Which Translation: The Odyssey

Barry B. Powell

2014 · Accentual verse

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
504
Holdings
2
Reviews

Biography

Barry Bruce Powell (b. 1942) is an American classical scholar, and Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of the widely used textbook ‘Classical Myth’ and the influential study ‘Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet’.

Powell translated the Odyssey into free verse. He attempted to preserve the ‘clarity and simplicity of the original’, avoiding both the formality of older academic translations and the colloquial exaggerations of recent ones. Reviewers praised his ‘incantatory repetitions’, which purportedly evoke a continuous ‘stream of sound’ recalling Homer’s Greek.

Widely adopted in university courses, Powell’s translation is praised for its scholarly rigor and readability.

Barry B. Powell on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 2014 — Oxford University Press, The Odyssey ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Sing to me of the resourceful man, O Muse, who wandered
far after he had sacked the sacred city of Troy. He saw
the cities of many men and he learned their minds.
He suffered many pains on the sea in his spirit, seeking
to save his life and the homecoming of his companions.
But even so he could not save his companions, though he wanted to,
for they perished of their own folly—the fools! They ate
the cattle of Helios Hyperion, who took from them the day
of their return. Of these matters, beginning where you want,
O daughter of Zeus, tell to us.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
she said to us: ‘Young men, my suitors, because the excellent
Odysseus is dead, be patient, although eager for my wedding,
until I finish this robe. I would not want my spinning
to be for nothing. It is a shroud for the warrior Laërtes,
for the time when the dread fate of grievous death will take hold
of him. I would not want any of the Achaean women in the land
to be angry with me, if he who had won many possessions should
lie without a shroud.’ So she spoke, and our proud hearts agreed.
“Then by day she wove at the great loom, but at night
she unraveled that same work by torchlight. Thus by this trick
she kept the Achaeans from knowing for three years. But when
the fourth year came around as the seasons rolled along, then
one of her women, who well knew what was going on, told us,
and we caught her unraveling the splendid weaving. So she finished it
against her will. We made her do it.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“You are cruel, you gods,
envious above all others! You have it in for any goddess
who sleeps openly with a mortal man, if any should take one
as her dear bed-fellow. Just so when Dawn with her fingers
of rose took Orion as a lover, you gods who live at ease
envied her until chaste Artemis of the golden throne
killed him in Ortygia, attacking him with her gentle arrows.
Or when Demeter of the plaited hair, giving into passion,
mixed in love with Iasion in the thrice-plowed fallow field,
Zeus was not long ignorant of it: He killed Iasion,
striking him with his flashing thunderbolt. Even so
you are now envious, you gods, that a mortal man should be
with me. I saved him when he was riding the keel and all alone,

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him sitting on the shore.
His eyes were never dry of tears. His sweet life
ebbed away as he longed in sorrow for his return,
for the nymph no longer pleased him. At night he slept
beside her in the hollow cave, under duress, unwilling
beside the willful nymph, but during the day he sat
on the rocks and the sand racking his heart with tears,
with moans and agonies, looking out over the restless
sea, pouring down tears.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
So speaking, the godlike Odysseus emerged from the bushes.
With his powerful hand he broke off a leafy branch from
the thick woods to cover his flesh, to hide his male parts.
He came out like a lion reared in the mountains, trusting
in its strength, who goes forth beaten with rain and wind-tossed,
and with eyes ablaze he goes into the midst of the cattle
or the sheep or after the wild deer, and his belly orders him
to go even into a closely built farmstead to attack the flocks.
Just so, Odysseus was about to mingle with the young girls
with fine hair, even though he was naked, for necessity drove him.
But he appeared hideous to them, all besmirched with brine!
They ran every which way—one here, one there—across
the jutting spits of the beach. Only the daughter of Alkinoös
held her ground, for Athena placed courage in her breast
and took fear from her limbs.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
These things the famous
singer sang, and Odysseus was melted. He wet the cheeks
beneath his eyelids with tears.
As a woman falls on her dear husband
and wails, a man who has fallen before his city and his people,
warding off the pitiless day from the city and from his children—
as she sees him dying and breathing his last, she shrieks
aloud and throws herself about him while the enemy
behind her strike the middle of her back and shoulders
with their spears, and lead her away into slavery to bear pain
and calamity while her cheeks are wasted with the most
pitiful grief—even so Odysseus poured a torrent of tears
from beneath his brows.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
“So I spoke. He did not answer from his
pitiless heart, but leaping up he seized two of my companions,
raised them high, then dashed them to the ground as if
they were puppies. Their brains ran out onto the ground,
wetting the earth. Cutting them limb from limb, he readied
his meal. He ate them like a lion raised in the mountains,
not leaving anything—not the guts nor the flesh nor the bones
rich with marrow.
“Wailing, we held up our hands to Zeus,
seeing this vile deed and helpless to do anything about it.
But when Cyclops had filled his great belly by eating the flesh
of two of our men, and then drinking pure milk, he lay stretched
out among the sheep in the cave.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops, you ask about my famous name, so I will tell
you and then you will give me a gift-token, just as you
promised. Nbdy is my name. My mother and my father
and everyone else calls me Nbdy.’
“So I spoke, and he at once
answered me from his pitiless heart: ‘Nbdy, I will eat you
last among your comrades, and the others first. That will be
your gift-token!’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘Who are you? Where is your city? Who are your parents?
I can’t believe that you drank my potion and yet
were not entranced. No other has withstood this drug,
once he has drunk it and it has passed the barrier of his teeth.
The mind in your breast cannot be enchanted! Surely
you are the trickster Odysseus. Argeïphontes of the golden
staff always said you would come, returning from Troy
in your swift, black ship. But come, put away your sword
in your scabbard. Let us go to my bed, there to mingle
in love. Let us learn, lying together, to trust one another.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
“So she spoke, but I pondered in my heart and wanted
to take in my arms my mother’s breath-soul, which had passed
away. Three times I leaped toward her, for my heart
urged me to hold her. Three times she flew away, out
of my arms, like a shadow or a dream.
“A still sharper pain
came to my heart, and I spoke to her words that went
like arrows: ‘My mother, why do you not await me?
I am eager to hold you, so that even in the house of Hades
we may delight in icy wailing, throwing our arms about one another.
Or are you just a phantom that the illustrious Persephone
has sent up so that I may groan and lament all the more?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Don’t sing praise to me about death, my fine Odysseus!
If I could live on the earth, I would be happy to serve as a hired
hand to some other, even to some man without a plot of land,
one who has little to live on, than to be king among all the dead
who have perished. But come, tell me of my good son,
whether he followed me to the war and became a leader or not.
Tell me of my father Peleus, if you know anything,
whether he still holds honor among the many Myrmidons,
or whether men deprive him of honor throughout Hellas
and Phthia because old age has taken possession
of his hands and feet. For I am not there to bear him aid
beneath the rays of the sun in such strength as I had
when at broad Troy I killed the best of their people,
defending the Argives.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘Come here, O storied Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans,
bring your ship over here so that you can hear the voices
of the two of us. For no man yet has passed
this island in his black ship before hearing the sweet
voice from our lips, but he takes pleasure in it and goes
on his way, knowing more. For we know all that the Argives
and the Trojans suffered through the will of the gods
in broad Troy, and we know all things that take place
on the much-nourishing earth.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
All death is hateful to wretched mortals,
but most pitiful is to die of hunger and so meet one’s doom.
So come, let us drive off the best of the cattle of Helios
and sacrifice them to the deathless ones who hold the broad
heaven. And if we ever arrive to Ithaca, the land of our fathers,
we will build a rich temple to Helios Hyperion, and place many
fine offerings in it. And if he is angry because of his
straight-horned cattle and wishes to destroy our ship,
and the other gods agree, I would rather die of a sudden,
gulping down a wave, than to waste away slowly
on a desert island.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
Then he went straight into
the house and among the proud suitors, but the fate of black death
took Argos when he had seen Odysseus in the twentieth year.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
As when a man before
a blazing fire swiftly turns a stomach filled with fat and blood
this way and that, and he is eager that it quickly roast, even so
was Odysseus turned this way and that as he contemplated how
he might place his hands on the shameless suitors, being one
against many.
Then Athena came close to him from heaven,
and she took on the appearance of a woman. She stood over his
head and she said: “Why are you awake, most ill-fated of all mortals?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So spoke the suitors. But the resourceful
Odysseus hefted the great bow and looked it over carefully—
even as when a man skilled in the lyre and in song easily
stretches the string around a new peg, making the twisted
sheep gut fast from both ends, so Odysseus without trouble
strung the great bow. Holding it in his right hand, he tried
the string. It sang sweetly beneath his touch, like the sound
of a nightingale.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
And then the resourceful Odysseus stripped off his rags,
and he leaped up onto the great threshold, holding his bow
and his quiver filled with arrows, and he poured out the swift
arrows before his feet. He spoke to the suitors: “Now at last
this mad contest comes to an end. And now for another
target, which no man has yet struck. I will know if I can
hit it and Apollo give me glory!”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
So he spoke, and he tied one end of the cable of
a blue-prowed ship to a great pillar of the portico and the other
to the round-house, stretching it up high so that no one could reach
the ground with her feet. As when long-winged thrushes or doves fall
into a snare set in a thicket as they launch themselves toward their
resting place, but hateful is the bed that gives them welcome—even so
the women held their heads in a row, and around the necks of all
of them were placed nooses so that they might die most piteously.
They writhed a little with their feet, but not for long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
So she spoke, putting her husband
to the test. But Odysseus, bursting with anger, spoke to his sensible
wife: “Woman—truly you have uttered a grievous word! Who has
moved my bed elsewhere? That would be hard to do even for one
highly skilled, unless some god should come down himself
and easily will it to be in another place. But no living man, no matter
how young and strong, could easily have moved it, for a great
sign is built into the decorated bed. I made it, and no one else.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
As welcome as the land appears
to swimmers, whose well-built ship Poseidon has smashed on the sea
as it was driven on by wind and rough waves—few escape
the gray sea by swimming to the mainland, and a thick crust of brine
has formed around their flesh, and gladly have they gone forth
onto the land, fleeing evil—even so was her husband welcome
to Penelope as she looked upon him, and she would not let loose
her white arms from his neck.