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(More customer reviews)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.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Homer's Odyssey 6-8: Greek Text with Facing Vocabulary and Commentary
Facing each set of 20 lines from Books 6-8 of Thomas W. Allen's edition of Homer's Odyssey (originally published by Oxford University Press in 1908) is a single page of corresponding vocabulary and intermediate level grammatical commentary. Once readers have memorized the core vocabulary list, they will be able to read the Homeric Greek and consult all relevant vocabulary and commentary without turning a page.
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