Project Components

Although electronic texts and translations of the Iliad and Odyssey are currently available in various web sites, they are no substitute for the Homer Multitext, which offers far more. The multitext is designed to display known variants from ancient papyri, from the scholia (marginal commentary in the medieval manuscripts, which derive from ancient scholarship), from the texts of the medieval manuscripts, and from ancient quotations. All these sources are presented in a historical framework. The multitext also offers links to supplementary materials, including translations, ancient as well as modern commentaries, and information about ancient Greek libraries, scholars, and scholarship.

A major component of the project is to offer unprecedented access to the tenth century manuscript of the Iliad known commonly as the Venetus A (Marciano Gr. Z. 454 [= 822]). You can now view and download digital images of this manuscript, as well as two others from the Marciana Library. This manuscript, the oldest and best, on which all modern editions are ultimately based, contains in its marginal commentaries a wealth of information about the history of the text. These commentaries in the margin, or scholia, derive mainly from the work of scholars at the Library at Alexandria in Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman eras. (Click here to view folios from a 1901 facsimile edition of the manuscript.) It has been a central goal of the project to obtain and publish high-resolution digital images of the manuscript, together with an electronic edition of the Greek text of the scholia along with an English translation. The inital publication of the images is now available.

The following resources have also been developed in connection with the Multitext and are currently available:

Domenico Comparetti, Homeri Ilias cum Scholiis (1901 facsimile edition of Venetus A)

Casey Dué, "Achilles' Golden Amphora in Aeschines’ Against Timarchus and the Afterlife of Oral Tradition"

Gregory Nagy, Homeric Questions

Gregory Nagy (trans.), The Epic Cycle as summarized by Proclus

Homer and the Papyri

Jean Baptiste Gaspard D'Ansse de Villoison, Homeri Ilias cum Scholiis   (1788)

A grant from the University of Houston will allow our team to add more components soon.