Welcome to the Homer Multitext

The Homer Multitext project seeks to present the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey in a critical framework that accounts for the fact that these poems were composed orally over the course of hundreds, if not thousands of years by countless singers who composed in performance. The evolution and the resulting multiformity of the textual tradition, reflected in the many surviving texts of Homer, must be understood in its many different historical contexts. Using technology that takes advantage of the best available practices and open source standards that have been developed for digital publications in a variety of fields, the Homer Multitext offers free access to a library of texts and images and tools to allow readers to discover and engage with the Homeric tradition.

The Homer Multitext is a long-term project emphasizing collaborative research (we are particularly interested in undergraduate research), openly licensed data, and innovative uses of technology. The Homer Multitext welcomes collaboration in the form of diplomatic editions, images of historical documents, and translations. All material must be openly licensed and attribution will be given to the contributors. Please contact Casey Dué (casey@chs.harvard.edu) and Mary Ebbott (ebbott@chs.harvard.edu).

Apps for end users

The new Manuscript Browsing Application is now available for use. (The application at chs75.harvard.edu will be going offline any day now.)

The Homer Multitext consists of edited scholarly materials—texts, images, data—and indices relating these materials. The digital library services that allow readers to access these materials and follow links among them are online at http://beta.hpcc.uh.edu/tomcat/hmtdigital/.

Inventory of Homeric Scholia

The Homer Multitext is compiling a comprehensive inventory of the scholia on Byzantine manuscripts of the Iliad.

Diplomatic editions of manuscripts of the Iliad

The Homer Multitext is creating complete diplomatic editions of Byzantine manuscripts of the Iliad, and making them available here (and the companion site for Homeric Papyri here).

Openly Licensed Images of Homeric Manuscripts

Thanks to fruitful collaborations with the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, the Real Monasterio de El Escorial in Madrid, and the Owner of the Archimedes Palimpsest, we are pleased to offer a collection of images of ancient manuscripts under open licenses that offer access to scholars, students, and anyone interested in studying these artifacts of cultural heritage.

The archive of images can be found at www.homermultitext.org/hmt-image-archive.

Please note that these images are copyrighted to their respective owners, and that the assigned licenses define and limit the terms under which we can use them ourselves and make them available to others. Parties interested in securing other rights should contact the copyright-holding institutions directly.