Update (16 May 2025): the Iliad notes have been updated and now cover up to Book VIII, line 150.

Are you working your way through Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey in the original Greek and would like some support? A reading group based in Dublin has you covered! This group is compiling some handy annotations as it progresses through the epics and is making them available to others.

The annotations are intended to supplement apps that provide online glossaries such as Attikos. The annotations cover the whole of the Odyssey and up to Book V line 500 of the Iliad. They include:

1) definitions from Liddell and Scott tied to the particular passage of Homer;

2) selected notes derived from the editions of Leaf and Bayfield (Iliad) and Stanford (Odyssey), and from the translations of Rieu, Lawrence and Wilson;

3) selected notes on the roots of irregular verbs and on tmesis (i.e. where a compound verb is separated from its prefix-preposition);

4) comments and suggested translations from the reading group.

The notes are compiled by UCD alumnus Michael O’Kelly, and comments are welcome (get in touch with Access Classics at access.classics@ucd.ie and we will pass on the message!).

The annotations are currently available as a Word document (Iliad and Odyssey) and hopefully soon as a HTML link (text from the Perseus database) where annotated words are highlighted and notes accessed by hovering over or touching the word.

The annotations of the Iliad will be updated as the Dublin reading group progresses – the rate is about four books per year.