The Odyssey by Homer

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The epic journey of Odysseus, the hero of Ancient Greece...

After ten years of war, Odysseus turns his back on Troy and sets sail for home. But his voyage takes another ten years and he must face many dangers - Polyphemus the greedy one-eyed giant, Scylla the six-headed sea monster and even the wrath of the gods themselves - before he is reunited with his wife and son.
Brilliantly retold by award-winning author, Geraldine McCaughrean.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

I Athene Visits Telemachus Tell me, Muse, the story of that resourceful man who was driven to wander far and wide after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy. He saw the cities of many people and he learnt their ways. He suffered great anguish on the high seas in his struggles to preserve his life and bring his comrades home. But he failed to save those comrades, in spite of all his efforts. It was their own transgression that brought them to their doom, for in their folly they devoured the oxen of Hyperion the Sun-god and he saw to it that they would never return. Tell us this story, goddess daughter of Zeus, beginning at whatever point you will. All the survivors of the war had reached their homes by now and so put the perils of battle and the sea behind them. Odysseus alone was prevented from returning to the home and wife he yearned for by that powerful goddess, the Nymph Calypso, who longed for him to marry her, and kept him in her vaulted cave. Not even when the rolling seasons brought in the year which the gods had chosen for his homecoming to Ithaca was he clear of his troubles and safe among his friends. Yet all the gods pitied him, except Poseidon, who pursued the heroic Odysseus with relentless malice till the day when he reached his own country. Poseidon, however, was now gone on a visit to the distant Ethiopians, in the most remote part of the world, half of whom live where the Sun goes down, and half where he rises. He had gone to accept a sacrifice of bulls and rams, and there he sat and enjoyed the pleasures of the feast. Meanwhile the rest of the gods had assembled in the palace of Olympian Zeus, and the Father of men and gods opened a discussion among them. He had been thinking of the handsome Aegisthus, whom Agamemnon's far-famed son Orestes killed; and it was with Aegisthus in his mind that Zeus now addressed the immortals: 'What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own transgressions which bring them suffering that was not their destiny. Consider Aegisthus: it was not his destiny to steal Agamemnon's wife and murder her husband when he came home. He knew the result would be utter disaster, since we ourselves had sent Hermes, the keen-eyed Giant-slayer, to warn him neither to kill the man nor to court his wife. For Orestes, as Hermes told him, was bound to avenge Agamemnon as soon as he grew up and thought with longing of his home. Yet with all his friendly counsel Hermes failed to dissuade him. And now Aegisthus has paid the final price for all his sins.' Excerpted from The Odyssey by Homer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The enduring character of the epic poem The Odyssey invites repeated attempts at translation, here most recently an energetic verse rendition by Wilson (classical studies, Univ. of Pennsylvania), who has authored books on the nature of tragedy, Socrates, and Seneca, as well as translations of plays by Euripides and Seneca. Wilson's goal is for the work to sound natural to the modern reader without falling into contemporizing anachronisms, such as those found in the translation of Stanley Lombardo. Unlike Robert Fagles or Robert Fitzgerald, Wilson deploys a natural English syntax, while closely following Homer's lines. Like Fagles and Barry P. Powell, she adopts iambic pentameter and seeks a diction that does not sound archaic, using the Latinate version of names and submerging many of the recurrent epithets. Thus Odysseus, "the man of many turns," becomes the "complicated man," or "bright-eyed goddess, Athena" becomes "she looked him straight into the eye," true to the spirit of the text if not always the word. -Wilson is particularly sensitive to the tone and description applied to the many women throughout the narrative, especially Helen and Penelope. VERDICT Wilson offers a fluent, straightforward, and accessible version of the Homeric epic; a solid reading edition.-Thomas L. Cooksey, formerly with Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

School Library Journal Review

Gr 6 Up-Concise and briskly paced, this dynamic comic-book version streamlines Homer's plot and zooms in on the all-out monster-trouncing, enchantress-encountering, death-defying action. The exploits of the square-jawed Odysseus are resplendent in bold lines and jewel tones while the fickle gods and goddesses shimmer in translucent hues. A reader-grabbing intro to the epic. (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Translator of an acclaimed Iliad (CH, Mar'09, 46-3686), Jordan (independent scholar) enters the Homeric fray again, earnestly attempting to render the story of the many-faceted "inventive one"--of twisting and turning, cunning intelligence, to cite opening epithets he unfortunately glosses over. Readability is the goal here, but transforming the 12,110 lines of Greek dactylic hexameter into line-by-line English iambic pentameter leads to tedium, given the necessary elimination of many key textual epithets and patronyms. To do so is a translator's privilege, but it is a process some will question. Jordan's handling of the great Greek hero's emotional moments is revealing yet shortsighted. For instance, compare Jordan and Robert Fagles (The Odyssey, 1996) on Odysseus's weeping. Listening to the rhapsode's account of his quarrel with Achilles, Odysseus, Jordan writes, covered "his head to hide his face"--Fagles has the more expressive "handsome face." After the minstrel's description of the Trojan Horse, Odysseus "let go restraint and tears bedewed his cheeks" (literally, tears ran down his eyelids onto his cheeks)--Fagles has "melted into tears." In the arms of Penelope finally, Odysseus is urged to weep "and weep he did"--Fagles: "tears welled up inside his breast.") The robust introduction by E. Christian Kopff redeems the volume. Summing Up: Optional. Large collections. R. Cormier emeritus, Longwood University

Kirkus Book Review

Fresh version of one of the world's oldest epic poems, a foundational text of Western literature.Sing to me, O muse, of thewell, in the very opening line, the phrase Wilson (Classical Studies, Univ. of Pennsylvania) chooses is the rather bland "complicated man," the adjective missing out on the deviousness implied in the Greek polytropos, which Robert Fagles translated as "of twists and turns." Wilson has a few favorite words that the Greek doesn't strictly support, one of them being "monstrous," meaning something particularly heinous, and to have Telemachus "showing initiative" seems a little report-card-ish and entirely modern. Still, rose-fingered Dawn is there in all her glory, casting her brilliant light over the wine-dark sea, and Wilson has a lively understanding of the essential violence that underlies the complicated Odysseus' great ruse to slaughter the suitors who for 10 years have been eating him out of palace and home and pitching woo to the lovely, blameless Penelope; son Telemachus shows that initiative, indeed, by stringing up a bevy of servant girls, "their heads all in a row / strung up with the noose around their necks / to make their death an agony." In an interesting aside in her admirably comprehensive introduction, which extends nearly 80 pages, Wilson observes that the hanging "allows young Telemachus to avoid being too close to these girls' abused, sexualized bodies," and while her reading sometimes tends to be overly psychologized, she also notes that the violence of Odysseus, by which those suitors "fell like flies," mirrors that of some of the other ungracious hosts he encountered along his long voyage home to Ithaca.More faithful to the original but less astonishing than Christopher Logue's work and lacking some of the music of Fagles' recent translations of Homer; still, a readable and worthy effort. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.