Homer's Odyssey 6-8: Greek Text with Facing Vocabulary and Commentary

Check out my review of Steadman's Symposium to see why I love this series so much. Again Steadman gives us a large font, this time not a blow up of the Oxford Text but what appears to be his own font design. It is about 75% bigger than Loeb, dark, straight, really a joy to read. Since Steadman does not use up the entire page as he does in the Symposium (which includes the Oxford critical apparatus on the bottom, which this text lacks) he could have made the font even bigger, a quibble which he will perhaps address in future editions/volumes.It cannot be overemphasized how wonderful it is to have the vocab on facing pages. The vocab in Homer is unbearably extensive, and what a joy not to be flipping through a lexicon. You can still look up some words, and you probably will if nothing else to find the roots, which can be helpful in vocab retention, but Homeric vocab is pretty straightforward, and Steadman's glosses cover the range of meanings well.His grammatical notes are not as extensive as they are in his Symposium. There Steadman gives you explanations and interpretations of EVERY conceivable difficulty. Maybe because the syntax of Homer is much simpler than the syntax of Plato, Steadman is less generous with his help here. Of course, he has to give you about twice as much vocab here than in Plato, so he may simply not have room. Also not in this volume are the helpful same-page paradigms which he gives in his Plato.None of this is meant to knock this book. I absolutely recommend both books, and I intend to buy virtually anything Steadman produces in this series, which are priced very reasonably.As to the Odyssey itself, it is either the greatest book ever written in any language, or it is the second greatest after the Iliad. Starting on Book 6 was a good idea since Beetham covers book 5. I don't know anything about Geoffrey Steadman, but I hope he is either a young man or he writes very fast. I want to see him cover all of Homer and as much of Plato as he can.

This is a brilliant book (as are the others in this series)! For someone attempting to read Homer on his or her own, it is an absolute must-have (along with Pamela Draper's Iliad, Book 1 (Bk. 1)). Steadman uses Clyde Pharr's brilliant Aeneid format (I'm always surprised that there aren't more texts out there that do so!). His notes are helpful and geared toward getting you to be able to read the text. Since vocabulary is the biggest hurdle for the beginner attempting to read Homer, having such a sizable about of vocabulary on the facting page is a god-send. Since Steadman begins with Book VI of the Odyssey, it makes it a perfect segue from Frank Beetham's marvelous Beginning Greek With Homer, which uses Book V as the reading text.Steadman has made all of his book available online for no charge. The paper edition is so inexpensive, and the book is just so wonderful, that you should get it anyway. You'll be happy you did!

Well edited and a pleasure to read. I think a parallel text would be even better as I use Cotterill's metric English translation as a guide as he is very close to the original. I am reading this without a teacher and find that many books don't much consider self-taught students enough. A Reading Course in Homeric Greek by Schoder and Horrigan also suffers from this reluctance to consider the self-taught student as much as they could. I imagine that as Classics Departments die on the vine there will be more and more enthusiasts who teach themselves. I did a year of Greek as a medical student 30 years ago.

Great books for reading Greek. Enables beginning students to focus on reading the beautiful language of the Ancient Greeks without having to look up every other word. Steadman has done the community of readers of Ancient Greek a great service!

this is the best way to learn Homer in Greek. You get the Greek, footnotes and modest commentary. The best.

This series is the best so far. Although other series (Cambridge Greek and Latin) can supplement this one well.

I don't have anything new to say, beyond what most of the other reviewers are saying.Just fantastic - Steadman has delivered (and is delivering - he keeps producing these editions) a real public service. My Greek is (and always has been) a bit rubbish, but with this - I can just read Homer, pretty much straight off - and NO translation even comes close to that.

I have to agree with the other commenters in praising this book: it really makes reading Ancient Greek, and, for that matter, Homer, a lot less painful; in fact, it makes it enjoyable. Excellent work. With the drudgery of endless dictionary/perseus checking eliminated, one can simply enjoy the Homer, which - maybe I'm crazy - feels clear and concise in the original. Much nicer than reading it in translation.

Very good format, I found it very useful as a Classics university student studying the Odyssey