PREFACE.

The very favorable reception of my school edition of the first half of the Odyssey Homer's epic poem detailing the ten-year journey of Odysseus returning home from the Trojan War, published in this series, leads me to hope that the present volume may receive as kind a welcome.

The scenes in these later books, though no less interesting, are less familiar; and the text has seemed to require somewhat more explanation. I have tried to leave no difficulties unnoticed; and I have thought it better to make the book, as far as possible, complete in itself, rather than to give references to notes in the previous volume.

In the preparation of the notes, I have been glad to make use of the commentaries of Ameis, Fäsi, and Crusius Prominent 19th-century German classical scholars known for their work on Homer; and the edition of Mr. Alexis Pierron (Hachette, 1875), which always does full justice to the opinions of the Alexandrine critics Ancient scholars from the Library of Alexandria who established the standard versions of Homer's texts and the Scholia Ancient marginal notes and commentaries found in the manuscripts of classical authors.

Oxford, 1878.