Page:The Odyssey (Butler).djvu/17

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PREFACE.
ix

print these in a slightly different type, with marginal references to the Iliad, and had marked them to this end in my M.S. I found, however, that the translation would be thus hopelessly scholasticised, and abandoned my intention. I would nevertheless again urge on those who have the management of our University presses, that they would render a great service to students if they would publish a Greek text of the Odyssey with the Iliadic passages printed in a different type, and with marginal references. I have given the British Museum a copy of the Odyssey with the Iliadic passages underlined and referred to in M.S.; I have also given an Iliad marked with all the Odyssean passages, and their references;[1] but copies of both the Iliad and Odyssey so marked ought to be within easy reach of all students.

Any one who at the present day discusses the questions that have arisen round the Iliad since Wolf's time, without keeping it well before his reader's mind that the Odyssey was demonstrably written from one single neighbourhood, and hence (even though nothing else pointed to this conclusion) presumably by one person only—that it was written certainly before 750, and in all probability before 1000 B.C.—that the writer of this very early poem was demonstrably familiar with the Iliad as we now have it, borrowing as freely from those books whose genuineness has been most impugned, as from those which are admitted to be by Homer—any one who fails to keep these points well before his readers, is hardly dealing equitably by them. Any one on the


  1. The press marks of these books are, for the Odyssey, Bks. 3, c. 3, 1893, 80, and for the Iliad, Bks. 3, c. 2, 1894, 80.