Zenodotus' variant readings have been rejected by Aristarchean scholarship and dismissed as inventions of his. As a result, they are almost never taken into account by modern linguists. Yet, as a linguistic study can show, many of them are indeed old, and some are even archaic — this is why they were no longer understood by Aristarchus. Those neglected readings bring new information on Greek historical linguistics, and of course on the history of the Homeric text.