The scholia on the Odyssey follow the poem's twenty-four books, gathering the ancient and Byzantine notes written beside its text in medieval manuscripts. Their oldest layer goes back to the Alexandrian editors, above all Aristarchus of Samothrace in the second century BCE, whose judgements on doubtful lines the notes often record; later layers add mythography, allegory and the short glosses of the schools.
Several books open with one or more plot summaries. The notes then follow the text line by line: they gloss rare words and give etymologies, report variant readings and lines rejected as spurious, explain places, objects and customs, and tell the stories behind Homer's allusions, citing Hesiod and Aristotle, and Hellanicus, Acusilaus, Apollodorus of Athens and other writers whose works are mostly lost. Some notes read episodes as moral teaching or allegory, as with the song of Ares and Aphrodite in Book VIII and Athena's visit to Telemachus in Book I. In Book XXIV they set out Aristarchus's reasons for rejecting the second descent to the dead, with an answer to each.
Scholia on the Iliad and Odyssey Scholia on the Odyssey: summary and contents (PDF)
Scholia on the Iliad and Odyssey Scholia on the Odyssey: summary and contents (Markdown)
Contents
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Αʹ Book I
Two plot summaries open the scholia on the first book, followed by an allegorical reading in which Athena's visit stands for Telemachus's own resolve, now past twenty, to bear the suitors' waste no longer. Later notes set a feast of many guests against a meal to which each brings a share, citing Hesiod, and explain the bolt and strap of Telemachus's bedroom door and the fleece he sleeps under.
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Βʹ Book II
Telemachus's assembly is the centre of these notes on Book II. They record Aristarchus's rejection of a line in his refusal to send his mother away, for fear she would call down the Erinyes, and read the two eagles Zeus sends as a sign of Odysseus's return. A long scholion sets out the senses of the word for dawn, and glosses on ox-hide ropes, mast, sail and keel follow Telemachus's ship as it sails through the night.
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Γʹ Book III
At Pylos, where Telemachus finds Nestor's people sacrificing black bulls to Poseidon, the scholia on Book III soon reach Hellanicus's account of Neleus founding the city. A long note on the singer Agamemnon left to guard Clytemnestra gathers stories of the honour paid to bards, including Timolaus's claim that he was Phemius's brother. Diocles of Pherae, host to Telemachus and Peisistratus on the road to Sparta, is traced back to the river Alpheus, said to run under the sea to Arethusa in Sicily.
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Δʹ Book IV
Telemachus's arrival in Sparta prompts notes on why the city is called hollow Lacedaemon, and how he can reach it after a night at Pherae, itself in Laconia. In Book IV Menelaus's simile of a doe leaving her fawns in a lion's lair brings in Aristotle on how many young a deer bears, and the Philomeleides whom Odysseus wrestled is made a king of Lesbos, not Patroclus. Asteris, the island where the suitors lie in wait, is described with its harbours open on both sides.
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Εʹ Book V
Dawn rising from Tithonus's bed leads the notes on Book V into his myth, his change into a cicada, and allegories making Endymion a hunter and Tithonus an astronomer. Odysseus's raft draws glosses on augers, pegs and joints, with Aristophanes and Aristarchus disagreeing over two verbs. His bed of leaves on the Phaeacian shore brings a note on the seed of fire, set beside Aeschylus's source of fire in Prometheus Bound.
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Ϛʹ Book VI
Athena's dream visit to Nausicaa opens the comment on Book VI, which identifies Scheria with Corcyra and places the Phaeacians' former home Hypereia variously, one view at Camarina in Sicily. Notes on Odysseus's comparison of Nausicaa to the young palm he saw at Delos ask whether it was the palm Leto held in labour. Odysseus petitions Athena that he may come to the Phaeacians as a friend, and a note explains Athena's regard for Poseidon, her father's brother.
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Ζʹ Book VII
Led by Athena into the Phaeacian city, Odysseus supplicates Queen Arete in Book VII, and its scholia run from the old servant from Apeire who lights Nausicaa's fire to the mist Athena pours round him, Arete's father Rhexenor, and his seat at the hearth, read as a bid for pity. A note on the bed the maids make up for him in the portico distinguishes the bedstead from the bedding laid on it.
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Ηʹ Book VIII
The Phaeacian games and the songs of Demodocus fill the notes on Book VIII. Euryalus's taunt and the discus throw are summarised at the start; a long note reads the song of Ares and Aphrodite as moral teaching, with the Sun as the eye no wrongdoer escapes, and suggests Homer shaped it for pleasure-loving listeners. Alcinous's question about a kinsman lost at Troy leads to in-laws, and to the claim that a good friend is worth a brother.
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Θʹ Book IX
Odysseus begins the story of his wanderings in Book IX. Notes on his praise of the Phaeacian feast record the charge that he loved pleasure; Maron is made a priest of Apollo rather than of Dionysus, against Hesiod's genealogy, and his gift of strong wine is weighed. The Cyclops's petition to Poseidon and his second rock bring a note that a line repeated from the first throw should be rejected there, and Odysseus receives the ram set aside for him from the spoil.
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Ιʹ Book X
Aeolus's bag of winds, the loss of eleven ships to the Laestrygonians and Circe's spell are set out in three plot summaries for Book X. The notes explain how Odysseus carried the great stag across his neck, and the word for the part of the back an animal cannot scratch. Circe's instructions for the rite at the edge of the dead raise the darkness of the Cimmerians, and Elpenor falls from her roof in search of cool air before she slips past the men unseen.
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ΙΑʹ Book XI
The descent to the dead is the matter of Book XI. Its notes debate who the Cimmerians were, citing Crates and Herodotus; record a later version in which Otus and Ephialtes kill each other striking at a deer sent by Artemis; and tell the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus among the heroines Odysseus sees. One note makes the Gorgon's head that Odysseus fears as he leaves the source of Hesiod's Gorgon myth.
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ΙΒʹ Book XII
The Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis and the herds of the Sun on Thrinacia are the episodes the scholia on Book XII follow, from Odysseus's return out of Hades to Circe. Their opening asks why Aeaea is set where the dawn rises; the notes on the cattle read the seven herds of fifty as the days of the lunar year, after Aristotle; and two lines on Scylla are marked spurious as Odysseus drifts astride keel and mast towards Calypso's island.
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ΙΓʹ Book XIII
Asleep among the Phaeacians' gifts, Odysseus is set ashore on Ithaca in Book XIII, and the notes run from Alcinous's last gifts and the wine kept for honoured men to Poseidon turning the returning ship to stone. Glosses on the Ithacan harbour, its paths and sheer rocks follow, and Athena's disguise for Odysseus is spelled out piece by piece: an old man's skin, a ragged tunic and a beggar's wallet on a twisted strap.
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ΙΔʹ Book XIV
In the hut of the swineherd Eumaeus, where Odysseus lodges in Book XIV, the notes open on the farmstead itself: its walls of dragged stones, its coping of wild pear thorn and its stakes. Odysseus's invented tale of Thesprotia and King Pheidon leads to Dodona and to the smell of sulphur after a thunderbolt. A gloss on the rock that shelters Eumaeus from the north wind brings in Acusilaus's story of Boreas carrying off Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus.
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ΙΕʹ Book XV
Telemachus leaves Sparta with Menelaus's gifts and takes the seer Theoclymenus on board in Book XV, while Eumaeus tells Odysseus how Phoenicians stole him and sold him to Laertes. Later notes trace Theoclymenus's descent from Melampus, who won Neleus's daughter with the cattle of Iphiclus, down to Amphiaraus, and explain the hawk tearing a dove, the omen at Telemachus's landing, and his trust in Peiraeus.
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ΙϚʹ Book XVI
Telemachus comes to Eumaeus's hut and Odysseus makes himself known to his son in Book XVI. The notes ask why the dogs fawn on Telemachus, gloss the morning meal, record Aristarchus's count of the suitors at one hundred and eight and mark eighteen lines on the weapons as spurious. Anticlides is the source for the story of the hill of Hermes: Hermes tried by the gods for killing Argus and freed by a heap of pebbles cast at his feet, the origin of the wayside cairns.
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ΙΖʹ Book XVII
As a beggar, Odysseus enters his own palace in Book XVII, and its plot summaries recall Melanthius's kick and Antinous's abuse. The notes describe the house's walls and coping, the belly that drives a beggar, and how the old dog Argus knew his master by scent, citing Aristotle on how long a dog lives. Eumaeus's evening meal, with a line of Callimachus, and the suitors' turn to dance and song follow.
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ΙΗʹ Book XVIII
The fight between Odysseus and the beggar Irus opens Book XVIII, and its notes offer a string of etymologies for Irus's real name, Arnaeus, and derive Irus from Iris because he carries messages. They treat Athena's beautifying of Penelope as she sleeps and Penelope's rebuke to Telemachus for letting a guest be mishandled, and gloss Telemachus's reproach to the suitors and the name of Amphinomus's herald Mulius as the evening ends.
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ΙΘʹ Book XIX
Odysseus and Telemachus carry the weapons out of the hall in the first scene of Book XIX, whose plot summary also names Eurycleia's recognition of the scar. The notes on Athena's golden lamp observe that Homer's heroes use torches, not lamps, and recall Athena's undying lamp at Athens. Odysseus's false tale brings etymologies of the word for year, among them wolves biting each other's tails as they cross a river, and notes on the axes Penelope sets for the contest.
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Κʹ Book XX
A sleepless Odysseus, torn over killing the maids who lie with the suitors, opens Book XX; the notes gloss his bedding of untanned hide and Athena's promise of victory against fifty companies. The festival of Apollo on which the killing is timed, Eumaeus's three fattened hogs and the cattle Philoetius has ferried from the mainland are treated next. The suitors' proposal to sell the strangers to the Sicels brings a note distinguishing the Sicels from the Greeks of Sicily.
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ΚΑʹ Book XXI
Penelope sets the bow before the suitors in Book XXI; the scholia follow her to the storeroom where it was kept from the hall's smoke, and explain how Messene, where Odysseus received the bow, once lay within Lacedaemon. Telemachus sets up the axes and Antinous urges delay for the archer god's feast; Odysseus then strings the bow like a lyre and shoots through every axe, and supper is read as the suitors' death.
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ΚΒʹ Book XXII
The killing of the suitors fills Book XXII. Its notes begin with Antinous, struck as he lifts his cup: the proverb that much lies between cup and lip is told, after Aristotle, of Ancaeus of Samos, killed by a boar before he could drink. Another note denies that Athena really turns into a swallow. Then come the removal of the bodies, the hanging of the maids, held a less clean death than the sword, and the purging of the house with sulphur.
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ΚΓʹ Book XXIII
Eurycleia hurries to wake Penelope with news of the suitors' death at the start of Book XXIII. The notes on the test of the bed explain how Odysseus built it from an olive trunk and why bed-legs were carved in the likeness of Hermes, after Apollodorus of Athens. They record the rejection of seven lines on Helen, and Odysseus's plan to raid for the flocks the suitors ate, leaving Penelope in the upper rooms.
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ΚΔʹ Book XXIV
Hermes leads the dead suitors down to Hades at the opening of Book XXIV, and the notes set out Aristarchus's reasons for rejecting this second descent to the dead, among them that Hermes is nowhere else their escort and that counting the Muses is not Homeric, each answered in turn. Further notes set Penelope against Clytemnestra, describe Laertes's farm, and gloss Zeus's smoking thunderbolt in the final fight on Ithaca.