Which Translation: The Odyssey

Michael Solot

2025 · Accentual verse

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Biography

Michael Solot is an American translator and poet born and based in Tucson, Arizona, who spent ten years working on his translation of Homer’s Odyssey, published by the Society of Classical Poets with illustrations by Aedan Kennedy.

Solot translated into what he called dactylic pentameter, a five-beat line mixing dactyls and anapests, but insisted that ‘the object is a propulsive rhythm, not scannable verse.’ He rejected line-for-line correspondence in favor of narrative momentum, wanting readers to ‘hardly notice the meter in a conscious way’. The translation employs modern contractions, italicizes Odysseus’s inner thoughts, and pays particular attention to Homer’s humor.

The Compulsive Reader praised the translation as feeling ‘so alive, modern, contemporary, and immediate - like reading Homer composed in native English,’ and lauded it as both an excellent reference work and a compelling work of literature.

Publication History

  • 2025 — self-published, The Odyssey of Homer ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
The Man, Muse, tell me the tale of that man
Who survived on his wits—driven afar in his wanderings
After he looted the citadel sacred to Troy.
So many cities he saw and minds he mastered,
So many heartbreaking sorrows he suffered at sea
As he struggled to save his own life and bring his men home;
But not even he could protect them, hard though he tried.
His shipmates were reckless—the fools!—dooming themselves
By gorging on cattle they stole from the pastures of Helios,
God of the Sun, who darkened their homecoming day.
Begin where you will, Goddess, and sing for us too.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘My wooers! Now, with my splendid Odysseus dead
You’re all hot for my wedding, but please, sit still and wait
Till I finish this weaving, a shroud for his father, Laertês.
When Fate comes to take him and lays him out low on his bier
I won’t have the womenfolk clucking and pointing their fingers,
Shaming me all round the island when they see Laertês—
A man of his wealth!—lying there naked in death.’
She played on our manly desire, so yes, we believed her.
By day she would weave her great web, but during the nighttime,
With torches burning beside her, she’d pluck out the threads
Of the work she had done. Three years she fooled us that way.
But after the turn of the seasons had brought us the fourth,
One of her housemaids spoke up, a slavegirl who knew,
And that’s when we caught her undoing her marvelous web.
Unwilling, she finished the shroud. We gave her no choice.”

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
How nasty! How jealous you are! You gods are the worst!
You hate any goddess who openly lies with a man,
Who makes him her husband—because she has fallen in love!
When Dawn spread her rose-petal fingers and picked out Orion
You all couldn’t stand it till Artemis went to Ortygia
And brought him down, gently, to death. Then there’s Demeter,
Who lay with the mortal Iasion off in a fallow-field
Furrowed three times; the goddess gave in to her passion,
Mingling in love and desire—but Zeus soon found out
And he blasted her lover away in the flash of a thunderbolt.
So now you hate me, you gods, because I have a man,
A mortal I saved when he floated to me on a keel,

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
High on a sea-cliff she found him,
Hunched on a rock with his face to the water—staring,
Crying, weeping for home without wiping his eyes,
Letting his tears drain the sweetness of life as they fell.
The nymph was no longer a pleasure. But when, every night,
She made him come back to a nook in the depths of her hollow
And made him lie down by her side, though he’d lost his desire
He yielded to hers. The days he sat out atop headlands
Or down at the ends of the spits—brooding, moaning,
Weeping his tears, wrenching his insides in sadness,
Endlessly eyeing those desolate acres of sea.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
As Odysseus crawled out from under the tangle of bushes
He reached up and snapped off a limb in his muscular hand,
A thick, leafy branch of the olive―something to hold out
To cover his maleness. He moved on the girls like a lion
Who stalks through a storm down the mountain that nursed him
And made him a pitiless killer: drenched by rains
And lashed by winds but sure of his daring and prowess
His eyes are ablaze as he prowls among pasturing cattle
Or sheep, or runs after deer; when his stomach demands it
He’ll even raid flocks where they huddle, afraid, in their folds.
So did Odysseus, naked, come on to those maidens
Whose braids were now swinging so free. Need was upon him.
He looked like a horror, filthy with sea wrack and brine
So as soon as they saw him they ran, this way and that way
Down spits in the sea—all except one, Nausicaa,
Thanks to Athena, who steadied her heart and her knees.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
These were the stories Demodocus sang for the feasters,
But as he was singing, memories melted Odysseus,
Warming the tears in his eyes and wetting his cheeks—
Like a woman who wails and collapses on top of her husband,
Her darling, just fallen in front of the walls he defended
While fighting to beat back the pitiless dawn of that day
When his city and children are doomed. She sees he is dying,
Gasping for breath, and flings herself down all around him,
Shrieking—but men are behind her, slapping their spears
On her back and her shoulders, the men who will drag her away
Into slavery, sorrow, and shame.
She raises her head
And her face is now utterly ravaged by heartbreak and pain—
Just like the heartbreak that flooded the eyes of Odysseus.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
“Without even one word of pity he leapt up and lunged at us,
Snatching two men—by their legs. With one in each hand
He battered them both on the ground, bashing their heads in,
Like puppies, again and again. As they lay there a moment
The stuff spilling out of their skulls started wetting the dirt—
But not for too long, for the ogre got down to his supper,
Tearing off limb after limb as he bolted their bodies,
Gulping them down like a lion, a mountain-bred killer,
Chewing their flesh, their guts, and their marrowy bones.
We could do nothing but watch these unspeakable crimes,
Crying and screaming and reaching our arms out to Zeus
As the Cyclops kept gorging, filling his belly with man-meat
While gulping his milk down unmixed. He stretched out his bulk
With his flocks all around him and instantly fell fast asleep.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops, my friend,
Didn’t you ask me my name? All right, I’ll tell you—
But you must remember, you promised to give me a gift!
Noman—my name is Noman. My mother and father,
They call me Noman, and so do each one of my friends.’”
“He rumbled right back at me, ruthlessly, ‘Noman, I’ll save you—
For last! I’ll eat your friends first, the ones who are left,
And then I’ll eat you. Let that be my guest-gift for Noman!’”

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘Who are you? Where are you from? Who are your parents?
No man has ever resisted my potion—no one!
Not ever! I just can’t believe it! They’ve all been enchanted
The moment they drink it, but you—you can’t be bewitched.
The mind in your chest is too strong. I know who you are—
You must be that man who survives on his wits—Odysseus.
Quicksilver Hermês kept telling me one day you’d come,
Sailing from Troy in your black-bottomed ship with your crew.
But now that you’re here, put that thing back in its scabbard
And come with me, up to my bed. Let’s lie down together
To mingle in love. Let’s learn to believe in each other.’”

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
“As soon as she finished her story I tried to embrace her,
This ghost of my mother—dead, my mother was dead!
Three times I ran up and grabbed her, desperate to hold her,
And three times she narrowed to nothing, a shadowy flicker
That flew from my arms, fluttering off like a dream.
Pang after pang stabbed my heart, sharper and sharper
Until I cried, ‘Mother! Please! I’m trying to hug you!
Why don’t you stay in one place? Can’t we take comfort,
Cold as it is, in wrapping our arms round each other
And weeping as one—even here, in the House of the Dead?
Or are you a trick, an illusion Persephonê sent here
To taunt me—to make me more wretched and moan even more?’”

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Don’t try your sweet talk on me,
Brilliant Odysseus. What do you know about death?
I’d rather be up there on earth, working for wages
For some worthless farmer who has next to nothing himself
Than command these cadavers as King of All Kings of the Dead!
But give me the news of my son: did he get to the war?
Did he fight out in front? And what of my father, old Peleus?
Is he still respected as king of the Myrmidon masses
Or do they dishonor him all over Hellas and Phthia
Because he’s now crippled by age—because I can’t protect him!
I’m out of the sunlight, a shadow, nothing at all
Like I used to be, once, on those wide open plains before Troy,
Killing the best men they had and defending the Greeks.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘Come hither, Odysseus, pride of Achaea, you marvelous man!
Anchor your ship by our meadow, stay here and listen
To voices like honey, a sweetness that flows from our lips.
There isn’t a sailor who doesn’t delight in our singing:
After they hear us they go away knowing the wishes
And whims of the gods—each of the many disasters
The Trojans and Greeks had to suffer while fighting at Troy.
Stay! We want to sing for you, all that we know—
Whatever is coming to pass on the nourishing earth.’”

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
All deaths are hateful to men, to us miserable mortals,
But dying by hunger—what could be worse! Come on!
Let’s pick off the best of these herds and offer their thighs
To the gods up in heaven, and if we get home—if ever!—
We’ll put up a temple on Ithaca just for the Sungod
And fill it with all kinds of baubles, things to delight him.
“Yes,” you’re all thinking, “but won’t he be burning with rage?
Won’t he be wishing us dead? And won’t all the other immortals
Be egging him on and say ‘Do it! Go shatter their ship!’”
Good! I’d much rather swallow a wave all at once
Than waste away slowly and die on this desolate island!’”

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
He swung out the gates and went in, straight through the yard
To the hall where the suitors were seated as lords of the feast.
Darkness and doom now descended on Argos—dead,
In his twentieth year, at the moment he sensed his old master.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
Around like a goat stomach over a blazing hot fire,
The blood and the fat inside sizzling: the cook, in a hurry,
Keeps turning it this way and that way to have his dish done—
And so was Odysseus twisting and turning, wondering,
How can I take on that whole mob of cutthroats alone
With just one pair of hands? Athena then dropped from the sky
In the shape of a woman, a mortal, and stood by Odysseus,
Over his head, as she asked him, “Why aren’t you asleep?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
In spite of their jeering Odysseus gathered his wits
As he eyed his bow closely and hefted it, getting the feel—
Then quick, like a minstrel, a master of playing the lyre
Who easily stretches his sheep-gut up over the crossbar
And wraps it around in a fresh roll of neck-hide to hold it,
So did Odysseus string the great bow, with effortless ease.
Taking the grip in his right hand he tested the string
With a pluck: it twanged, shrill, like a twittering swallow.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Odysseus, master of guile, now ripped off his rags.
Grabbing his bow and his quiver, chock-full of arrows,
He leapt to the threshold and emptied the shafts at his feet—
All were still pointed and fletched—then said to the suitors:
“Now that we’ve settled that contest, once and for all,
I’ll try something new, a target no archer has touched.
Give me the glory, Apollo! Make my aim true!”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
He found a long ship’s cable, threw it up over the roundhouse
And took up the slack so it circled the peak of the dome,
Keeping it high as he fastened both ends to a pillar
So nobody’s foot would be touching the ground. The women,
Like slender-winged thrushes returning to roost in the evening
Who tangle themselves in a trammel-net laid in their thicket
And die on that desperate perch—
so too were they caught,
Hanging, their heads in a circle, each with her neck
In a loop of the rope, dying the ghastliest death.
Their feet flailed a little, then twitched, but not for too long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
She was testing her husband, who leapt to his feet in a fury.
“Woman!”—he yelled at his faithful, unwavering wife—
“What a horrible, heart-stabbing thing you just said! Our bed?
Somebody moved it? But no one, no matter how cunning,
Could ever have shifted it out of its place! A god,
If he came here in person, might easily fling it around,
But there isn’t a mortal who’d ever be able to budge it—
Not even a man in his prime! At the peak of his strength!
A great secret was built in that marvelous bedstead—by me,
And not anyone else. I was the master who made it.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
What joy! Think of a sailor who’s swimming away
From a ship shattered far out at sea—a good one, well pegged,
But wrecked by the winds and the mightiest waves of Poseidon.
While most of his shipmates go under he swims and he swims
And survives—all crusted with brine as he walks up the beach
In a rapture of joy, his sufferings now at an end.
Penelope’s joy was like that as she gazed at her husband
Without letting go of his neck, not even a little,
Baring her elbows, all white, where her robe fell away.