Which Translation: The Odyssey

Daniel Mendelsohn

2025 · Hexameter verse

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
358
Holdings
8
Reviews

Biography

Daniel Adam Mendelsohn (b. 1960) is an American classicist, critic, essayist, and memoirist. He is the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College, Editor at Large of the New York Review of Books, and holds a Ph.D. in Classics from Princeton University.

Mendelsohn wanted to create an English-language Odyssey that was pleasant to read, while reproducing everything present in each line of Homer’s Greek, including repetition, meter, allitation, assonance, and enjambment. He had in mind an audience of literature students, who might be learning to appreciate the way a literary work’s form can serve its content. Mendelsohn used plain language with occasional departures to suggest a slightly higher register, and carefully rephrased epithets that had become cliche in English in an attempt to restore some of their arresting strangeness.

Edith Hall of The Telegraph called it potentially ‘the best translation of The Odyssey yet’. It has been hailed as a ‘momentous achievement,’ described as ‘searingly faithful-yet absolutely original,’ and named one of the best books of 2025.

Daniel Mendelsohn on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 2025 — Penguin Classics, The Odyssey (UK edition)
  • 2025 — University of Chicago Press, The Odyssey (US edition) ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Tell me the tale of a man, Muse, who had so many roundabout ways
To wander, driven off course, after sacking Troy’s hallowed keep;
Many the peoples whose cities he saw and whose ways of thinking he learned,
Many the toils he suffered at sea, anguish in his heart
As he struggled to safeguard his life and the homecoming of his companions.
But he did not save his companions even so, though he longed to,
For their heedlessness destroyed them, theirs and nobody else’s—
Fools that they were, like children, who devoured the sun-god Hyperion’s
Cattle, and so he took from them the day of their homecoming.
Goddess, start where you will; daughter of Zeus, share the tale with us too.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘Young men who are my suitors, since noble Odysseus is dead
Please wait—eager though you may be for my marriage—until I have finished
This garment—for I do not want all my weaving to count for naught—
It’s a shroud for the lord Laërtes, for the hour when our common doom,
Death, will lay him low—death, which draws out our sorrow!—
I don’t want the Achaean women to make a great show of their outrage
Because a man who’d amassed such wealth now lies there without a stitch.’
Her words. And straightaway our stalwart hearts were convinced.
While it was still daytime, she would weave the enormous fabric,
But she undid her work each night by the light of torches they’d set there.
For three full years she fooled the Achaeans, her ruse undetected.
But as season followed on season the fourth year came around;
It was then that one of her women, who knew the whole story, spoke up,
And we caught her in the act of undoing her splendid weaving.
So she finally finished it up—all unwilling, because we forced her.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“What wretches you are, you gods, jealous beyond all others!
You’re full of resentment at goddesses who sleep with mortal men
Openly, if one of us wants to make him her wedded husband.
So when Dawn, who touches the sky with her fingertips of rose,
Chose Orion, you gods who live in ease grew resentful of her
Until the holy lady Artemis, who sits on a golden throne,
Aimed her gentle shafts at him in Ortygíê, striking him dead.
Demeter with her lovely braids once yielded her heart to Iasíôn:
When she mingled with him in love—their bed was but a fallow
Field plowed three times over—it hardly went unnoticed
By Zeus, who struck him dead with a flash of his thunderbolt.
And so it is now: You resent it because I’m with a mortal man.
But I was the one who saved him as he sat there astride a keel

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him by the shore, sitting there; nor did his tears
Ever dry, since the sweetness of life was trickling away
As he grieved for his homecoming. For the nymph had ceased to please him.
Night after night he lay down in the hollow caves beside her,
Compelled by the goddess to do so, he unwilling, she all too willing,
While during the day he would sit on the rocks by the edge of the sea
Weeping and moaning and tearing his heart to shreds in despair,
The tears pouring down as he stared at the restless wastes of the sea.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
His words. And noble Odysseus slid out from under the bushes.
With his mighty hand he broke off a leafy branch from the dense
Woods, to hold up to his body and so hide his private parts.
He went off like a mountain-bred lion, swaggering in its strength
As it stalks out into the rain and the wind, and yet both its eyes
Are ablaze. And then there it is, chasing the cattle or sheep
Or tracking deer in the wild—its belly commands it even
To have a go at the thick-walled pen, which is home to the flocks.
Such was Odysseus, then, as he prepared to consort with the maidens
Of the beautiful braids—stark naked. So dire was his need.
He was a harrowing sight to see, all fouled with briny water,
And the girls ran every which way as they hid by the stream’s jutting banks.
Only Alkínoös’s daughter stayed where she was, for Athena
Put courage into her heart and took the fear from her limbs.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
So that was the song that was sung by the far-famed bard. But Odysseus
Dissolved into tears that drenched the cheeks beneath his lids.
Just as a woman would weep while embracing a beloved husband
Who, there before his city and his people, has fallen
Defending his town and his children from the day that will show no pity—
When she sees him dying there, gasping his final breath,
She collapses on top of him, shrieking loudly, while behind her
The enemy thrashes her back and her shoulders with their spears,
Leading her into bondage to endure hard labor and grief,
And a heart-wrenching anguish causes her cheeks to waste away—
That’s how those wrenching tears streamed from under Odysseus’s brows.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
My words. But no reply ever came from his pitiless heart.
No! Springing to his feet, he laid violent hands on my comrades.
Grabbing two of them at once, he dashed them down on the earth
Like pups, and their brains poured out on the ground, drenching the earth.
He tore them limb from limb, then went about making his supper.
He ate like a lion reared in the mountains—not a morsel left over,
Not the innards nor the flesh nor the bones bursting with marrow.
As for us, we were all wailing and raising our hands to Zeus
As we witnessed these heinous deeds, at a loss for a clever way out.
But then, just after the Cyclops had filled his enormous belly
With that meal of human meat and washed it down with unmixed milk,
He lay down inside the cave, stretching out among the flocks.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops, you’ve been asking me for my famous name and now
I shall tell you—and then you’ll give me the guest-gift you’d promised me.
No-One is my name. No-One is what people call me,
My mother and my father and all of my comrades, too.’
My words. And there came right away this reply from his pitiless heart:
‘I’ll eat No-One last of all, after the rest of his comrades.
First I’ll eat the others—that will be your guest-gift!’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘Who are you among men? Where’s your town, who are your parents?
I am amazed that you drank the drugs but the charm did not work.
For no one—not a one—has ever resisted these drugs
Once he has drunk them down and they’ve passed through the fence of his teeth.
But something within your mind is proof against enchantments.
So you must be Odysseus, the man of the roundabout ways,
Who Hermes, Slayer of Argos, kept saying would come here one day
As you made your way home from Troy on a swift-running, black-hulled ship.
But come now, hang up your sword in its scabbard, and let us two
Get into our bed, so that once we have mingled together
In bed, making love, we may finally trust each other.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
Her words. I was brooding deeply, for I wanted so much to hold my
Mother—to embrace her shade although she was dead and gone.
Three times I rushed forward, and my heart urged me to hold her,
Three times she slipped from my arms like a shadow or a dream
And flew off. The pain in my heart, so sharp, kept growing sharper,
And I spoke to her then with words that flew toward her like arrows:
‘Mother, why won’t you stay still? For I long so much to hold you
So that even in Hades we two, our arms thrown around each other,
Can both have our fill of mourning, that chilly pleasure.
Or has noble Persephone sent me some kind of apparition
So I, steeped in grief already, would have even more to mourn for?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Don’t you sweet-talk me about death, illustrious Odysseus!
I would far rather live off the earth as the serf of another man—
Some man with a pitiful portion who barely ekes out a living—
Than rule here as the lord of all those who are dead and gone.
But come now, tell me something about my splendid son.
Did he follow me into the war as the foremost fighter, or not?
And tell me of faultless Peleus, if by chance you have heard any news—
Does he still hold his place of honor in all the Myrmidon cities?
Or do men throughout Hellas and Phthía disrespect him now
Because old age has seized both his arms and his legs in its grip?
For I myself can no longer defend him under the rays of the sun
And be as I once was by the sprawling plains of Troy
When I’d slaughter the enemy’s finest as I was defending the Argives.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘O Odysseus, rich in praise, great glory of the Achaeans,
Come hither now, halt your ship and hear the sound of our voice!
For no one has ever rowed past us aboard his black-hulled ship
Before he’s heard the voice from our lips with its honeyed harmonies.
But once he has taken his pleasure, he returns knowing so much more.
For well we know all the hardships that there, in Troy’s sprawling plains,
Both the Argives and the Trojans endured through the will of the gods.
And we know whatever happens on the earth, which nourishes all.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
Every kind of death is hateful to wretched mortals,
But the most awful is death by starvation: what a way to meet one’s fate!
Come now, let’s round up the finest of the cattle of the Sun
And sacrifice them to the gods who inhabit the far-flung heavens.
And if we ever succeed in reaching Ithaka, land of our fathers,
We will straightaway build a rich temple to Helios Hyperion
And place a wealth of lavish offerings inside.
But if for any reason he’s angered on account of his long-horned cattle
And wants to destroy our ship, and the other gods follow his lead—
Well, I’d rather lose my life at once by gagging on a wave
Than waste away, drop by drop, here on this desert island.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
So saying, he went inside the bustling palace,
Going straight through the Hall to join the lordly Suitors.
And Argos? His fate—black death—took him in its grip
The moment he saw Odysseus, after twenty years had passed.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
Just as a man might stand before an enormous roaring fire,
Turning over, again and again, a skin that’s been filled to bursting
With steaming fat and blood, impatient for it to be done:
So did he keep tossing and turning, again and again, pondering
Just how he might lay hands upon those shameless Suitors,
One man against so many. But Athena then drew near him,
After gliding down from the skies and taking the form of a woman.
She stood at the head of his bed and addressed him with these words:
“Still awake? But why, most unfortunate of men?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
Those were the Suitors’ words. But Odysseus, that man of great cunning,
Lifted the great bow up right away and examined it—
Just as a man who has mastered the lyre and the art of song
Will easily stretch a string all the way round a new peg,
Attaching the twisted sheep-gut firmly at either end—
So, with no effort at all, did Odysseus string the great bow.
With his right hand he held the bow while he made a test of the string,
Which sang out beautifully, like the sound a swallow makes.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
But, stripping off his rags, Odysseus, that man of great cunning,
Leapt up upon the great threshold, holding the bow and the quiver
Which was filled to the brim with arrows. He poured the swift arrows out
Right there by his feet, then spoke a word to the Suitors:
“So this fateful contest of yours is well and truly over!
Now I’ll find another target which no one has ever shot at
Before—and if I hit it, may Apollo grant me glory.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
His words. Then he took a cable from a ship with its blue-painted prow.
Once he’d fastened it to a pillar, he strung it around the great round-house,
Stretching it high above so their feet wouldn’t reach the ground.
Just as when some thrushes with their slender wings, or some doves,
Go crashing into a snare that’s been set inside a bush
As they’re heading to their nests—but a loathsome bed welcomes them:
So did the women hold their heads all in a row, and the nooses
Went round the necks of them all so they’d die a most piteous death.
For a time, their feet went on twitching; but not for very long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
So she spoke, testing her husband. But now Odysseus
Grew angry at his wife, whose thoughts were so true, and addressed her:
“Woman, what you have said deeply pains my heart—
Who has moved my bedstead somewhere else? That would be hard
For even a man who is skilled—not unless some god were to come
And easily, just by willing it, move it somewhere else.
There is no one living mortal, however young and strong,
Who could pry it loose without effort, for a great sign has been built into
That bed with its artful design. I made it myself—no one else.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
Just as the sight of land is welcome to swimmers at sea
Whose well-built ship Poseidon has splintered upon the ocean
As it’s driven on ahead by the wind and the surging waves;
A few of them have escaped onto land from the iron-gray sea
By swimming, the crusts of brine forming around their skin
And—welcome sight!—they tread on dry land after escaping from disaster:
That’s how welcome the sight of her husband was as she gazed upon him,
Nor could she bear to let his neck slip from her white arms.