About Iliad · Odyssey

Iliad · Odyssey is a small, independent reading room for Homeric Greek. It exists so a student, teacher, or curious reader can see a verse in the original, hear it in Latin letters, and check a continuous English rendering without flipping between three books.

The project is published by Valentin Dodonov. The transliteration engine, the five-line stanza layout, the facing PDF, and the editorial notes on this site are original work. The Greek text of the Iliad and the Odyssey is ancient and in the public domain. The English column can be Samuel Butler’s 1898 prose or A. T. Murray’s facing translation (Iliad 1924, Odyssey 1919). The Russian column is N. I. Gnedich’s Iliad (1829) or V. V. Veresaev’s Odyssey (1953), each a hexameter line facing the Greek. These versions are in the public domain in Russia and the United Kingdom. The printed Loeb revisions of the 1990s are not used.

What you can do here

• Transliterate a passage you paste yourself (up to 500 words) and download a PDF.
• Read the full Iliad and Odyssey, twenty-four books each, in five-line groups.
• Hear reconstructed hexameter recitations of Iliad 1.1–21 and Odyssey 1.1–21.
• Compare Homeric spelling with a consistent scholarly Latin transcription. The rules are explained on the method page.

Sources

The Greek follows the Internet Sacred Text Archive’s Homeric pages, which reproduce a standard printed text with green line numbers stripped for reading. Odyssey 11, which that archive cuts short, is completed from the Perseus canonical Greek text. English is aligned from the Perseus “card” editions. Butler is a continuous story packed into the five-line groups. Murray was written to sit opposite the Greek, so it usually tracks the verse order more closely. Gnedich and Veresaev are Russian hexameter, one line to each Greek verse. You can switch between them at the top of each book.

The sung recitations are modern reconstructions, not ancient recordings. Iliad 1.1–21 is © 2025 Perkʷunós; Odyssey 1.1–21 is from the Literature and History Podcast. Each sung page names the source and links to the original video.

This is a reading aid, not a critical edition. Line counts can differ slightly from an Oxford Classical Text. Spelling, punctuation, and the diction of Butler, Murray, Gnedich, and Veresaev are kept close to the sources rather than modernised.

How the site is funded

There are no advertisements. Hosting is paid for by Valentin Dodonov and by readers who choose to give a small donation.

Contact

Questions about the text, the transliteration, or privacy are welcome at the contact page or capital93@gmail.com.