The Works of Homer

To Thomas Jefferson, Homer was "the first of poets, as he must ever remain, until a language equally ductile & copious shall again be spoken." In Jefferson's library lists, Homer was always listed first among the works he classified under Poetry - Epic.¹ 

Thomas Jefferson owned at least 19 different editions of Homer’s works, most notably The Iliad and The Odyssey. He held multiple copies of Homer in his library at Monticello and at Poplar Forest. 

As the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, Jefferson learned Latin and Greek as part of a classical education. As a schoolboy, he read Homer while learning the rudiments of Latin, Greek and French from Reverend William Douglas between 1752-1757. He studied Homer and other classical authors in earnest under the tutelage of the Reverend James Maury between 1758 and 1760, revisiting the Greek poet again between 1762-1766 while reading law under George Wythe. It was during this period that Jefferson transcribed passages from The Iliad and The Odyssey in Greek, as well as excerpts from Alexander Pope’s English translation of The Iliad into his commonplace book.² 

Of Jefferson’s reading habits, granddaughter Ellen Wayles Randolph recalled, "Books were at all times his chosen companions, and his acquaintance with many languages gave him great power of selection. He read Homer, Virgil, Dante, Corneille, Cervantes, as he read Shakespeare and Milton.”³ 

Jefferson treasured the opportunity and ability to read Homer and other Greek and Roman authors in their original. On January 27, 1800, he wrote to Joseph Priestley, “. . . to read the Latin & Greek authors in their original is a sublime luxury . . . I enjoy Homer in his own language infinitely . . . it is an innocent enjoyment. I thank on my knees him who directed my early education for having put into my possession this rich source of delight: and I would not exchange it for any thing which I could then have acquired & have not since acquired.”⁴ 

While Jefferson enjoyed reading Homer in Greek, he also enjoyed reading it alongside translations in Latin, English, and Italian. In 1771, he specifically recommended Alexander Pope's translation of The Iliad and The Odyssey to Robert Skipwith who asked Jefferson for a list of recommended reading "suited to the capacity of a common reader who understands but little of the classicks and who has not leisure for any intricate or tedious study."⁵. 

Homer’s epic poems continued to appear in recommended reading lists that Jefferson drew up in subsequent years for various individuals. In December 1783 while Congress was meeting in Annapolis, he despatched a copy of Homer to his nephew Peter Carr as the latter embarked on his studies under the Reverend Walker Maury, who was the headmaster of a classical school in Williamsburg. From Paris in August 1785, Jefferson continued to recommend that Carr study Homer as he exhorted the young man to be “choice in your reading.”⁶ 

In 1806, Jefferson received the library of George Wythe following Wythe’s untimely death from arsenic poisoning. From the bequest, he designated Wythe’s duodecimo copies of Pope’s translation of The Iliad and The Odyssey to his granddaughters Anne Cary and Ellen Wayles Randolph, and the folio editions of these Homeric works in Greek to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph. 

Years later in October 1820 as his grandson Francis Wayles Eppes was getting ready to pursue his studies at South Carolina College in Columbia, SC, Jefferson directed that Francis include The Iliad and The Odyssey in Greek among his prescribed studies. Jefferson wrote, “your Latin & Greek should be kept up assiduously by reading at spare hours . . . I would advise you to undertake a regular course of history & poetry in both languages. in Greek, go first thro’ the Cyropaedia, and then read Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon’s Hellenics & Anabasis, Arrian’s Alexander, & Plutarch’s lives, for prose reading: Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey, Euripides, Sophocles in poetry, & Demosthenes in Oratory; alternating prose & verse as most agreeable to yourself ... "⁷ 

Homer was a source Jefferson often drew upon in his writings. In his "Thoughts on English Prosody," composed in 1786 for the Marquis de Chastellux, he quoted a long passage from The Iliad, remarking that even if the lines of Homer’s poetry were to run together as prose, it would “still immortalize its author were every other syllable of his compositions lost.” He summed up Homer’s immortality in a passage near the end of his essay: "When young any composition pleases which unites a little sense, some imagination, and some rhythm, in doses however small. But as we advance in life these things fall off one by one, and I suspect we are left at last with only Homer and Virgil, perhaps Homer alone. He like ‘Hope travels on nor quits us when we die.’"⁸ 

When Jefferson’s wife Martha died in September 1782, he drew on Homer for the epitaph he placed on her tombstone in the Monticello graveyard, which was lines 389-390 in Greek from Book 22 of The Iliad. The passage depicts Achilles mourning over his dead friend Patrochlus. A modern English translation reads: “And even if in the house of Hades men forget their dead, yet will I even there remember my dear comrade.“⁹ 

Jefferson quoted from The Odyssey in his remarks on slavery in Query XIV (on “Laws”) of his Notes on the State of Virginia, rendering lines 392-393 in Book 17 in Greek alongside Pope’s translation as follows: "Jove fix’d it certain, that whatever day / Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.”¹⁰ 

Jefferson’s love and appreciation for Homer never waned in his old age. Granddaughter Ellen wrote, “In his youth he had loved poetry, but by the time I was old enough to observe, he had lost his taste for it, except for Homer and the great Athenian tragics, which he continued to the last to enjoy.” In a letter to Nathaniel Macon in 1819, Jefferson declared, “I feel a much greater interest in knowing what passed two or three thousand years ago, than what is now passing. I read nothing, therefore, but of the heroes of Troy . . . “ At age 75, he was still engaging in erudite discussions with John Adams over Greek pronunciation and "the sublime measure of Homer."¹¹ 

Jefferson’s five-volume set of Homer’s works from his post 1815 library at Monticello survives intact at the Library of Congress in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division today.¹²   

Editions of Homer in Thomas Jefferson’s Library 

In Greek: 

1. Homērou Odysseia. [Oxford]: Ek Theatrou en Oxonia, 1705. 
2. Tēs tou Homērou Iliados ho tomos proteros [-deuteros]. Glasguae: In aedibus academicis, excudebant Robertus et Andreas Foulis, 1756. 
3. Tēs tou Homērou Odysseias ho tomos proteros [-deuteros]. Glasguae: In aedibus academicis, excudebant Robertus et Andreas Foulis, 1758.  

Latin translation and Greek text: 

1. Homērou Ilias = Homeri Ilias : postrema editio: cui originem & exitum belli Troiani addidimus, Coluthi Helenae raptum & Tryphiodori Ilij excidium : Latinè omnia ad verbum exposita, et à F. Porto Cretensi innumeris in locis emendata. Geneuae: Ex typographeiō M. Berjon, 1621. 
2. Homērou Ilias kai eis autēn Scholia tōn palaiōn = Homeri Ilias, et veterum in eam scholia, quæ vulgò appellantur Didymi. Cantabrigiae: Ex Officinâ Joann. Hayes, Celeberrimae Academiae Typograph ; Londini: Vendit Ed. Brewster, in Coemeterio D. Pauli sub Insigni Gruis, 1689. 
3. Homeri opera quae exstant omnia, Graece et Latine. Graeca, ad principem H. Stephani, ut & ad primam omnium Demetrii Chalcondylae editionem atque insuper ad cod. mss. sunt excussa. Amstelaedami: Ex officina Wetsteniana, 1707. 
4. Homērou Ilias kai Odusseia kai eis autas scholia, ē exēgēsis, tōn palaiōn = Homeri Ilias & Odyssea, et in easdem scholia, sive interpretatio, veterum. Cantabrigiae : Apud Cornelium Crownfield, 1711. 
5. Homeri Odyssea Graece et Latine, item Batrachomyomachia, Hymni, et Epigrammata, Homero vulgò ascripta. Londini: Impensis Johannis et Pauli Knapton, 1740. 
6. Homeri Ilias, Graece et Latine. Annotationes in usum serenissimi principis Gulielmi Augusti, Ducis de Cumberland, &c. regio jussu scripsit atque edidit Samuel Clarke, S.T.P. Londini: impensis Johannis & Pauli Knapton, 1754. 
7. [Homērou hapanta], h.e., Homeri opera omnia ex recensione et cum notis Samuelis Clarkii. Lipsiae: Impensis G. Theophili Georgii impressit Vdalr. Christianus Saalbach, 1759-1764. 
8. Hē tou Homērou Ilias = Homeri Ilias. Homērou exēgētēs = Homeri interpres, cum indice locupletissimo. Glasguae: excudebat Andreas Foulis, 1778. Argentorati: Per Vuendelinum Rihelium, Mense Septembri, 1539. 
9. Homerou Ilias sun tois scholiois. Homeri Ilias ad veteris codicis Veneti fidem recensita. Scholia in eam antiquissima ex eodem codice aliisque nunc primum edidit cum asteriscis, obeliscis, aliisque signis criticis, Joh. Baptista Caspar d'Ansse de Villoison. Venetiis: Typis et sumptibus fratrum Coleti, 1788.  
10. Homeri Carmina cum brevi annotatione accedunt variae lectiones et observationes veterum grammaticorum cum nostrae aetatis critica curante C.G. Heyne. Lipsiae: In libraria Weidmannia ; Londini : Apud I. Payne et Mackinlay, 1802. 
11. Homeri Ilias, Graece et Latine. Annotationes in usum serenissimi principis Gulielmi Augusti, Ducis de Cumberland, &c. Regio jussu scripsit atque edidit Samuel Clarke, S.T.P. Novi Eboraci: Typis Georgii Long, 71 Pearl-Street. Impensis E. Duyckinck, P.A. Mesier, T.A. Ronalds, S.A. Burtus: M. Carey, Philadelphia; Websters & Skinners, Albany; et Howe & Deforest, New-Haven, 1814. 

English translations: 

1. The whole works of Homer; prince of poetts in his Iliads, and Odysses. Translated according to the Greeke, by Geo: Chapman. London: Printed [by Richard Field and William Jaggard] for Nathaniell Butter, [1616?] 
2. The Iliad of Homer. Translated by Alexander Pope, Esq. London: Printed for Henry Lintot, 1750. 
3. The Odyssey of Homer. Translated from the Greek. London: Printed for Henry Lintot, 1752. 
4. The Iliad of Homer. Translated by James Macpherson, Esq. Dublin: Thomas Ewing, 1773. 

Italian translation: 

1. Opere d'Omero tradotte dall'original greco da Anton Maria Salvini. Padova: Nella stamperia del Seminario ; Apresso Giovanni Manfrè, 1742. 

Further Sources

• Homer [entry] in “Register of Authors," Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book. Edited by Douglas L. Wilson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 165.   
• Onuf, Peter S., and Nicholas Cole, eds. Thomas Jefferson, the Classical World, and Early America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011. 
• Vermeule, Emily Townsend. “Jefferson and Homer.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 137, no. 4 (1993): 689–703. 
• Wright, Louis B. “Thomas Jefferson and the Classics.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 87, no. 3 (1943): 223–233. 
• Burstein, Stanley M. “The Classics and the American Republic.” The History Teacher 30, no. 1 (1996): 29–44.