NEO-MELANESIAN/E CON D > Book

There are two commercially available English dictionaries of Homeric Greek: Cunliffe and Autenrieth. Autenrieth is the author of the original German version; Robert P. Keep, a classical scholar who taught at the Norwich Free Academy, is the translator of this edition which was originally published in 1876. This book is a little smaller both in size and extent of coverage than Cunliffe's dictionary.

An introductory section entitled "The Chief Peculiarities of the Homeric Dialect" presents a concise treatment of how Homeric differs chiefly from Attic Greek. It is fairly thorough and helpfully included.

Individual entries are often immediately followed by parenthetical references that indicate important information such as (1) whether the word contained a digamma, or (2) a related noun form (for verbs) or verb form (for nouns). Verb entries clearly identify aorist, perfect or other tenses, as well as middle v. active forms.

Definitions usually include book and line references for specific meanings that are contextually unique. However, the old fashioned convention of referring to the books of the Iliad and Odyssey with upper or lower case Greek letters can be a challenge, unless you have an instantaneous recognition of what book omicron or rho refers to.

Overall this lexicon does not provide the same depth of coverage found in Cunliffe for the full range of inflected forms of a word (verbs especially) or for unique definitions of individual words and their locations in the Homeric poems. Still, it is a serviceable tool and helpful companion for reading Homer in Greek. In fact, Cunliffe often seems to give such a wealth of information for individual words that it can be a tad overwhelming to digest. Autenrieth gives you exactly what you need without the overkill.