Students of Altertumswissenschaft everywhere owe much to the continuing commitment of publishers, to the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla and the Clarendon Press for a commentary on the Odyssey and to the Cambridge University Press for undertaking at Geoffrey Kirk's instigation an even grander commentary on the Iliad. A commentary on either poem of Homer, unless it has a very narrow focus, must nowadays be the work of several hands; such is the pressure of other duties in English-speaking lands on those who would willingly devote all their time to the old poet. Though each of the General Editor's collaborators has had a free hand and with it an inescapable responsibility the commentary is in a sense a co-operative venture. In detail Richard Janko, Nicholas Richardson and Mark Edwards and of course the General Editor suggested many improvements and generously made their own work available to me, but in a deeper sense the concept of an Iliadic commentary that shaped vols. I and II (see the outline in vol. I XV–XXV) has shaped my own work. The same assumptions are made about unity of conception, though I follow Danek in relieving Homer of responsibility for book 10; about the broad integrity of the text, though the easy accessibility of the scholia in Erbse's edition is a constant reminder how much we take on trust; and about the profound influence of oral techniques of composition on the linguistic and narrative style of the epic.