This book presents the first systematic linguistic study of Zenodotus’ variant readings, showing that he used a version of Homer older than the one used by Aristarchus a century later. Several clues point to the fact that Zenodotus’ version belongs to a tradition that was already distinct from that which eventually yielded the vulgate (that is, the Homer we know). In particular, his version largely pre-dates the Sophists’ reflections on language, rhetorics and style, and the grammatical theories of Alexandrian scholars. It preserves a remarkable number of linguistic archaisms, more often than not ignored by linguists, unfortunately: these archaisms should find their due place in the picture of the different Homeric texts from the philological point of view, and bring important new information for historical Greek linguistics