This is the first instalment of a six-volume Commentary on the Iliad, of which I hope to undertake the second volume also, the rest being committed to four other authors – J. B. Hainsworth, R. Janko, M. W. Edwards and N. J. Richardson – with myself as general editor. Subsequent volumes should appear at close intervals in some four years' time.

The Commentary has always been envisaged as one that develops as it goes along, rather than one in which everything has been decided once and for all. The latter may be simpler for the user, but the present kind has compensating advantages. Different emphases will emerge, in a more or less logical order, through the six volumes, as poem and Commentary unfold. That is why there is a strong emphasis in this opening volume on poetics, especially at the level of rhythm and diction. Another important aspect of composition, at least of the oral kind, is the varied use of standard themes and ‘typical scenes’ – the equivalent, on a larger scale, of the standard phrases we call ‘formulas’. These are less obtrusive in the epic's opening Books than later, and will accordingly be more fully treated from the second volume on. Again, the overall structure and dominant emotional impulse of this enormous poem – its metaphysical aspect, almost – only emerge as the epic approaches its conclusion, and consequently are left undefined, or open, in the present volume.