Homer's Complete Works

This is not a Victorian penny dreadful but a sixteenth-century scholarly Latin edition of Homer's complete works. The volume, published in Basel by Sebastian Henricpetri in 1606, contains the Iliad, Odyssey, Batrachomyomachia, Hymns, and other Homeric poems in Greek with Latin translation. It includes extensive scholarly commentary by Ioannes Spondanus on both epics, plus an epitome of the Iliad by Pindar in Latin verse and Dares Phrygius's account of the Trojan War. The edition is dedicated to King Henry IV of France and Navarre. Prefatory material includes dedicatory epistles praising Homer's treatment of royal virtue, fortitude, and prudence as models for monarchs, with references to Alexander the Great's devotion to the text.