Which Translation: The Odyssey

Richmond Lattimore

1967 · Hexameter verse

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
2,115
Holdings
4
Reviews

Biography

Richmond Alexander Lattimore (1906-1984) was an American poet, classicist, and translator. Born in Baoding, China, to American parents, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and taught at Bryn Mawr College for over thirty years. His brother Owen Latimore was a China expert and advisor to Chiang Kai-shek, and was falsely accused of being ‘the top Russian espionage agent in the United States’.

Lattimore translated the Odyssey into a loosely six-beat English line that echoed Homer’s dactylic hexameter, maintaining a faithful line-for-line correspondence with the Greek. He preserved repeated epithets and formulaic phrases, aiming to let English readers experience the poem’s original structure and texture.

The New York Times Book Review called it ‘a splendid achievement’ and ‘the best translation there is’, and the TLS called it ‘a landmark in the history of modern translation.’ D.S. Carne-Ross, in ‘A Mistaken Ambition of Exactness’, called the translation ‘colorless,’ arguing that word-for-word literalism creates an illusion of fidelity. Columbia’s Literature Humanities syllabus used Lattimore for over 50 years before switching to Wilson in 2018. Lattimore’s translation is also the basis for a standalone commentary by Peter V. Jones, which summarizes the opinions of scholars on various aspects of the poem and explains some of the translation choices. It remains the standard choice for courses requiring closer engagement with Homer’s Greek.

Richmond Lattimore on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 1967 — Harper and Row, The Odyssey of Homer; A Modern Translation
  • 1991 — Harper Perennial, The Odyssey of Homer; translated with an introduction ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven
far journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel.
Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of,
many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea,
struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions.
Even so he could not save his companions, hard though
he strove to; they were destroyed by their own wild recklessness,
fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios, the Sun God,
and he took away the day of their homecoming. From some point
here, goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak, and begin our story.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
“Young men, my suitors now that the great Odysseus has perished,
wait, though you are eager to marry me, until I finish
this web, so that my weaving will not be useless and wasted.
This is a shroud for the hero Laertes, for when the destructive
doom of death which lays men low shall take him, lest any
Achaian woman in this neighborhood hold it against me
that a man of many conquests lies with no sheet to wind him.”
So she spoke, and the proud heart in us was persuaded.
Thereafter in the daytime she would weave at her great loom,
but in the night she would have torches set by, and undo it.
So for three years she was secret in her design, convincing
the Achaians, but when the fourth year came with the seasons returning,
one of her women, who knew the whole of the story, told us,
and we found her in the act of undoing her glorious weaving.
So, against her will and by force, she had to finish it.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
‘You are hard-hearted, you gods, and jealous beyond all creatures
beside, when you are resentful toward the goddesses for sleeping
openly with such men as each has made her true husband.
So when Dawn of the rosy fingers chose out Orion,
all you gods who live at your ease were full of resentment,
until chaste Artemis of the golden throne in Ortygia
came with a visitation of painless arrows and killed him;
and so it was when Demeter of the lovely hair, yielding
to her desire, lay down with Iasion and loved him
in a thrice-turned field, it was not long before this was made known
to Zeus, who struck him down with a cast of the shining thunderbolt.
So now, you gods, you resent it in me that I keep beside me
a man, the one I saved when he clung astride of the keel board

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
and found him sitting on the the seashore, and his eyes were never
wiped dry of tears, and the sweet lifetime was draining out of him,
as he wept for a way home, since the nymph was no longer pleasing
to him. By nights he would lie beside her, of necessity,
in the hollow caverns, against his will, by one who was willing,
but all the days he would sit upon the rocks, at the seaside,
breaking his heart in tears and lamentation and sorrow
as weeping tears he looked out over the barren water.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
So speaking, great Odysseus came from under his thicket,
and from the dense foliage with his heavy hand he broke off
a leafy branch to cover his body and hide the male parts,
and went in the confidence of his strength, like some hill-kept lion,
who advances, though he is rained on and blown by the wind, and both eyes
kindle; he goes out after cattle or sheep, or it may be
deer in the wilderness, and his belly is urgent upon him
to get inside of a close steading and go for the sheepflocks.
So Odysseus was ready to face young girls with well-ordered
hair, naked though he was, for the need was on him; and yet
he appeared terrifying to them, all crusted with dry spray,
and they scattered one way and another down the jutting beaches.
Only the daughter of Alkinoös stood fast, for Athene
put courage into her heart, and took the fear from her body,

War-widow simile

8.521–532
So the famous singer sang his tale, but Odysseus melted, and
from under his eyes the tears ran down, drenching
his cheeks. As a woman weeps, lying over the body
of her dear husband, who fell fighting for her city and people
as he tried to beat off the pitiless day from city and children; she
sees him dying and gasping for breath, and winding her body
about him she cries high and shrill, while the men behind her,
hitting her with their spear butts on the back and the shoulders,
force her up and lead her away into slavery, to have
hard work and sorrow, and her cheeks are wracked with pitiful
weeping. Such were the pitiful tears Odysseus shed from under
his brows,

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
‘So I spoke, but he in pitiless spirit answered
nothing, but sprang up and reached for my companions,
caught up two together and slapped them, like killing puppies,
against the ground, and the brains ran all over the floor, soaking
the ground. Then he cut them up limb by limb and got supper ready,
and like a lion reared in the hills, without leaving anything,
ate them, entrails, flesh and the marrowy bones alike. We
cried out aloud and held our hands up to Zeus, seeing
the cruelty of what he did, but our hearts were helpless.
But when the Cyclops had filled his enormous stomach, feeding
on human flesh and drinking down milk unmixed with water,
he lay down to sleep in the cave sprawled out through his sheep.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
“Cyclops, you ask me for my famous name. I will tell you
then, but you must give me a guest gift as you have promised.
Nobody is my name. My father and mother call me
Nobody, as do all the others who are my companions.”
‘So I spoke, and he answered me in pitiless spirit:
“Then I will eat Nobody after his friends, and the others
I will eat first, and that shall be my guest present to you.”

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
“What man are you and whence? Where are your city and parents?
The wonder is on me that you drank my drugs and have not been
enchanted, for no other man beside could have stood up
under my drugs, once he drank and they passed the barrier
of his teeth. There is a mind in you no magic will work on.
You are then resourceful Odysseus. Argeïphontes
of the golden staff was forever telling me you would come
to me, on your way back from Troy with your fast black ship.
Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us
two go up into my bed so that, lying together
in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other.”

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
‘So she spoke, but I, pondering it in my heart, yet wished
to take the soul of my dead mother in my arms. Three times
I started toward her, and my heart was urgent to hold her,
and three times she fluttered out of my hands like a shadow
or a dream, and the sorrow sharpened at the heart within me,
and so I spoke to her and addressed her in winged words, saying:
“Mother, why will you not wait for me, when I am trying
to hold you, so that even in Hades’ with our arms embracing
we can both take the satisfaction of dismal mourning?
Or are you nothing but an image that proud Persephone
sent my way, to make me grieve all the more for sorrow?”

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
“O shining Odysseus, never try to console me for dying.
I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another
man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on,
than be a king over all the perished dead. But come now,
tell me anything you have heard of my proud son, whether
or not he went along to war to fight as a champion;
and tell me anything you have heard about stately Peleus,
whether he still keeps his position among the Myrmidon
hordes, or whether in Hellas and Phthia they have diminished
his state, because old age constrains his hands and feet, and I
am no longer there under the light of the sun to help him,
not the man I used to be once, when in the wide Troad
I killed the best of their people, fighting for the Argives.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
“Come this way, honored Odysseus, great glory of the Achaians,
and stay your ship, so that you can listen here to our singing;
for no one else has ever sailed past this place in his black ship
until he has listened to the honey-sweet voice that issues
from our lips; then goes on, well pleased, knowing more than ever
he did; for we know everything that the Argives and Trojans
did and suffered in wide Troy through the gods’ despite.
Over all the generous earth we know everything that happens.”

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
All deaths are detestable for wretched mortals,
but hunger is the sorriest way to die and encounter
fate. Come then, let us cut out the best of Helios’ cattle,
and sacrifice them to the immortals who hold wide heaven,
and if we ever come back to Ithaka, land of our fathers,
presently we will build a rich temple to the Sun God Helios
Hyperion, and store it with dedications, many
and good. But if, in anger over his high-horned cattle,
he wishes to wreck our ship, and the rest of the gods stand by him,
I would far rather gulp the waves and lose my life in them
once for all, than be pinched to death on this desolate island.”

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
So he spoke, and went into the strongly-settled palace,
and strode straight on, to the great hall and the haughty suitors,
But the doom of dark death now closed over the dog, Argos,
when, after nineteen years had gone by, he had seen Odysseus.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
And as a man with a paunch pudding, that has been filled with
blood and fat, tosses it back and forth over a blazing
fire, and the pudding itself strains hard to be cooked quickly;
so he was twisting and turning back and forth, meditating
how, though he was alone against many, he could lay hands on
the shameless suitors. And at this time Athene, descending
from the sky, came close to him, and wore the shape of a lady.
She came and stood above his head, and spoke a word to him:
‘Why are you wakeful now, O most wretched of all men?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So the suitors talked, but now resourceful Odysseus,
once he had taken up the great bow and looked it all over,
as when a man, who well understands the lyre and singing,
easily, holding it on either side, pulls the strongly twisted
cord of sheep’s gut, so as to slip it over a new peg,
so, without any strain, Odysseus strung the great bow.
Then plucking it in his right hand he tested the bowstring,
and it gave him back an excellent sound like the voice of a swallow.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Now resourceful Odysseus stripped his rags from him, and sprang
up atop the great threshold, holding his bow and the quiver
filled with arrows, and scattered out the swift shafts before him
on the ground next his feet, and spoke his word to the suitors:
‘Here is a task that has been achieved, without any deception.
Now I shall shoot at another mark, one that no man yet
has struck, if I can hit it and Apollo grants me the glory.’

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
So he spoke, and taking the cable of a dark-prowed ship,
fastened it to the tall pillar, and fetched it about the round-house;
and like thrushes, who spread their wings, or pigeons, who have
flown into a snare set up for them in a thicket, trying
to find a resting place, but the sleep given them was hateful;
so their heads were all in a line, and each had her neck caught
fast in a noose, so that their death would be most pitiful.
They struggled with their feet for a little, not for very long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
So she spoke to her husband, trying him out, but Odysseus
spoke in anger to his virtuous-minded lady:
‘What you have said, dear lady, has hurt my heart deeply. What man
has put my bed in another place? But it would be difficult
for even a very expert one, unless a god, coming to help in
person, were easily to change its position.
But there is no mortal man alive, no strong man, who lightly
could move the weight elsewhere. There is one particular feature
in the bed’s construction. I myself, no other man, made it.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
And as when the land appears welcome to men who are swimming,
after Poseidon has smashed their strong-built ship on the open
water, pounding it with the weight of wind and the heavy seas,
and only a few escape the gray water landward
by swimming, with a thick scurf of salt coated upon them,
and gladly they set foot on the shore, escaping the evil;
so welcome was her husband to her as she looked upon him
and she could not let him go from the embrace of her white
arms.