussion on related subjects under the thread “Sleeping under the portico” (and has veered seriously off-topic).
Basically, West produced a critical edition on the Ilias…in line with textual criticism’s theories and practices? I do agree with a lot of what you’re saying but some points.
“He introduces conjectures of his own and of other scholars, many of who lived before the nature of oral poetry began to be understood.”
Every edited text is like this, that is to say from personal theorising. As for oral poetry…well two things 1) Undoubtedly the texts are part of an antique oral tradition and continued to exist in one, regardless of this fact they eventually ended up as texts and are thus subject to the same tools as every other text. They’re not magical. 2) I don’t think its worth talking about our understanding of oral poetry overall, let’s face it we haven’t so much adopted oral poetics as established a silly model of privileged comparision with the Slavic stuff. There’s a reason anthropologists etc think our understanding of oral poetry is facile…
“That said, West’s critical notes are very scrupulous and complete, so that you can always tell what is in the medieval manuscript tradition by digging in the apparatus. (Van Thiel’s edition, which offers a text more along the lines I would prefer, with minimal editorial intervention, provides a stripped-down apparatus that doesn’t give as much information about the evidence.) But you shouldn’t have to dig in the apparatus to discover the actual evidence.”
I don’t see the problem here, he marshals the evidence and produces a text. You can check the results for yourself. You shouldn’t be reading with just one version of the text anyway unless you’re reading for pleasure.
Anyway yes it has its problems, but is still a phenomenal work.
Yes, exactly. A more conservative text such as van Thiel’s with West’s apparatus. I recognize the problem with van Thiel’s failure to bracket weakly attested lines that seem to be interpolated (and Janko suggests that even West doesn’t bracket enough of them), but I think West’s text veers much to far in the direction of his own personal preferences. My particular gripe is West’s delight in “restoring” philologically reconstructed forms that aren’t found in the paradosis. (But, as I mentioned, he doesn’t do this consistently, and a text that reads just as he thinks it would have in mid-seventh century Ionia would be unreadable today, with no word division, no double consonants, no breathings, no omicron upsilons or epsilon iotas, with qoppas, psilotic, etc.).
West’s interventions in the text proceed from his view that the Iliad was composed in writing by a single individual in the middle of the seventh century. Consequently, he edits the Iliad in the same way that he would edit Thucydides or Plato, excising verses he thinks don’t belong, reconstructing forms he thinks were changed over the course of the Iliad’s transmission (based on his understanding of the history of the text), and going to far as to insert into the text conjectures of his own and other modern scholars (many of whom did not understand the oral nature of the Homeric poems as well as we think we do). My discomfort with West’s text is precisely that he edits the Iliad in the same way as he would edit other texts with a better understood history.
As I mentioned, West is a very great scholar, and his views are certainly defensible and deserve to be considered, but, quite frankly, I personally think we just don’t know enough about the origins and history of the Iliad for him to treat the text as radically as he does. The medieval paradosis is the main source of evidence for the text of the Iliad, and it’s the most reliable. It’s relatively uniform–in better shape than tragedy and comedy, for example. We know too little about papyri (what was their source?), ancient scholarship (were they working from manuscripts or just conjecturing?) and ancient quotations (did they look up the passages they quoted or did they rely on their memory?). To my Wolfian way of thinking, a good text of the Iliad presents a lightly edited version of the medieval paradosis, and the rest belongs in the apparatus, commentaries or treatises.
And by the way, I am reading for pleasure, but I use both van Thiel and occasionally even Allen along with West. I use mainly West, despite my reservations, because he provides the best apparatus.
By the way, West’s Iliad was originally published by the Leipzig publishing house B.G. Teubner, as part of their Bibliotheca Teubneriana series of Greek and Latin texts, which goes back 150+ years. Sadly, Teubner ran into financial difficulties (I’m told they didn’t manage the reunification or their East and West German branches very well) and divested itself of its Classics titles, including the Bibliotheca Teubneriana, selling them to Saur in Munich. But after a few years, Saur sold them again to de Gruyter, a major publisher of academic books based in Berlin (I think). Although Amazon doesn’t carry West’s Iliad, you can order it on-line directly from De Gruyter: http://www.degruyter.com/
You can order van Thiel’s Iliad, the un-West, from amazon.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Homeri-Ilias-Iterum-recognovit-Helmut/dp/3487137062/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364135103&sr=8-1-fkmr0 , and also his Odyssey: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Homeri-Odyssea-Bibliotheca-Weidmanniana-Homer/dp/3487094584/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364135265&sr=1-1
It’s ironic that the Oxford editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are nearly 100 years old now and which are notoriously unreliable, list for about $100 each (although they’re hardcover books and you can get them cheaper from Amazon or used). It’s part of Oxford’s (and Cambridge’s) project to throttle the Classics by raising the prices of basic texts out of the reach of anyone who doesn’t own a house in the Hamptons.
Thanks for all that information regarding West’s Iliad. I was completely unaware of the financial difficulties Teubner had to deal with.
De Gruyter does offer some of their books through Amazon. Shame they don’t do it with West’s text since it is more cumbersome to order through their website than Amazon’s. I’ve run into a couple of problems when ordering from them. Seems they are still having issues with the major “upgrade” they did to their website last year.
Rather off-topic to this thread, but I thought I’d go ahead and post this link: http://www.klincksieck.com/
Looks like a revised edition of Chantraine’s Grammaire homérique is being published.
That’s good news! The price is typically high. Note that this is just the volume 1. For me at least the volume 2 (syntax) is much more useful, but I guess we’ll have that too. My copy of vol 1 is from the first impression of 1942 and has its quaint charm though: the pages have been cut open with a knife, the book is dirty and dusty and smelly in a nice antiquarian way, and the Greek font is difficult to read like they used to be in the Good Old Times…
Yes, yes, nasty OxBridge (working together as a conglomeration of course!) trying to throttle the Classics! How so very clever though, of them to hide this via constant access drives, sponsoring the Classics in school, producing textbooks, summer courses and what not on one end, handing out fellowships and positions on the other…so…delightfully insidious I don’t believe I haven’t seen it before…Actually you’ll find its just economics and the usual stuff.
The Oxford texts are reasonably priced, much more reasonably than the Teubners, £16 for a hardback volume is pretty damn good, even if they’re reprints. In fact you can even occasionally get hold of these softback student editions for cheap, they last ages, since like 2008 or so no problem with constant reading. Surprising for softbacks…
Nice pics, Scribo. I had no idea Oxford put paperback versions of their classical texts.
As you indicated, even the hardcover editions of the Oxford Iliad can be had for about $35 each on Amazon. That doesn’t strike me as being unreasonable.
constant access drives, sponsoring the Classics in school, producing textbooks, summer courses and what not on one end, handing out fellowships and positions on the other…so..
You’re referring to the Universities. It’s their Presses that are the culprits. I’m sure it’s is just economics, and the high prices aren’t limited to Classics. I was being facetious.
But why is Lewis & Short, a book that was typeset 130 years ago, now priced at USD$250?
I’m American but my copy of one of the volumes of the OCT Homer series still has a sticker on it that reads Price 12/6.
Yes, sorry. I think it might have something to do with the anti OxBridge feeling one always gets in England.
I don’t know too much about economics post archaic Greece I’m afraid - god knows who the bribe guzzling basileus’ are in this situation. I suspect it has something to do with supply and demand. Which is fair enough, though I really do wish things were cheaper. I literally can’t afford books unless I’m lucky enough to stumble across them at heavy discounts. I do agree that in some cases its ridiculous, dictionaries and what not. These are hardly uber specialised works like the LFGe or Ernout and Millet… something does need to change in the way printing is handled.
I do worry about how Classical Studies is going to sustain itself as an academic discipline. I don’t how younger scholars can accumulate a library. True, many texts are available on line, but they’re older texts that are out of copyright and they typically don’t have critical apparatuses, which are essential for anyone doing serious academic work.
The OCT texts have a pathetically anachronistic note on the back cover about how they are designed to allow undergraduates to accumulate a library to last a lifetime. That was true 40-50 years ago, when I was an undergraduate, but at today’s prices . . . . Ultimately, I didn’t pursue an academic career, and, though not wealthy, I’m in a situation where I can buy most books that I covet, but I feel for younger scholars starting out today, especially when I see how much books I bought 50 years ago cost today.
Ha, sustainment and all that is another discussion all together. Unfortunately I’m tempted to answer, simply, it won’t. As for young scholars and libraries, we can’t. Everything I have is a gift, donation, prize, or purchased ridiculously cut price. I have the most impressive personal library of any young Classicist I know and its still…paltry.