Adrian Kelly shows that familiarity with the oral background of Homeric poetry is vital for a proper appreciation of Homeric narrative. He presents the kind of information a modern reader requires to become as fluent in traditional epic poetry as an original ancient audience.

This book aims to provide the reader of Homer with the traditional knowledge and fluency in Homeric poetry which an original ancient audience would have brought to a performance of this type of narrative. To that end, Adrian Kelly presents the text of Iliad VIII next to an apparatus referring to the traditional units being employed, and gives a brief description of their semantic impact. He describes the referential curve of the narrative in a continuous commentary, tabulates all the traditional units in a separate lexicon of Homeric structure, and examines critical decisions concerning the text in a discussion which employs the referential method as a critical criterion. Two small appendices deal with speech introduction formulae, and with the traditional function of Here and Athene in early Greek epic poetry.

The principal strength of this work is its patient amassing of a large body of material that allows us to appreciate Book 8's rich and complex intratextual referents. The work has established its author as a 'promakhos' in the field of Homeric studies, and I look forward to reading and profiting from his future research.