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INTRODUCTION

have held that it denotes merely the legendary fitter-together or harmonizer original: "homê + ar" (ὁμῆ + ἀρ), derived from the Greek words for "together" and "to join." of traditional poetical material. That the word means "blind" was assumed in antiquity, but is believed by no one today.

If the personality of the poet, under whose name the Odyssey has come down to us, is thus vague and shadowy—even the most familiar elements being drawn perhaps from his own portrayal of the blind bard, Demodocus A character in the Odyssey, a blind singer at the court of King Alcinous who was said to have been inspired by the Muse.—so too there has seemed to many scholars to be a like obscurity regarding the early history of the poem itself. Regarding this the evidence is as follows:

The oldest manuscripts of the Odyssey date from the tenth and eleventh centuries A.D. A.D. (Anno Domini) refers to the "Year of our Lord," or the Common Era. Papyrus fragments whose dates range from the third century B.C. B.C. (Before Christ) refers to the years before the start of the Common Era. to the fourth century A.D. carry our knowledge still further back, and the evidence afforded by our acquaintance with the work of the Alexandrian grammarians Scholars based in Alexandria, Egypt, who worked from the 3rd century B.C. onwards to standardize and preserve classical Greek texts. is invaluable in tracing the history of the text; while, finally, we have quotations from Homer in classical authors, and somewhat vague and not wholly convincing evidence of the constitution of an authoritative text at Athens in the sixth century B.C. Certain facts stand out prominently. First, our modern text is remarkably