IN editing this first portion of the Iliad, I have to express my thanks for some valuable hints supplied by Mr Arthur Holmes, the Cambridge Editor of the Catena Classicorum, and also by Mr D. B. Monro, Fellow of Oriel College. Mr Monro's own edition of Homer is, I trust, soon forthcoming. An article, by him, in the Quarterly Review of October, 1868, on the present state of the Homeric question, will be read with interest, and should be consulted. For criticism of the poetry of Homer, I know nothing that the student can readily obtain at all equal to Mr Matthew Arnold's Lectures on Translating Homer and Last Words about Homer. I have myself been deeply indebted to them, and gladly take an opportunity of acknowledging my obligation. b PREFACE. THE notes in this edition of Homer have been written to assist beginners. My wish has been to give a short and clear account of such words and constructions as seemed most to need explanation or comment. The grammatical references have been made to Jelf's Greek Grammar, from which also the technical terms I have employed have been mainly borrowed. I have also quoted largely from Buttmann's Lexilogus—a work of especial value to the Homeric student, not only for the actual results attained, but also, and perhaps chiefly, for the method followed in their attainment. I am aware, indeed, that the facts thus reached cannot be considered as exhausting the subject they deal with. Much fresh work has been done already; much more will doubtless be done in the future, especially by the new light which comparative philology has thrown upon modern scholarship. But its actual results are as yet slender and tentative, and I have therefore thought it better as far as possible to avoid introducing them into a work intended chiefly for boys, who need, above all things, definiteness, precision, certainty. Having then endeavoured to clear some of the first obstacles which the student will encounter, and to put him into the right way of working for himself, I will add only that, to know Homer well, he must read Homer for himself often and carefully; and he will find him after all his own best commentator. Ex ipso Homero Homerus optimè intelligitur. With the difficulties of the Homeric text I have not ventured to grapple. I determined from the first to take some text of recognized authority, and to follow it without question. The choice seemed to lie between that of Dindorf and Bekker; and I have taken the former, as departing less widely from the ordinary readings, and containing fewer (apparently) conjectural emendations. There are only two passages in which I am aware of having departed from it, viz. in I. 97, where by a carelessness which it is too late to correct I have allowed the insertion of λοιμοῖο βαρείας χεῖρας ἀφέξει, in the place of Dindorf's reading Aavaoîow deikéa λoiyòv årwσeɩ, and in IV. 212 (explained in the notes and list of errata), where the note on the passage implies a punctuation which I had intended to substitute for the one which Dindorf has sanctioned. The entire question of the text is beset with its own special difficulties. The text, as we possess it, is based upon a revision by the Alexandrian grammarians of the third and second centuries B. C. Eight copies of Homer are known to us by name as having been in their hands-the copy of Antimachus, of Aristotle the philosopher, and ai èk tóλewv, bearing the names of states and not of individuals; and it was with these as their material that the Alexandrians set themselves to the work of criticism'. The names that best deserve notice are those of Zenodotus, in the first half of the third century-of Aristophanes, who flourished about the middle of the third century—and of his late contemporary and pupil ARISTARCHUS, 1 The word "criticism" is, perhaps, misleading; but I know of none that could be substituted for it. For a discussion of the serious imperfections of the Alexandrians both in their aim and method, vide Wolf's Prolegomena, cap. xxxviu. |