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(More customer reviews)I have just finished using Steadman's edition of Homer Odyssey 9-12 in my fourth semester Greek course here at Miami University. We read Book 11. 362-696 in seven class days, a little less than 50 lines a day. The students found this a reasonable amount of Homer to read, by their own account spending around two hours per class to write out an accurate translation. The amount of vocabulary and commentary was sufficient for them to read this amount of Greek with very few additional resources--although some of my students regularly use Perseus for parsing weird forms. There is a glossary of more common words in the back and a synopsis of the verb luo'''. As in Steadman's other volumes, the commentary is restricted to grammatical matters rather than literary matters. I think this works great in a classroom setting, since an instructor can decide what elements to emphasize in discussing the text. There are some basic introductory remarks about Homeric language and meter which are concise and useful.
I use the JACT Reading Greek textbook and the Homer selection there is taken from Odyssey 6. Steadman has another volume covering books 6-8, and I toyed with the idea of using that to follow up the JACT selection. However, Odyssey 6-8 are not the most scintillating reading in the Odyssey, whereas books 9-12 are nothing if not scintillating. Steadman's texts are meant to be read from beginning to end, but they are also designed to be selectable, so there is no problem starting and stopping anywhere you please. All that students need is right there on the facing page. In fact it is possible to download the pdf for free and select a few pages if you just want to give a taste of Homer, but the book itself is so reasonably priced, it is worth it for students to buy.
The text is based on T.W.Allen's 1908 Greek edition of the Odyssey, which is out of copyright. It is reproduced in a somewhat unattractive font that could be a little bigger in my humble opinion, but that is quibbling. Since the book is self-published, there are errors here and there, but not many. Moreover, it is possible to contact the author via his Blog with errors and he will correct them in future versions. This is a tremendous boon to Greek instructors everywhere, to have a low-priced intermediate text that has handy resources for students who are just starting to read Homer. Compared to other texts that have glossaries and commentaries inconveniently placed in the back of the book, this text reduces the tedium of flipping back and forth. Steadman has done for these books of the Odyssey what Clyde Pharr's version has done for the first half of the Aeneid.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Homer's Odyssey 9-12: Greek Text with Facing Vocabulary and Commentary
Facing each set of 20 lines from Books 9-12 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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