Allow me to amplify the disappointment I expressed yesterday regarding Peter Jones’s edition of Odyssey 1-2. What I have read so far has been of shockingly poor quality. I should not recommend this text to anyone, and I myself shall be requesting Stanford’s commentary immediately. (Actually, Stanford’s was the commentary that I had originally planned to use – unfortunately the library could not find their copy. I shall have to inter-library loan it.) Although I do not have the book with me right now and have not read anywhere near the whole thing, I have no hesitation in making the following comments.
Jones’s edition contains an introduction, brief Homeric grammar, text with translation, and commentary. Every aspect is flawed.
While the book purports to be addressed to students, nearly every paragraph of the introduction is littered with references to the scholarly literature. Fine – but more useful to the student would be a brief explanation of what the scholarly literature actually says. The information that is provided is generally quite basic, but sometimes makes unwarranted assumptions about what students would know (e.g., references to the names of the archaeological layers at Troy without explanation; discussion of elision in formulas before discussing basic scansion). The book can’t seem to find its audience.
To make matters worse, typographical errors abound. There are embarrassing mistakes in the introduction like “where” for “were” (repeated twice on the same page!) and sentences that lack any kind of grammatical coherence. Errors are not limited to the introduction: on the first page of the text there is a typographical error as well (unfortunately I can’t post Greek here at work, so you will just have to believe me).
The translation seems to try to be a literal crib, using devices like brackets to indicate words inserted into the translation not found in the Greek, but it is inevitably forced into departing from literalness in places and into changing the grammatical construction of sentences. I should not object to this ordinarily, for most translations do not strive for literalness, but if you are going to be literal generally, you should probably stick with that approach everywhere unless absolutely forced to deviate. Finally, even the first page of the translation is marred by error (or at least by inferior and less probable selection among possible options – again, I can’t post Greek so you will have to take my word for now).
Would that these were the only problems! The most painful, annoying, and distracting problem with this book is that in the introduction and commentary Greek text is – transliterated! I can only assume that it was considered too expensive to typeset the Greek font in among the Roman. A terrible mistake. The introduction and, especially, the commentary, of course make frequent reference to the Greek, so this text could not be used by the Greek-less. Since, therefore, the only audience for the book is those who read Greek, it was the height of folly to avoid printing Greek words just to save some money. The printer clearly had the capacity; they managed to print the actual text in Greek!
The typography is otherwise hideous as well. The fonts, both Greek and Roman, are ugly. The paragraphs in the introduction are not indented; they are instead separated by a blank line. Such a format is ideal for reading on a screen, but it is the wrong choice for a scholarly dead-tree book.
While I am piling up criticism, I shall also note that the perfunctory section on scansion will only insult the intelligence of someone who knows something about the hexameter, while at the same time utterly failing to provide any worthwhile assistance to the tyro. The final message seems to be: “There are too many exceptions to be worth learning. Oh well. Good luck!” The abbreviated “Homeric grammar” is utterly useless.
As to the content of the commentary itself, I shall withhold comment until I have read further.
I plan to use this edition to read all of book 1; I hope by that time the library will have acquired Stanford’s edition. I post so soon about Jones’s book first because I am so disappointed, but second – and more importantly – to try to save any poor unsuspecting soul who is about to start reading the Odyssey from making the same mistake that I did.