Iliad and Odyssey, ed. van Thiel (Beta Code, no diacritics or punctuation)

In 2000 Professor Dr Helmut van Thiel, the eminent scholar and editor of the Homeric epics, hosted on his homepage at Universität Köln freely available PDF files containing plain text versions of his editions of the Iliad and Odyssey. The PDF files went under the titles 'iliaspur', 'odysspur', and a combined version in one file, 'homerpur'. Sadly, at some point, the webpage went offline.

These files were uniquely valuable precisely because they contain just the plain text, with no modern punctuation or diacritics. The letters were in a font designed to resemble the Greek alphabet, but the characters used were actually Beta Code. In addition, each line began with an annotation giving the reference for each line: 'A1' up to 'W804' for the Iliad, and 'a1' up to 'w548' for the Odyssey.

These features made the files ideally suited for searching the text for metrical formulas and other repeated phrases. It would be regrettable if this data were lost to time.

The attached version is the result of exporting the text from the PDF files. The file is in plain text format, with UTF-8 character encoding and Windows (CR LF) line breaks.