An undergraduate or graduate student who has already had a little experience with Homer will get the most use of this commentary; however, more advanced Homerophiles will ignore this small but potent book at their own risk: its pages swarm with ideas, hunches, questions, and references to an astounding range of primary and secondary works.
Rutherford writes in his Preface, “I hope that this book will be usable by readers of Homer at all levels. I have tried to make it as self-contained as possible, and to enable readers to use it with no other books on their desks apart from a Homeric dictionary such as Autenrieth’s or Cunliffe’s, or Liddell and Scott, and a text or some version of the rest of the Odyssey.” These minimal ingredients make a full meal for thoughtful readers; however, if you happen to have access to an excellent university library with a full complement of classical scholarship from the early Nineteenth Century up to the publication date of this commentary, you can make yourself into a Homeric scholar by chasing down all Rutherford’s references. A copy of the Old Testament might come in handy, as well as the works of Hesiod, Thucydides, the Tragedians, and Vergil. But let the amateur Homerist start with Rutherford’s commentary and a lexicon, and by all means have at hand a text of the rest of the Odyssey in Greek or a translation with line numbers.
For readers unfamiliar with the Odyssey to apprehend Rutherford’s approach thoroughly, they must have and refer frequently to a whole version of the epic, and they must read the whole in translation. Rutherford pursues an ambitious goal: to understand the whole organism through one of its cells, and to begin the investigation at Book XIX, a point in the story rich in literary attributes and problems. It is fertile ground for interpretation and argumentation. Rutherford explains that his choice of Book XIX “arose naturally from work I had been pursuing on recognition, irony and illusion in Homer.” (A recent example of his work in this area can be found in “The Philosophy of the Odyssey”JHS CVI (1986): 145-162.) Rutherford’s commentary matches the material in richness: he comments on virtually every line, often devoting a whole paragraph or page to an interpretive problem. Virtually every other comment contains multiple references to primary and secondary works. I cite an extreme case on 19.215 πειρήσεσθαι:
… Stories in many cultures tell of gods visiting men in disguise, seeking out and rewarding virtue, and punishing the wicked. See Genesis 18.1-5; 19:2; Hebrews 13:1; Hollis on Ovid, Met. 8.611-724; R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth 1986) ch.4. The Odyssey alludes to such tales at 17.483-7, where some of the suitors, alarmed by the menacing words of the disguised hero, fear that Odysseus may in fact be a god. He is not, but several passages play on his resemblance to a god in this role (see 7.199-206, 16.183-5, 23.62-4), and he is certainly an instrument of divine punishment, as the increasing support of Athene and the moral authority of his pronouncements (esp. 22.413-18) both stress. See further West on Hes. WD 249ff.; E. Kearns, C.Q.