Robinson Smith
The Original Iliad

(I) The Original Iliad, The Solution of the Homeric Question. Parts I–III in one. Pp. 1–36, 63–95, 100–140. Nice: privately printed, 1927 onwards. Quartercloth. (2) The Digamma in the Iliad. Pp. 51–68. (3) The Original Iliad, Text and Translation. Pp. xvi+245. (4) Homeric Studies. Pp.76. London: Grafton, 1938. Bound, 5s., 10s. 6d., 10s. 6d.

I have been unable to find a copy of Robinson Smith's text. The following details come from descriptions and reviews of what he provides.

Robinson Smith sets up a method for trimming the text of the Iliad by recognizing and deleting additions provided by scribes, who, he argues, expanded the text over hundreds of years by about 11,000 verses. His method of proceeding is summed up by one reviewer (J. State, "The Immaculate Iliad" Review Article, Classical Review, 53.4, September 1939, 119-120) as follows:

When two passages seem alike it is assumed that one is an imitation of the other. (All other possibilities are ignored). Of the two passages the imitation is the one which violates more freely some twenty-five rules (e.g., that Homer always oberved diagamma, never used . . . irregular quantities, or elisions of  'structure-words'). Rejecting these imitations, we are left with 'source-lines.'

We must now forget what we have done, and look at these 'source-lines' with unprejediced eye. Many of them show quite unexpected features: they keep some twenty-five rules. . . . Those which keep the rules will be 'original'; the remaining 'source-lines' will be early among the accretions.

Thus the 'original' verses are selected because they keep the rules; and now the rules are regarded as confirmed by the fact that the 'original' verses keep them. It only remains to apply the rules throughout the poem--but not too stringently, lest the whole thing be wiped out.

Mr. Smith is not alone in using such methods, which must surely give pause to any one who is tempted to exaggerate the benefits of a classical education.

List of Published English Translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey