A New Companion to Homer. by MORRIS, I., and B. POWELL,

Brill, Leiden (...), 1997. XVIII,755p. Original grey cloth with dust wrps. May require extra shipping costs: weight including packing from 1 - 2 Kg. 'Hailed as a replacement to the Wace-Stubbings 'Companion' of 1962 (and reaching, it is claimed, for 'the chimaera of comprehensive coverage') the 'New Companion' follows the same design: a collection of extended essays. Like its predecessor it is not so much a companion to Homer as a survey of current Homeric scholarship. It has the same English-speaking bias, this time with a transatlantic preponderance, 24 of 30 contributors being domiciled in North America. The contributors are masters of their specialisms and the quality of the essays ranges from the excellent to the superb. The 'New Companion', however, claims a wider readership than the old; it may be useful then to estimate 'for the general student of literature' its utility as an introduction to two inimitable poems. First then, what sort of history lies behind our printed texts of Homer? (...) Second come seven papers on Homeric Language. (...) A welcome third section is assigned to literary criticism. (...) Part Four, Homer's world, is the part that most students will turn to first.' (J.B. HAINSWORTH in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1999, pp.177-78).