The Odyssey | Page 2

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 killed her lord on his return, and
that with sheer doom before his eyes, since we had warned him by the
embassy of Hermes the keen-sighted, the slayer of Argos, that he
should neither kill the man, nor woo his wife. For the son of Atreus
shall be avenged at the hand of Orestes, so soon as he shall come to
man's estate and long for his own country. So spake Hermes, yet he
prevailed not on the heart of Aegisthus, for all his good will; but now
hath he paid one price for all.'
And the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, answered him, saying: 'O father,
our father Cronides, throned in the highest; that man assuredly lies in a
death that is his due; so perish likewise all who work such deeds! But
my heart is rent for wise Odysseus, the hapless one, who far from his
friends this long while suffereth affliction in a sea-girt isle, where is the
navel of the sea, a woodland isle, and therein a goddess hath her
habitation, the daughter of the wizard Atlas, who knows the depths of
every sea, and himself upholds the tall pillars which keep earth and sky
asunder. His daughter it is that holds the hapless man in sorrow: and
ever with soft and guileful tales she is wooing him to forgetfulness of
Ithaca. But Odysseus yearning to see if it were but the smoke leap
upwards from his own land, hath a desire to die. As for thee, thine heart
regardeth it not at all, Olympian! What! Did not Odysseus by the ships
of the Argives make thee free offering of sacrifice in the wide Trojan
land? Wherefore wast thou then so wroth with him, O Zeus?'
The "Odyssey" (as every one knows) abounds in passages borrowed
from the "Iliad"; I had wished to print these in a slightly different type,
with marginal references to the "Iliad," and had marked them to this
end in my MS. I found, however, that the translation would be thus
hopelessly scholasticised, and abandoned my intention. I would

nevertheless urge on those who have the management of our University
presses, that they would render a great service to students if they would
publish a Greek text of