The centuries-old copy of “The Odyssey” is filled with annotations from former professor Eben Alexander, who taught at Carolina beginning in the late 19th century. (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)
Amid renewed interest in “The Odyssey” thanks to this year’s cinematic adaptation, Carolina’s Wilson Library is putting a rare edition of the iconic epic poem on display — one with a unique connection to Carolina history.
Published in 1517, this edition — printed entirely in ancient Greek — represents the immortality of Homer’s tale and how the story has been continuously passed down, retranslated and reinterpreted for more than three millennia.
Visitors can find the edition in the second-floor lobby, where it will be on display for a limited time.
Eileen Dewitya is the Frank Borden Hanes curator of the Rare Book Collection at Wilson. She’s interested in seeing how Carolina students react to the book once they return to campus in the coming days.
“A lot of them might have just seen the movie in the theater and had their own ways of relating to it,” Dewitya said. “But here’s the actual piece in Greek that they can discover. I think that’s very exciting.”
Here’s a look at the book’s significance and its tie to Carolina history.
It was produced by an Italian Renaissance printer.
This edition of “The Odyssey” was printed by Aldus Manutius, a printer and humanist who founded the Aldine Press, which received worldwide renown for introducing italic type and small, portable books that acted as the precursor to the modern paperback.
Manutius was also known for producing far more copies of a single book than was expected at the time. While others published between 100 and 200 copies, the Aldine Press produced up to 1,000. His work made classics like “The Odyssey” more widely available.
“For this edition, he was very excited to share the unadulterated, untranslated Greek,” Dewitya said. “This was in its pure form. Readers could get the full, authentic experience.”
Carolina is one of only 12 documented institutions worldwide with this edition.
This rare edition is also the only known copy in the southeastern U.S. and one of seven documented editions housed at American universities.
“They all might be the same text, but each copy has its own provenance,” Dewitya said. “That’s part of what makes them so interesting to visitors.”
A UNC-Chapel Hill classics professor gifted it to the University.
Eben Alexander, who taught at Carolina from 1886 to 1909, had a deep love for the ancient classics and is known for introducing modern Greek into the University’s curriculum.
Alongside his duties at Carolina, Alexander served as a U.S. diplomat to Greece, Serbia and Romania. While visiting Athens in 1896, he helped facilitate U.S. participation in the first modern Olympic Games. He was also an avid supporter of the University Library, where he served as a supervisor and helped establish an academic Carnegie library, a research library directed by Louis Round Wilson.
Alexander’s original handwritten annotations can be seen in the margins of the book, giving this already rare copy some Tar Heel personality.
“Alexander’s writings make this a living document,” Dewitya said. “He had a deep connection with this book.”
Wilson Library’s five curators build these landmark special collections and bring them to life. In creating the Frank Borden Hanes curatorship for the Rare Book Collection, the Hanes family has ensured that generations of researchers will benefit from the insight and guidance of skilled curators like Eileen Dewitya.