0.7 Homer multitext project—a response

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The Iliad and the Odyssey , the great epic poems of the ancient world attributed to an author named Homer, which run like a golden thread through western thought, literature and art, raise so many generic issues in both the analogue and digital world that it is hard to know quite where to begin. Let me start with the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard itself, which we can charitably describe from one perspective as a form of university boosterism—good for the university, good for scholarship and, perhaps, even good for the public with an interest in Homer. I do not wish to be pejorative, as the decision to support this center and its projects as opposed to another center with other imperatives, even in a university as rich as Harvard, involves choices, just as it did for the Renaissance princes who sponsored similar ventures. My reason for beginning with the center, partly selfish, is to draw a comparison with the great Glasgow Homer project of 1756-58, “The Glasgow Homer”—so described by a London auction catalogue in1796—refers to the Greek folios of Homer printed in Glasgow by Robert and Andrew Foulis in 1756 ( Iliad, vols.I-II) and 1758 ( Odyssey and Homeric Hymns , vols. II-III), with a rare general title page dated 1758 (Hillyard 2010). which was conceived as joint venture by the professors of the College (the University of Glasgow) and the legendary Glasgow printers Robert and Andrew Foulis. Despite the interval of 250 years, the comparison does not end there: after all, we are dealing with millennia, not a mere hundred years or so. Although the Glasgow Homer marked no “textual advances in the history of editing the texts,” it was recognized as almost flawless in its conception, typography and layout—“must have” objects at a time when all learned men enjoyed a classical education. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1818, “the perfection of accuracy is to be found in the folio edition of Homer by the Foulis of Glasgow, I have understood they offered 1000 guineas [perhaps $50,000 today] for the discovery of any error in it, even of an accent, and that the reward was never claimed.” The edition won the annual prize of the Edinburgh Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Science, Manufactures and Agriculture for printing in Greek in successive years from 1756 to 1758. Copies were presented by the University as a mark of respect and to curry political favor and benefactions. Nevertheless, this was the only publication that the professors ever supported and it was rumored that the venture contributed to the eventual demise of the Foulis’s enterprise (Hillyard 2010). I will return to the thorny question of finance. Where, of course, the Harvard multi-text project differs is that it seeks to set a new authorial standard that takes advantage of all the supposed flexibility and openness of the new media; but—and it is a big but—it will still need to observe the scrupulous editorial and representational standards that Jefferson so much admired in the Glasgow Homer, if it is to be a credit to Harvard and to scholarship. These are ambitious objectives.