The Homeric Tradition Collection

This collection brings together the complete Homeric epics alongside the most important ancient texts that interpret, continue, and respond to Homer’s poetry.

From the Iliad and the Odyssey themselves to later epic continuations, hymns, and philosophical commentaries, the collection traces how Homer became the foundation of Greek literary, educational, and philosophical culture.

Why was Homer so influential in ancient Greek education and culture?

Homer was not only the first poet of the Greeks, but also their primary teacher. His verses shaped ideas of heroism, fate, justice, the gods, and the human condition. For centuries, poets, philosophers, and scholars read Homer as both literature and wisdom, returning to his epics to interpret their meaning, defend them, criticize them, and continue their stories.

Alongside the complete Iliad and Odyssey, the collection includes key works of the Epic Cycle, the Homeric Hymns, and major post-Homeric epics, as well as philosophical and allegorical interpretations by thinkers such as Heraclitus, Porphyry, and Plutarch. Nine major tragic works inspired by the Homeric tradition are also part of the collection.

Each volume presents the original Ancient Greek text, a reliable modern Greek translation and introductions and scholarly commentary, illuminating literary, mythological, and philosophical contexts.

What does the collection include?

The collection is ideal for students, researchers, educators, and devoted readers of epic poetry, as well as for private libraries seeking a complete and coherent presentation of the Homeric world and its reception in antiquity.

The Authors & Volumes Included are:

• Homer – Odyssey, 6 volumes
• Homer – Iliad, 6 volumes
• Heraclitus – Homeric Problems, 1 volume
• Quintus Smyrnaeus – Posthomerica (After Homer), 3 volumes
• Homeric Epics – Epic Cycle (Batrachomyomachia, Titanomachy, Oedipodea, etc.), 1 volume
• Homeric Hymns, 1 volume
• Porphyry – On the Cave of the Nymphs in the Odyssey & To Marcella, 1 volume
• Plutarch – Moralia 31: On Homer (On His Life and Poetry), 1 volume

• Euripides: Hecuba, Trojan Women, Andromaque, Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Helen, 6 volumes

• Sophocles: Philoctetes, Ajax, 2 volumes

• Aeschylus: Agamemnon, 1 volume.