Homer

Iliad

Parmae, typis Bodonianis, 1808

In three volumes in large folio format, edited by the Greek scholar Luigi Lamberti, it is Bodoni's most monumental work. He made two copies on Bavarian parchment, one for Napoleon (now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris), the second offered to the Viceroy of Italy Eugene di Beauharnais (since 1929 in the Palatine Library in Parma).

The project, already conceived in 1803, ended with the printing which took place from May 1807 to December 1808. The long gestation can be explained by the publication, in 1805, of the Hymn to Ceres (test essay of Greek characters for the Iliad) , with the need to cast an extraordinary quantity of new Greek characters and to type the matrixes of the characters together with the spirits, with the difficulties in procuring the parchment for the prints intended for Napoleon and Beauharnais, as well as the lengthiness of Lamberti in preparing the text.