Homero - Ilias Ambrosiana - Cod. F. 205 P. Inf. Bibliotheca Amrosianae Mediolanensis - 1953

An illustrated Byzantine manuscript, possibly from the 5th or 6th century; which is preserved in the Ambrosian Library, which is why it is also called Iliad Ambrosiana ("Ilias Ambrosiana"). Written on vellum paper, it contains fifty-one folios with fifty-eight images depicting scenes from Homer's Iliad and parts of the text of the poem in ancient Greek on the back. In the 12th century, the miniatures were cut and pasted into a paper codex of Calabrian-Sicilian origin that contained material from the Homeric corpus.
Mai published the fragments in "Iliadis fragmenta antiquissima cum picturis item scholia vetera in Odysseam" in 1819. Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli believes that it was written in Alexandria between AD 493 and 508, based on the abundance of green in the images, which would have been the color of the faction in power at the time. Bandinelli published the most complete study of the manuscript, "Hellenistic-Byzantine Miniatures of the Iliad." It is one of the oldest illustrated manuscripts in classical literature that has survived from ancient times.