Editing Homer (section)

== Textual transmission ==
[[File:Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, English (born Netherlands) - A Reading from Homer - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4 |''[[A Reading from Homer]]'' (1885) by [[Lawrence Alma-Tadema]]]]

The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a [[scribe]] by the poet and that our inherited versions of the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' were in origin orally dictated texts.<ref>Steve Reece, "Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: From Oral Performance to Written Text", in Mark Amodio (ed.), ''New Directions in Oral Theory'' (Tempe: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005) 43–89.</ref> [[Albert Lord]] noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating.<ref>[[Albert Lord|Albert B. Lord]], ''The Singer of Tales'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts, [[Harvard University Press]], 1960).</ref> Some scholars hypothesise that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kirk |first=G. S. |author-link=Geoffrey Kirk |title=Homer and the Oral Tradition |date=1976 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-0521213097 |page=117 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IgHVXQfEzA4C&pg=PA117}}</ref><ref>{{harvc|last=Foley|first=John Miles|chapter=Oral Dictated Texts|in=Finkelberg|year=2012}} {{doi|10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1029}}</ref>

Other scholars hold that, after the poems were created in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Nagy |first1=Gregory |title=Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond |date=1996 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-0521558488 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6GCHXNMeHMoC |language=en}}</ref> After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters of the [[Greek alphabet]]. Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of [[Alexandria]], in Egypt.<ref>U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, ''Homerische Untersuchungen'', (Berlin, 1884), 369; R. Pfeiffer, ''History of Classical Scholarship'', (Oxford, 1968), 116–117.</ref> Some trace the divisions back further to the Classical period.<ref>{{harvc|last=West|first=Martin L.|author-link=Martin Litchfield West|chapter=Book Division|in=Finkelberg|year=2012}} {{doi|10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0253}}; S. West, ''The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer'', (Cologne, 1967), 18–25.</ref> Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions.<ref>{{multiref |1=P. Mazon, ''Introduction à l'Iliade'', (Paris, 1912), 137–140 |2=C. H. Whitman, ''Homer and the Heroic Tradition'' (Cambridge [Massachusetts], 1958), 282–283 |3={{cite journal |author=G. P. Goold |title=Homer and the Alphabet |journal=[[Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association]] |volume=91 |date=1960 |pages=272–291 |jstor=283857 |doi=10.2307/283857 |ref=none}} |4=K. Stanley, ''The Shield of Homer'' (Princeton, 1993) 37, 249ff.}}</ref>

In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BCE by [[Pisistratus]] (died 528/527 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jensen |first1=Minna Skafte |title=The Homeric Question and the Oral-formulaic Theory |date=1980 |publisher=[[Museum Tusculanum Press]] |isbn=978-8772890968 |page=128 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xgyJoouOkyAC&pg=PA128 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="Lamberton2010"/> The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during the reign of Pisistratus is referenced by the first-century BCE Roman orator [[Cicero]] and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancient ''Lives of Homer''.<ref name="Lamberton2010"/> From around 150 BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems found in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, and the text seems to have become relatively stable. After the establishment of the [[Library of Alexandria]], Homeric scholars such as [[Zenodotus]] of Ephesus, [[Aristophanes of Byzantium]] and in particular [[Aristarchus of Samothrace]] helped establish a canonical text.<ref name=Haslam2012>{{harvc|last=Haslam|first=Michael|chapter=Text and Transmission|in=Finkelberg|year=2012}} {{doi|10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1413}}</ref>

The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy by [[Demetrios Chalkokondyles]]. Today scholars use medieval manuscripts, [[papyri]] and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-century edition of [[Arthur Ludwich]] mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows the medieval vulgate.{{clarify|date=November 2023|Not the [[Vulgate]]? But what?}} Others, such as [[Martin Litchfield West|Martin West]] (1998–2000) or [[Thomas William Allen|T. W. Allen]], fall somewhere between these two extremes.<ref name="Haslam2012"/>