Customer Reviews

Selections from Homer's Iliad

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have a great sentimental attachment to Benner's Selections, as it was with this textbook that I first read Homer in Greek. I loved the selections, etc.!

However, as students have later come to me with their Homer reading projects, I've placed this side-by-side with the notes in M.M. Willcock's "Iliad of Homer: Books I-XII" and "Iliad of Homer: Books XIII-XXIV," and it just doesn't measure up. Willcock's work is fresher (1978/1984 vs. 1903), and he gives better and fuller help with Homer's language. (Also, he happens to be the more sensitive reader of Homer's poetry.)

If there's a reason to stick with Benner, it's that it's cheaper and gives excellently chosen selections (grammar overview + text + notes) in one volume, as opposed to Willcock's two-volume format covering the entire Iliad. Also, you've just got to love a book (=Benner) that begins, "This edition of the Iliad includes the books commonly required for admission to American colleges..." Also, Benner has a wonderfully written and complete glossary in the back, whereas with Willcock you need also to buy a good Homer lexicon (that is, Cunliffe's "Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect," which is much better than Autenrieth's brief work IMHO).

This text is probably the best choice for those who have spent a year learning the basics of Homeric (or Attic) Greek and want to experience some payoff for all the hours spent conjugating second aorists and declining endless varieties of third-declension nouns. The selections consist of long excerpts (five books of the Iliad are included in their totality) of the best parts of the Iliad. As a whole, the selections comprise a sort of "Essential Iliad" inasmuch as they convey the scope of the entire poem from the wrath of Achilles to the burial of Hector.
My only gripe with the editors' choice of what to include is with the omission of Hera's deception of Zeus.

Along with the selections is a commentary which helps elucidate those words and phrases here and there that are likely to cause the relative beginner trouble in construing the sense. In general, the commentary is quite good, though it does let the reader down from time to time. It won't, for example, explain to you what the connective particle in line 8 of Book One means even though no beginner will know what to make of it. Thus, a bit more help could have been given, particularly in the area of particles.

In addition to the commentary, there is a vocabulary comprising all the words used in the excerpts. This is a real bonus, since rifling through big lexicons can be tedious, particularly for a relative beginner. Also, all hapax legomena (words used only once) are listed at the bottom of every page of text.

All in all, then, Benner's Selections From The Iliad is a must-have for those who want to expand upon an elementary understanding of Homeric Greek.

So, you've made it through a year of college-level classical Greek -- Attic, or perhaps one of those texts that starts out with Homeric Greek. Now you're ready to read the Iliad, the single greatest work of western literature. What you now need is a good solid school text, with vocabulary, grammatical appendices, and copious notes. This is the book for you. I used this as an undergraduate years ago and still cherish my hardcover copy. This is a new, paperback edition, presumably the same old standard-issue Benner. I know of none better. I've seen lots of school editions of the Iliad, many pre-dating and some post-dating Benner, but none compare with this edition for overall utility. Is there anything as exciting as reading the Iliad in Greek? It seems curious, perhaps even paradoxical, that a 2700 year old poem is as pure and as fresh as the morning dew, more alive and vibrant than anything that has been written since. For those who are coming to the poem for the first time, you can't do better than to have an old schoolmaster like Benner take you through the best parts of the poem with lots of helpful guidance.

This is a good resource for all the books of the Iliad; however, someone just beginning to read Homer or any original text may need more help than Benner provides. Consider either Iliad I by Pamela Ann Draper or Iliad I by Simon Pulleyn. Draper is better on nuts and bolts grammar and has the vocabulary on the facing page. Pulleyn has the vocabulary in the back of the book, but is better on literary and historical issues. His introduction is excellent: wide-ranging but concise; written in clear, stylish, non-academic prose. These texts cover only Book I. This is a good thing since it allows both authors to limit the vocabularies and Pulleyn to provide a complete commentary on that one book.

This text is an incredible resource for any serious student of Greek. The poem contained in this edition is in its entirety replete with grammatical notes, a lexicon, and index. Especially useful for the active translator are the reference appendices. For the especially confusing, and grammatically challenging, lines there are line by line notations which either explain spelling changes, textual issues, or forward the reader to the specific gramatical reference. Finally, the lexicon is clear, concise, and extremely helpful when trying to ascertain the meaning of words that tend to seriously morph in form. I have used no text like it and continue to work through Homer with this user-friendly guide--always continuing to build a serious and rich grammatical understanding of the text.

Allan Rogers Benner provides us with a wonderfully complete book that would allow anyone with at least a moderate knowledge of Attic Greek to explore the world of Homer in the original (as of 300-or-so BC) text.
The text is set up in such a way so as for a beginner in the Homeric language to work their way through without much trouble: the book starts with an enlightening commentary on the state of the language itself as we have it in addition to contextual and historical analysis. The text itself uses a font which is more than large enough to recognize all of the accents and breathing marks as well as the iota-subscript. He has selected passages from some of the more important parts of the epic, Books I, III, IX, XVIII, and XXII are all even contained in their entirety for example, and there are also passages from numerous other books. Additionally, Homeric hapaxes (words that only appear once) are glossed on the bottom of the page. After the text, there are almost 150 pages of notes to aid in the understanding of trickier passages, and there are also Attic equavilances of archaic Homeric forms. Benner also provides a very brief overview of Homeric language both morphologically and syntactically that is ideal for reference should one encounter an unfamiliar use of an optative, for example. And lastly, and most importantly, there is a complete glossary in the back to avoid the unfortunate shuffling between books often required of beginning classicists.
Overall this book is absolutely ideal for an introductory college-level course in the Homeric dialect, and very well deserves to become the standard such text used. This book is also perfect for someone who would like to work on their own on reading the Iliad in Greek, provided of course they have at least some background in Attic forms and syntax. Benner deserves high praise for his work and efforts, as he has truly produced one of the greatest texts for Greek students at the intermediate level.

My review does not address the content but rather this edition. When they chose an old copy of Benner to make copies from they did not choose a clean txt. There is writing that is illegible and makes many of the words hard to read. Some pages (i.e. 32 and 33) are downright so horribly copied as to be useless. Those two pages are partially covered up by some blob and page 33 is totally slanted and some of it is oddly magnified, the same thing you see when you put a book on a copier and don't straighten it enough. This is really inexcusable. Few enough students attempt reading Homer as it is, don't chase them away by making them pay a lot of money for a "new" edition that is so poorly put together. Do yourself a favor and buy a used copy of an older edition.

This is simply a printing of a public domain book available on Google books. The text has writing in it and there are pages that are illegible. I do not encourage you to purchase this book. Instead, get the less expensive and much better printing done by Red River Books.

More than just for my school requirements, this antique book is a pleasure to look through. This seller comes highly recommended.