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This dissertation includes a digital proof of concept called the “Comprehensive Odyssey”, which provides the text of the first 105 lines of the Odyssey, the secondary sources for each line and the scholia. This digital project was the focus of an analysis of the possibilities of the digital medium to produce a digital critical edition or rather a digital critical repository of the Homeric poems and their indirect tradition. The dissertation presents all the stages in this analysis. As this edition deals with Homer’s Odyssey, one chapter here takes into consideration the present situation in Homeric scholarship. The analysis also embraces an overview of the theory of oral composition, traditional referentiality, notional fixity and the process from oral to print to digital, bearing in mind that the project deals with a poem whose origin is not in the form of a written composition, but of an oral composition in performance. To assess the possibilities of creating a digital project concerning Homer, a review has been carried out of digital projects in Classics, some of which are centred on Homer. We also discuss the theories both of digital editing and of textual editing. Assessing digital theories helps when deciding about which framework to use for a digital project, and it was what assisted us in understanding the difficulties that would have to be overcome in order to make this project feasible. Moreover, this dissertation includes a detailed overview of all the technical challenges encountered while producing it, by this meaning the encoding process with XML and TEI and the visualisation process with XSLT. One chapter aims to provide examples of research that can stem from the collection of secondary sources and their understanding as fragmentary authors, together with an awareness of the problems arising from the creation of an edition from printed critical editions. The purpose of this dissertation is to assess the chances that this proof of concept may become a fully functional project and help in understanding the Homeric tradition. Most importantly, this proof of concept would be a never-ending repository which, with the help of encoding in XML and TEI, would always remain open to changes and improvements. The hindrances that the digital medium faces, such as copyright and ‘comprehensiveness’, are also pointed out. The concept of crowdsourcing is discussed, as it seems that it might serve to complete the encoding of all the sources of the “Comprehensive Odyssey”. Finally, the outcomes that might result from the above-mentioned ‘voyage’ are examined, leading to the conclusion that a project such as the one we envisaged is too ambitious, since it contains several different aspects within one project, yet is not a failure. It is a worthwhile journey that helps us understand the importance of studying orality in connection with collaboration in the digital medium and the value of studies on quotations and fragmentary authors for the secondary sources.

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In these studies I discuss a number of selected passages from Iliad 3-5 where there are textual variations supported by extant minuscule copies and about which we can reasonably argue that they also existed in the text of uncial COpIes. The purpose of these discussions is to assert the claim of each variant to direct tradition, i.e. that their presence in the medieval minuscule tradition is due to inheritance from the text of extant or lost uncial copies, or, to use an abbreviated term, that they are ancient; and also to assert its utility for the evaluation or classification of the manuscripts which attest it, i. e. to identify the manuscripts which are the rightful heirs of such a variant through early lost minuscules, as well as to identify closely related groups of manuscripts. I have limited myself to a selection of the older manuscripts and attempted to discover by analysis which of these manuscripts are the most useful in preserving ancient variants. This approach differs from Allen's, who in the case of his edition of 1931 uses some 180 manuscripts and in the case of the Oxford Classical Text of 1920 mainly manuscript families on the strength of numerical agreements in various readings, resulting in a most unsatisfactory state of affairs in both cases. In the second part I provide a collation of the chosen manuscripts for Iliad 18, to demonstrate how reliable or unreliable Allen's collations are. I also provide an apparatus criticus for the same book which is not meant to serve the ordinary purpose of an apparatus criticus (no notice is taken of papyri, quotations, or modem conjectures), but only to show what the manuscript picture looks like, on the evidence of my collation for the variants judged worthy of mention in the Oxford Classical Text

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The Path of Song: Semantic Strategies in Iliad VIII is a continuous commentary to Book VIII of the Iliad, applying to this section of the poem a new aesthetic methodology developed primarily by the comparative scholar J. M. Foley. Termed 'traditional referentiality1, this methodology holds that oral traditional poetics is founded upon the duality of 'denotative' and 'connotative' levels of meaning, in which the semantic potential of any given element in the narrative, of any sort, is a result of the audience's experience with that element in previous performances. Thus, the associative qualities of traditional narrative allow the poet during the realisation of the song to manipulate audience expectations as they listen to stories whose general outlines (i.e. who kills who, who must not die at a certain moment in the story, etc.) they know from a lifetime of experience. To recapture this complex of meaning is to recreate the ancient experience of Homeric poetry, giving a modern audience access to the excitement and uncertainty of a narrative designed for a progressive unfolding at the moment of performance. After a brief introduction, in which a key term within Homeric poetics (οϊμη 'song path') is briefly discussed before we outline the history of the methodology and its place within modern scholarship, the commentary successively summarises and describes the key elements in small sections of the narrative, and then presents for each of these sections the comparative evidence establishing the conclusions reached. A conclusion is followed by two appendices on some of the more contentious speech introduction formulae.

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This is a full-length study of Charikleia, the heroine of Heliodoros' Ailhiopika. I set Charikleia in both her literary and cultural/ historical context. The thesis is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter, 1 discuss Charikleia within the genre of the Greek novel. The second chapter focuses on the issue of virginity and looks at the relationship between the Aiihiopika and early Christian literature, in particular, the Acts of Paul and Thekla. The final chapter focuses on the issue of women and education and considers the literary evidence regarding women philosophers.