Which Translation: The Odyssey

Anthony Verity

2017 · Free verse

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
202
Holdings
5
Reviews

Biography

Anthony Courtenay Froude Verity (b. 1939) is a British classical scholar and educationalist, educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He served as Head of Classics at Bristol Grammar School, Headmaster of Leeds Grammar School, and Master of Dulwich College.

Verity’s translation aimed for a straightforward English register rather than anything poetic. He tried to keep closely to the Greek, and to allow the directness and power of the original to speak for itself.

Praised in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review as an ‘excellent, clear, traditionally literal’ translation, it has become a standard affordable scholarly edition in the Oxford World’s Classics series, valued for its accuracy and William Allan’s introduction.

Anthony Verity on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 2017 — Oxford University Press, The Odyssey (Oxford World's Classics) ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many turns, who was driven
far and wide after he had sacked the sacred city of Troy.
Many were the men whose cities he saw, and learnt their minds,
many the sufferings on the open sea he endured in his heart,
struggling for his own life and his companions’ homecoming.
Even so he could not protect them, though he desired it,
since they perished by reason of their own recklessness,
the fools, because they ate the cattle of the Sun, Hyperion,
and he took away the day of their homecoming. Tell us, too,
goddess daughter of Zeus, starting from where you will.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
“Young men, my suitors! Glorious Odysseus is dead; but
eager though you are for this marriage, wait until I finish
this robe, so that my weaving is not wasted, all in vain. It is a burial
shroud for the hero Laertes, meant for when the cruel fate of death,
bringer of long misery, takes him away, so that
no Achaean woman in our people will be indignant with me
because he who amassed great wealth is lying without a shroud.”
That is what she said, and our proud hearts were persuaded.
From that time she would weave at the great loom by day, but
at night torches were set beside her and she unravelled her work.
So for three years her guile went unnoticed and she fooled the
Achaeans; but when with the seasons’ round the fourth year arrived,
then at last one of her women, who knew the deceit well, told us, and
we found her in the act of undoing the bright weaving; and so the robe
was brought forcibly to completion, albeit against her will.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
‘You are hard, you gods, and envious beyond all others,
bearing a grudge against any goddess who takes a man
openly to her bed, if she desires to make him her husband.
It was so when Dawn with the rosy fingers chose Orion;
the gods who live an easy life bore a grudge against her
until finally chaste Artemis of the golden throne pursued
him in Ortygia and killed him with her gentle shafts.
It was so when Demeter of the lovely hair yielded to
passion and coupled in love with Iasion, in a thrice-
ploughed field. It was not long before Zeus found out
and killed him with a cast of his flashing thunderbolt.
And now it is my turn; you gods begrudge me that I have a
mortal here, a man I rescued as he bestrode his ship’s keel,

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him sitting on the seashore; his eyes were never
without tears, and his sweet life drained away as he grieved
for a way home, since the nymph no longer pleased him.
He spent his nights in her hollow cavern, but by constraint,
since she desired him, while he had no love for her.
All his days he passed sitting on rocks on the seashore,
tearing at his heart with tears and groans and anguish,
forever weeping and looking out over the restless sea.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
So glorious Odysseus spoke, and came from under the thicket.
With his brawny hand he broke off a branch of dense brushwood, a
leafy one, to hold before his body and hide his man’s parts.
He set off like a mountain-nurtured lion that trusts in its strength,
advancing buffeted by wind and rain, and the eyes in it are
blazing; now it goes hunting among cattle or sheep, now after
deer in the wild, and now its belly drives it on to make an attack on a
strongly built farmyard and to fall upon the sheep there.
Just so Odysseus made ready to join the lovely-haired girls,
naked though he was, because necessity had come upon him.
A fearful sight he presented to them, disfigured by brine, and they fled
in terror, this way and that along the jutting sand-spits.
Only the daughter of Alcinous stood firm, for Athena had
put boldness in her heart and taken the fear from her limbs.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
This, then, was the famed singer’s tale; and as he sang
Odysseus melted, and tears fell from his eyes, wetting his
cheeks. As when a woman weeps, throwing herself on her
dear husband, who has fallen in battle in front of his city and people
while warding off the pitiless day from the town and
its children; she finds him dying, gasping for breath, and
throws her arms about him with a shrill cry of keening; but
the enemy follow up and beat her back and shoulders with
their spears and drag her off into slavery, to endure toil and misery, and
her cheeks are ravaged by her piteous anguish;
so Odysseus let fall a flood of piteous tears from his eyes.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
‘So I spoke, and he in his pitiless heart made no reply, but
started up and, stretching out his hands towards my companions, seized
two of them as if they were puppies and beat their heads on the ground;
and their brains ran out and drenched the earth.
He then tore them limb from limb, and so prepared his supper;
he ate like a lion bred in the mountains, leaving nothing
behind, neither flesh nor entrails nor marrow-filled bones.
Meanwhile we, weeping, held up our hands to Zeus at the
sight of such cruel deeds; but helplessness gripped our hearts.
When the Cyclops had filled his vast belly with this meal
of human flesh, washing it down with unwatered milk,
he lay down in his cave, sprawled out among his flocks.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
“Do you ask me my name, Cyclops? Well, I shall tell you,
and then you must give me the present that you promised.
No-man is my name, and No-man is what my mother
and father call me, and all my companions as well.”
‘So I spoke, and at once he answered from his ruthless heart: “Then I
shall eat No-man last of all his comrades, and
the others first. That shall be my guest-present for you.”

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘ “Who are you? Where are you from? Where is your city, and your
parents? I am amazed you were not bewitched when you drank.
No other man, no one at all, has been able to resist this potion once it
has passed the barrier of his teeth and he has drained it—you have a
heart in your breast that is proof against sorcery.
Surely you must be Odysseus, man of many turns, the one who
the Argus-slayer, god of the golden rod, has always told me
would come in his swift black ship on his way back from Troy.
So come, put your sword back in its scabbard, and then
let us both go up to my bed, so that when we have slept
together in the bed of love we may come to trust one another.”

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
‘So she spoke; and I pondered in my heart and longed
to take the shade of my departed mother in my embrace.
Three times I started forward, my heart urging me to hold her,
and three times she fluttered through my arms, like a shadow
or a dream; and the grief in my heart grew even keener,
and I addressed her, speaking in winged words:
“Mother, why do you avoid me when I ache to hold you,
hoping even in Hades’ realm we may throw our loving arms
around each other and so enjoy our fill of chill weeping?
Or is this a mere phantom that proud Persephone has
sent me, to make me lament and groan all the more?”

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
“Do not try to comfort me about death, splendid Odysseus.
I would rather be a land-labourer, bonded to another man,
one who owns no land, and with little enough to keep him
alive, than to be king over all the dead who have passed away.
But now; tell me some news about that lordly son of mine—
did he follow me to the war, to be a champion there, or not?
Tell me too if you have heard any report of excellent Peleus,
if he still enjoys honour among the numerous Myrmidons,
or if in Hellas and Phthia they now treat him without respect
because old age binds his hands and feet fast in its grip.
I cannot now be his protector under the light of the sun—
the kind of man I once was in Troy’s wide lands, when I
defended the Argives and killed the best of Troy’s fighters.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
“Odysseus of many tales, great glory of the Achaeans, draw near; bring
your ship into land, and listen to our twofold song!
No man has ever sailed past this place in his black ship without hearing
the honey-toned voice that issues from our lips, and
then, full of delight, going on his way a much wiser man.
You see, we know everything that both Trojans and Argives
endured on Troy’s wide plain, by the will of the gods; and we
know too all that happens on the earth that nourishes many.”

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
All ways of dying are hateful to wretched mortals,
but the most miserable way to meet one’s doom is by hunger.
So come, let us drive off the best of the Sun-god’s cattle, and sacrifice
them to the gods who dwell in the wide high sky.
Then, if we ever manage to reach Ithaca, our native land,
we shall before anything else build a rich temple to Hyperion
the Sun-god, and deposit many splendid offerings in it.
But if the god is angry because of his straight-horned cattle
and wishes to wreck our ship, and the other gods follow him,
then I would rather lose my life with one last gulp of sea-water
than have it slowly squeezed out of me on some desolate island.”

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
So he spoke, and went into the pleasantly ordered palace,
and set off straight through the hall to join the lordly suitors.
But the doom of black death seized hold of Argus, at the
very moment he saw Odysseus again, after nineteen years.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
As when a man has stuffed a paunch full of fat and blood,
and keeps turning it back and forth on a blazing-hot fire,
because he wants it to be cooked as quickly as possible,
so Odysseus kept turning back and forth, pondering how
to lay his hands on the shameless suitors, though he was
only one against so many. Then down from the high sky
came Athena in the form of a woman and stood close to him.
Standing above his head she addressed him in these words:
‘Still awake, yet again, you most ill-fated of mortals?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So the suitors spoke. But Odysseus, man of many wiles,
lifted up the great bow, examining it from every side,
and then, just as a man skilled in lyre-playing and song
without difficulty stretches a string around a new peg,
tying the well-twisted gut of a sheep at both its ends,
so, without any effort, did Odysseus string the great bow.
Taking it up in his right hand he tested the string,
and it sang out sweetly, like the song of a swallow.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Odysseus of many wiles threw back his rags, and leapt
on to the great threshold, holding the bow and quiver
full of arrows; and there he spilled the swift shafts,
right in front of his feet, and addressed the suitors:
‘This terrible contest has now come to its end! But this
time I shall shoot at another mark, one that no man has
yet hit—if I can hit it, and if Apollo grants my prayer.’

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
So he spoke, and tied the cable of a black-prowed ship to
a tall pillar, and threw the other end about the round-house, securing it
high up so that their feet could not touch the ground.
As when long-winged thrushes or doves fly headlong into
a net strung in a thicket to catch them—they are making for
their roosting-places, but it is a grim repose that awaits them—
so these women’s heads were held fast in a row, with a noose
round each neck, so that their death would be most pitiable.
Their feet twitched for a short time, but not for very long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
So she spoke, testing her husband; and Odysseus burst out in anger,
and addressed his faithful-minded wife:
‘Lady, what you have just said causes me pain in my heart.
Who has moved my bed to another place? That would be hard
to do, even for a very skilled man, unless some god decided
to come here in person and easily set it down somewhere else.
There is no man alive, not even one in the prime of life,
who could shift it without difficulty, since there is a unique
token artfully built into it; it was my work, and mine alone.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
As welcome as the sight of land appearing to swimmers, men whose
strong-constructed ship, driven by winds
and heavy seas, Poseidon has shattered in open waters—
only a few escape the grey sea by swimming to the shore,
their skin covered with a thick crust of brine, and with joy
they set foot on land, for they have avoided a grim death—
just so did Penelope look with joy upon her husband, and
would not quite release her white arms’ hold on his neck.