TLGMarathon: Odyssey, resources

Greek Homeric Greek and Early Greek Poetry
1

So, I thought this topic could serve as a place to efficiently display the items of interest for the first reading of the Odyssey. I know this has been discussed in several other places, but as a part of my the TLGMarathon series, I thought it would be nice to have it all conveniently stored in the first post of a topic, and not scattered all over a thread, or several threads, buried under loads of all too interesting opinions about the items that distracts (which has been my experience in the digging on the forum). If I may ask you to name your favorite(or any!) resources first in your comments, and then any eventual opinion underneath, and then I will update my first post so that anyone who wants material for this kind of endeavor, modern in particular, only needs to look for “TLGMarathon”(I plan to do this with every text that I’ll be reading) and then finds a list πεπληρωμένον ὡς μάλιστα ἀλλὰ καὶ εὐμέτρως in the first post. If you come across anything new in particular, I would be delighted to update the list(s). It’s always more difficult to keep up with the new stuff, especially since there’s that 2 year gap in L’Année Phil. that hinders my sleep at night.

Commentary, text, translation

-Homer’s Odyssey : Greek text with facing vocabulary and commentary /Geoffrey Steadman https://geoffreysteadman.com/# (look under “Homer”, and there will be upcoming volumes, now 6-13, 17-20(beta!))
-Odyssey, Book 1 / Homer ; edited with an introduction, translation, commentary, and glossary by Simon Pulleyn; Oxford 2018
-Odyssey. Books XIII and XIV /edited by A. M. Bowie; Cambridge 2014
-Odyssey. Books XVII-XVIII /Homer ; edited by Deborah Steiner; Cambridge 2010
-A narratological commentary on the Odyssey / Irene J. F. de Jong; Camdridge 2001
-The Loeb editions (HUP; 1998^2) (credit: nate.a)
-The Odyssey; Translation and Analysis / R.D. Dawe; Sussex 1993
-Odyssey, Books XIX and XX / Homer ; edited by R.B. Rutherford; Camdridge 1992
-Homer, The Odyssey 1 & 2; With an Introduction, Translation and Commentary by Peter Jones; 1991(might be difficult to come by)
-A commentary on Homer’s Odyssey. Vol. 1, Introduction and books I-VIII / Alfred Heubeck, Stephanie West, J.B. Hainsworth; Oxford 1988

  • A commentary on Homer’s Odyssey. Vol. 2, Books IX-XVI / Alfred Heubeck; Oxford 1989
  • A commentary on Homer’s Odyssey Vol. 3 Books xvii-xxiv / Joseph Russo, Manuel Fernández-Galiano, Alfred Heubeck; Oxford 1992
    -The Odyssey of Homer. Vol. 1I, Books XIII-XXIV / Stanford; 2:e ed. 1958
    +The Odyssey of Homer. Vol. 1, Books I-XII / Stanford; 2:e ed. 1959, (subsequent reprints “with alterations and additions” as it says in my reprint from 1967)
    -Homer’s Odyssey / edited with English notes, appendices, etc. by W. Walter Merry and James Riddell; Oxford 1886
    First vol. https://archive.org/details/homersodyssey00monrgoog/page/n11, second vol.??

Others

-The Making of the Odyssey/M. L. West; Oxford 2014. (credit: nate.a)
-The Chicago Homer: http://homer.library.northwestern.edu Greek text, interlinear translation, greek words parsed and you can see the number of occurrences in early greek epic of every word, as well as make searches for particular words and phrases. As with the TLG, use with caution.

So, these are the material that I have gathered so far. Please come with further suggestions! Help out a madman!

2

Thanks for this! Now, I’m no expert when it comes to Homer, but one might add:

The Making of the Odyssey/M. L. West; Oxford 2014.

The Loeb editions (HUP; 1998^2),

and perhaps (though not so modern)
Scholia Graeca in Homeri Odysseam ex Codicibus Aucta et Emendata/Gulielmus Dindorfius; Oxford, 1855.

3

When it comes to Scholia, wouldn’t Erbse, “Scholia” and van der Valk, “Researches” be a better option? I’ve just ordered https://brill.com/view/title/22910?lang=en which I think will provide all the relevant materials in the bibliographies on similar matters. But I think it may lay outside the scope of TLGMarathon.

4

I am afraid I’m a little short on time to add names but I hope you enjoy your Homer. I would wish you good luck but you won’t need it for a while.

Can I ask what kind of secondary literature / ‘resources’ you are looking for exactly? Enough commentary to help you with language points for comprehension, or something more?

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When it comes to Scholia, wouldn’t Erbse, “Scholia” and van der Valk, “Researches” be a better option?

Not if you’re reading Odyssey :wink:

6

No worries! Thanks! :slight_smile:

My idea is those “resources” that you use in the actual reading through of text. You encounter a problem, linguistic, historical, contextual or what have you, and you quickly want look it up to find a good answer even though you don’t have enough expert knowledge of the scholarly fields to know were to look among tons and tons of monographs and articles. It’s a little vague on purpose, and I maybe should add the lexicons that I use as well.

7

HA! I’m an idiot. Thank you for pointing that out. Of course I never bothered to look if those texts included the Odyssey as well as the Iliad. My bad. :laughing:

8

You should absolutely add Cunliffe’s Lexicon of the Homeric dialect on the list. Available online as well:
http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/cunliffe/#eid=1

9

There’s no mention of the Cambridge “Green and Yellow” commentary on books VI to VIII by Garvie, which I think is particularly good (even if it’s slightly older than the rest).

On the hand, I would bracket Dawe’s book, which is interesting if you’re looking for an analytical dissection of the Odyssey, but certainly no use for a first reading, and also de Jong’s narratological commentary, which frankly bores me to death. I think narratology is a fad that won’t help you at all in your first reading of the Odyssey.

Stephanie West’s part in the Oxford series seems particularly good, and to get started, Pulleyn’s brand new commentary on the first books seems pretty good as well, although I have read only part of it.

For the those who know German, the age old Ameis-Hentze(-Cauer) school commentary is still the best no-nonsense grammatical help.

10

Thank you! Unfortunately, I didn’t know that there was a time limit to update ones posts, so I won’t be able to incorporate your suggestions in the main post as I had planned.

11

I take the liberty to post the resource list by seanjonesbw from the post “Odyssey Reading Group: Introduction” https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bk06uapk0hhhbiz/AADhSIe4VqkH6JygAcW52wL-a?dl=0&preview=Odyssey_Reading_Group_Resources.pdf
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bk06uapk0hhhbiz/AADhSIe4VqkH6JygAcW52wL-a?dl=0&preview=ORGR_Old.pdf