Which Translation: The Odyssey

Henry Bernard Cotterill

1911 · Hexameter verse

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
179
Holdings
7
Reviews

Biography

Henry Bernard Cotterill (1846-1924) was a British missionary, schoolteacher, and author. He was the son of Henry Cotterill, Bishop of Edinburgh, and was associated with Trinity College, Cambridge. He published introductory books on poetry and Greek history.

Cotterill produced a line-for-line translation of the Odyssey that converted the original Greek dactylic hexameter into analagous English accentual hexameter lines. Through this technically demanding approach, he aimed to reproduce the formal qualities of Homer’s verse. The edition was illustrated with twenty-four illustrations by Patten Wilson.

Cotterill’s approach has attracted comparison with Lattimore’s later hexameter-influenced translation. His language was criticized by Ian Johnston for ‘too many deliberate archaisms and the syntactical awkwardness typical of those who wrench the English to fit the Greek.’

Henry Bernard Cotterill on Wikidata ↗

Publication History

  • 1911 — George G. Harrap / Dana Estes, Homer's Odyssey; a line-for-line translation in the metre of the original; with twenty-four illustrations by Patten Wilson ★
  • 1924 — George G. Harrap, Homer's Odyssey; a line-for-line translation in the metre of the original; with an introduction by Walter Leaf

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Sing, O Muse, of the man so wary and wise, who in far lands
Wandered whenas he had wasted the sacred town of the Trojans.
Many a people he saw and beheld their cities and customs,
Many a woe he endured in his heart as he tossed on the ocean,
Striving to win him his life and to bring home safely his comrades.
Ah but he rescued them not, those comrades, much as he wished it.
Ruined by their own act of infatuate madness they perished,
Fools that they were—who the cows of the sun-god, lord Hyperion,
Slaughtered and ate; and he took from the men their day of returning.
Sing—whence-ever the lay—sing, Zeus-born goddess, for us too!

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘Princes, avoid your hand—since dead is the godlike Odysseus—
Patiently wait, though eager to hasten my marriage, till fully
Woven this web—lest vainly I forfeit the fruits of my spinning.
Lo, ’tis a shroud for the hero Laertes, to wrap him, whenever
Bringing his destined doom low-laying death overtakes him ;
Else in Achaea’s land might well some woman reproach me,
Were he to lie, who possessed such riches, lacking a grave-cloth.’
So did she speak and within us the valiant heart was persuaded.
Thus then all of the day at the spacious loom she was weaving ;
During the night she unravelled the web with her torches beside her.
Three long years was her secret device she befooled the Achaeans ;
Till, when the fourth year came, and as season was followed by season,
Then at the last (since one of her women, who knew it, had told us),
While at the loom her magnificent web she unravelled, we caught her.
Thus was she forced, though sorely unwilling, to finish her labour.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“Truly ye gods are cruel of heart and exceedingly jealous!
Ever ye grudge that a goddess shall mate with a man that is mortal,
Openly though it be done and she take him as consort and love him.
Now when Orion was chosen by Morning, the roseate-fingered,
All of you gods were jealous, who live at your ease in the heaven,
Till in Ortygia’s isle chaste Artemis, golden-enthroned,
Launching her painless shafts assailed him and suddenly slew him.
Also with Iasion when the fair-tressed goddess Demeter,
Yielding herself to desire, was united in tender embracements,
While in a thrice-ploughed fallow they lay, right quickly perceived it
Zeus ; and he cast with the blinding bolt of his thunder and slew him.
Now once more ye are jealous, ye gods, that I live with a mortal,
Even the man that I saved as he clung to the keel of his vessel

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
Him still sitting she found on the shore; the incessant teardrops
Flooded his eyes, and ebbing away was his life and its sweetness,
While for his homeland he pined, no longer in love with the sea-nymph.
Truly at night he had ever (not finding a means of refusal)
Slept by her side in the cave, unwilling indeed—but she willed it.
All day long howbeit he sat on the rocks or the shingle
Painfully racking his soul with his grieving and groaning and weeping,
Gazing with tears in his eyes at the barren expanse of the ocean.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
These words uttered, from under the bushes the godlike Odysseus
Issued, and breaking a branch with his powerful hand from the thicket
Girdled his body with leaves, its nakedness striving to cover.
Thus in the pride of his strength from his lair in the mountain a lion
Stalks forth soaked with the rain and battered with wind, and his two eyes
Flame as he prowleth abroad midst droves of the sheep and the oxen
Or on the track of the deer, and often his belly will bid him
Making assay on the flocks e’en strong-built granges to enter;
So to the fair-tressed maidens Odysseus was fain to betake him,
Though all naked his body—on such distress was he fallen.
Sight terrific he seemed to the maidens, disfigured with sea-brine.
Hastily hither and thither in panic they fled to the sand-spits.
Sole stood firmly the daughter of Alcinous; for Athene
Gave to her courage of heart and took from her limbs all trembling;

War-widow simile

8.521–532
Such was the story he sang, this singer renowned; and Odysseus
Melted in tears and the great drops fell on his cheeks from his eyelids.
E’en as a woman with wailings her well-loved husband embraceth
Fallen in front of the city, in front of the host of the fighters,
Warding the pitiless day from his native town and his children;
E’en as beholding him lying before her gasping and dying
Piercingly shrieking she claspeth his body—but foemen behind her
Smiting her oft with the shafts of their spears on the back and the shoulders
Drive her away as a slave and to slavery’s toils and afflictions,
Where with her withering cheeks she in pitiful misery pineth—
So did the pitiful tears fall fast from the eyes of Odysseus.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
Thus did I speak, but with pitiless heart, and answering nothing,
Suddenly making a spring, out-darting his hands on my comrades,
Two in his clutches he seized and as whelps on the floor of the cavern
Dashed—and the brains flowed forth on the floor and the earth was bespattered.
Cutting them member from member he straight made ready his supper ;
Then as a mountain lion he ate, not leaving a morsel,
All the intestines, all of the flesh and the bones with the marrow.
Meantime weeping to Zeus we upraised our hands in entreaty,
Seeing the terrible deed ; and helpless terror possessed us.
Now when at last he had glutted his monstrous maw to repletion,
Feasting on human flesh and the raw milk drinking thereafter,
Stretching him out in the midst of the flocks he reclined in the cavern.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops—lo, thou demandest my name. Well, listen! for plainly
Now will I tell it. So give me thy promise, the gift of a stranger !
Nobody—that is my name, and nothing but Nobody call me
Mother and father and all of the rest of my fellows and comrades.’
Thus did I speak, but with pitiless heart he addressed me in answer :
‘Nobody then I shall eat when I’ve eaten his fellows and comrades—
All of the others before him ; and that is my gift to the stranger.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘Say, what mortal art thou, and from whence? what city and parents?
Sorely I marvel that drinking the potion thou feëlst not enchantment.
Never before hath another of mortals resisted the potion,
None that hath drunk it—when once by the door of its teeth it had entered.
Surely within thy breast is a soul too strong for bewitchment.
Verily thou art Odysseus the wary and wise, who was destined
Hither to come (so said to me ever the Slayer of Argus),
Home from the Trojan land in a swift black vessel returning.
Nay now, hide in the scabbard thy weapon, and come let us hasten
On to my couch to ascend and folded in tender embracement
Revel in love and in sleep, and trust each other for ever.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
So did she speak, and I pondered thereon and yearned in my spirit,
Longing to clasp to my bosom the soul of my dear dead mother.
Three times forward I sprang with a heart which bade me embrace her;
Three times out of my hands as a shadow or vision of dreamland
Fled she, and ever became in my heart more bitter the anguish.
Then did I utter my voice and with swift-winged words I addressed her:
‘Mother beloved, why waitest thou not when I long to embrace thee,
So that we twain might wind our arms thus lovingly round us,
Sating ourselves, yea even in Hades, with chill lamentation?
Or is it only a phantom that high Queen Persephoneia
Sendeth, to make more bitter the grief wherewith I bewail thee?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Speak not smoothly of death, I beseech, O famous Odysseus!
Better by far to remain on the earth as the thrall of another,
E’en of a portionless man that hath means right scanty for living,
Rather than reign sole king in the realm of the bodiless phantoms.
Come now, speak of my son! of the brave young gallant inform me:
Followed or followed he not to the war ? and became he a leader?
Say to me also if aught thou hast learnt of the glorious Peleus:
Whether he still is revered by the powerful Myrmidon people,
Or peradventure is scorned and dishonoured in Hellas and Phthia,
Now that in hand and in foot he is feeble, by age overmastered,
Neither again can I come to the light of the sun to avenge him,
Such as I was when of yore on the widespread plain of the Trojans
Slaying the best of the host of the foemen I succoured the Argives.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘Come to us, famous Odysseus, thou glory of all the Achaeans,
Stay but a moment the vessel and list to the song that we sing thee!
Never hath earth-born man passed here in his black-hulled vessel
Ere he hath listened to music of voices as sweet as the honey.
Here doth he taste of delight and fuller of knowledge he fareth,
Since that we all things know—what befell on the plain of the Troad—
All that was sent by the will of the gods to the Trojans and Argives,
Yea and whatever shall hap on the earth, which nourisheth all things.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
Every manner of death for unfortunate mortals is hateful;
Death most hateful is this—to be doomed through hunger to perish.
Come, let us forth, and catching the best of the kine of the sun-god
Offerings make to the gods who inhabit the infinite heaven.
Yea and if haply at last we arrive at the Ithacan homeland,
Then to the god of the sun, Hyperion, a rich-wrought temple
Straight will we rear, and adorn it with gifts full many and precious.
Nay, if he even, in wrath maybe for his straight-horned cattle,
Strive to destroy our vessel, and other immortals abet him,
Sooner with one last gulp at a wave will I sink to the bottom
Rather than thus stay starving to death on a desolate island.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
These words spoken, he entered the pleasant abodes of the palace.
Straight to the hall he betook him and came to the arrogant suitors,
While that the doom and the darkness of death descended on Argus,
Just as again, in the twentieth year, he had welcomed his master.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
Just as a man in the front of a fire that is mightily blazing
Holdeth a pudding of blood and of fat, and to this and to that side
Constantly turns it, and longs for the thing to be speedily roasted,
So was he tossing to this and to that side, musing in spirit
How ’twere best to attempt the attack on the impudent suitors
Single against so many.
And now drew near him Athene,
Come from the heights of Olympus and changed to a woman in semblance.
Standing beside him, anigh to his head, these words she addressed him:
“Wherefore still art thou lying awake, most hapless of mortals?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
Such words uttered the suitors. But now deep-plotting Odysseus,
After with care he had handled the great strong bow and had viewed it,
E’en as a man that is skilled with the lute and is practised in singing
Easily stretches the string on a new-made peg of his phorminx,
After attaching the ends of the chord tight-twisted of sheepgut,
Thus with the great strong bow did Odysseus, and easily strung it.
Then with his right hand seizing it firmly he tested the bowstring.
Under his touch full sweetly it sang, as the voice of a swallow.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Casting his beggarly raiment aside, deep-plotting Odysseus
Leapt on the threshold of stone, still holding the bow and the quiver
Laden with bolts; and before him the swift-winged arrows he poured out
Close to his feet on the floor ; and he spake, addressing the suitors:
“Lo, this fatal, calamitous contest is done—it is finished!
Now for a mark far other—a mark ne’er smit by a bowman!
This will I choose me, and see if renown shall be sent by Apollo.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
Speaking, he seized on the rope of a blue-prowed vessel and lashed it
High on a pillar, and over the dome of the kitchen he flung it,
Hoisting it tautly, that none might reach to the ground for a foothold.
Then, as it haps if a covey of long-winged thrushes or pigeons
Suddenly fall in the snares of a trap that is set in a thicket,
Whither they flock for the night—but a bed right cruel receives them—
Thus with their heads in a row stood all of the women, with nooses
Over the neck, to a death most cruel and pitiful destined.
So with their feet some moments they writhed—and soon it was over.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
Thus did she speak as a test for her husband ; and much was Odysseus
Angered thereat, and he turned to his own true wife and addressed her :
“Verily, wife, this word thou hast spoken is grievously cruel.
Who hath removed it—the bed that I built ? ’Twere difficult truly
E’en for a man right skilful, unless some deity helped him.
Though for a god ’twere easy to move it wherever he listed,
Never a mortal that liveth, not e’en in the prime of his manhood,
Out of its place could heave it with handspikes. Great is the secret
Touching that fine-wrought bed—for I made it myself and in private.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
Welcome as sight of the land, when at last it appeareth to swimmers
Whose good ship, o’erwhelmed in the midst of the sea by Poseidon,
Drifts as a wreck and is tossed by the wind and the mountainous billows,
While some few, in the hope to escape from the grey salt water,
Swim for the land, and with brine are thickly encrusted their bodies,
Then on the shore right gladly they step, and they find them in safety,
Thus, when she saw him, she welcomed with gladness Odysseus her husband,
Nor from his neck for a moment her fair white arms did she loosen.