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The Odyssey: Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original

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Title: The Odyssey

Author: Homer

Translator: Samuel Butler

 
Release date: April 1, 1999 [eBook #1727]
 Most recently updated: December 2, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1727

Credits: Jim Tinsley and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ODYSSEY ***

[Illustration]

The Odyssey

by Homer

rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the
original

Contents

 PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
 THE ODYSSEY
 BOOK I.
 BOOK II.
 BOOK III.
 BOOK IV.
 BOOK V.
 BOOK VI.
 BOOK VII.
 BOOK VIII.
 BOOK IX.
 BOOK X.
 BOOK XI.
 BOOK XII.
 BOOK XIII.
 BOOK XIV.
 BOOK XV.
 BOOK XVI.
 BOOK XVII.
 BOOK XVIII.
 BOOK XIX.
 BOOK XX.
 BOOK XXI.
 BOOK XXII.
 BOOK XXIII.
 BOOK XXIV.
 FOOTNOTES:

AL PROFESSORE
CAV. BIAGIO INGROIA,
PREZIOSO ALLEATO
L'AUTORE RICONOSCENTE.

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

This translation is intended to supplement a work entitled "The
Authoress of the Odyssey", which I published in 1897. I could not give
the whole "Odyssey" in that book without making it unwieldy, I
therefore epitomised my translation, which was already completed and
which I now publish in full.

I shall not here argue the two main points dealt with in the work just
mentioned; I have nothing either to add to, or to withdraw from, what I
have there written. The points in question are:

(1) that the "Odyssey" was written entirely at, and drawn entirely
from, the place now called Trapani on the West Coast of Sicily, alike
as regards the Phaeacian and the Ithaca scenes; while the voyages of
Ulysses, when once he is within easy reach of Sicily, solve themselves
into a periplus of the island, practically from Trapani back to
Trapani, via the Lipari islands, the Straits of Messina, and the island
of Pantellaria.

(2) That the poem was entirely written by a very young woman, who lived
at the place now called Trapani, and introduced herself into her work
under the name of Nausicaa.

The main arguments on which I base the first of these somewhat
startling contentions, have been prominently and repeatedly before the
English and Italian public ever since they appeared (without rejoinder)
in the "Athenaeum" for January 30 and February 20, 1892. Both
contentions were urged (also without rejoinder) in the Johnian "Eagle"
for the Lent and October terms of the same year. Nothing to which I
should reply has reached me from any quarter, and knowing how anxiously
I have endeavoured to learn the existence of any flaws in my argument,
I begin to feel some confidence that, did such flaws exist, I should
have heard, at any rate about some of them, before now. Without,
therefore, for a moment pretending to think that scholars generally
acquiesce in my conclusions, I shall act as thinking them little likely
so to gainsay me as that it will be incumbent upon me to reply, and
shall confine myself to translating the "Odyssey" for English readers,
with such notes as I think will be found useful. Among these I would
especially call attention to one on xxii. 465-473 which Lord Grimthorpe
has kindly allowed me to make public.

I have repeated several of the illustrations used in "The Authoress of
the Odyssey", and have added two which I hope may bring the outer court
of Ulysses' house more vividly before the reader. I should like to
explain that the presence of a man and a dog in one illustration is
accidental, and was not observed by me till I developed the negative.
In an appendix I have also reprinted the paragraphs explanatory of the
plan of Ulysses' house, together with the plan itself. The reader is
recommended to study this plan with some attention.

In the preface to my translation of the "Iliad" I have given my views
as to the main principles by which a translator should be guided, and
need not repeat them here, beyond pointing out that the initial liberty
of translating poetry into prose involves the continual taking of more
or less liberty throughout the translation; for much that is right in
poetry is wrong in prose, and the exigencies of readable prose are the
first things to be considered in a prose translation. That the reader,
however, may see how far I have departed from strict construe, I will
print here Messrs. Butcher and Lang's translation of the sixty lines or
so of the "Odyssey." Their translation runs:

Tell me, Muse, of that man, so ready at need, who wandered far and
wide, after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy, and many were the
men whose towns he saw and whose mind he learnt, yea, and many the woes
he suffered in his heart on the deep, striving to win his own life and
the return of his company. Nay, but even so he saved not his company,
though he desired it sore. For through the blindness of their own
hearts they perished, fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios Hyperion:
but the god took from them their day of returning. Of these things,
goddess, daughter of Zeus, whencesoever thou hast heard thereof,
declare thou even unto us.

 Now all the rest, as many as fled from sheer destruction, were at
 home, and had escaped both war and sea, but Odysseus only, craving
 for his wife and for his homeward path, the lady nymph Calypso
 held, that fair goddess, in her hollow caves, longing to have him
 for her lord. But when now the year had come in the courses of the
 seasons, wherein the gods had ordained that he should return home
 to Ithaca, not even there was he quit of labours, not even among
 his own; but all the gods had pity on him save Poseidon, who raged
 continually against godlike Odysseus, till he came to his own
 country. Howbeit Poseidon had now departed for the distant
 Ethiopians, the Ethiopians that are sundered in twain, the
 uttermost of men, abiding some where Hyperion sinks and some where
 he rises. There he looked to receive his hecatomb of bulls and
 rams, there he made merry sitting at the feast, but the other gods
 were gathered in the halls of Olympian Zeus. Then among them the
 father of men and gods began to speak, for he bethought him in his
 heart of noble Aegisthus, whom the son of Agamemnon, far-famed
 Orestes, slew. Thinking upon him he spake out among the Immortals:
 'Lo you now, how vainly mortal men do blame the gods! For of us
 they say comes evil, whereas they even of themselves, through the
 blindness of their own hearts, have sorrows beyond that which is
 ordained. Even as of late Aegisthus, beyond that which was
 ordained, took to him the wedded wife of the son of Atreus, and
 k

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