Speaking Of Words: What Version Of The Odyssey Should You Read?

By Michael Ferber, InDepth NH

Or reread, because of course you have read it before, at least in college if not in high school. If you’ve seen the new movie, or heard the hype and hoopla about it, you may well think it’s time to dig up your old copy, or pick a new translation to buy. There are a lot of choices.

I am assuming you are not tempted by Alexander Pope’s translation of 1726, in rhymed couplets, which begins: “The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d, / Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound.” Resound indeed. Pope’s Iliad and Odyssey were the standard for a century, and there are good reasons to read them today, but not if you want to get close to the original Greek. Homer did not compose in couplets, and rhyme was not a feature of any Greek (or Latin) verse.

John Keats, having known Pope’s version, was thunderstruck when he came upon the older version by George Chapman (1616), and wrote a poem about it, but Chapman too thought rhymed couplets were the way to go: “The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way / Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay.” I like this better too, though I’m not sure I understand it. And alliteration (all those w-words) was not a feature of Greek or Latin poetry any more than rhyme was, though you can find a few instances of it, probably random.

You will want a more modern translation. There is a much-admired prose version by E. V. Rieu (1946), the book that opened the great Penguin Classics series, revised by his son in 2003. But I think you should read the Odyssey in verse. It was composed in verse, in a very strict form indeed, dactylic hexameter. Here, for a taste of it, is an attempt to do the opening two lines in Homer’s meter: “Speak in me, Muse, of the man who kept turning, much battered and broken, / After he laid waste Ilion’s high and impregnable fortress.” That’s not very good, but it captures the long dactylic line, very different from the much shorter iambic pentameter of Pope and Chapman and most modern verse versions. Yet to put the whole epic into dactyls would be exesperatingly difficult and probably exasperating to read.

Of the many modern verse translations I will say something about five: Robert Fitzgerald (1961), Richmond Lattimore (1965), Robert Fagles (1999), Emily Wilson (2018), and Daniel Mendelsohn (2025). If I had more space I would mention several other worthy ones, but these five seem the most important, and certainly the most popular, of the lot.

If you want the full story, but are not much interested in the effects of the original poetry, then Emily Wilson’s version in iambic pentameter will do nicely. It’s clear, and often impressive with its own effects, but it is stripped down, shorn not only of the epithets and other “decorative” bits but often too of essential details. She matches line for line, and that forces her to omit too much. She also tends to write short sentences, whereas the Greek sentences often carry over several lines.

If you want the version closest to the original, wth long lines, you must get Lattimore’s. Some readers may get bored by the repetitions, not just epithets such as “much-suffering (Odysseus)” but sometimes whole lines and sections. The famous “rosy-fingered Dawn” line recurs twenty times verbatim in the Greek, and Lattimore lets it do so in English, whereas Fitzgerald, for example, makes it different in as many ways as he can. We should remember, though, that Homer, and the generations of bards before him, were illiterate; they composed their songs on demand, making use of lots of memorized bits but reassembling them afresh each time. So they often needed what we would call padding to fill the stringent hexameter scheme.

The best way to give an impression of each version is to compare how they each treat particular passages. As we have space for only one passage, I will somewhat arbitrarily choose the moment in Book 16 where Odysseus, right after Athena removes his beggar’s disguise and makes him look like a god, and his son Telemachus is awestruck and a little frightened, reveals himself as his father. (The movie skips this bit, alas.) Here is Lattimore, pretty close to the original:

Then in turn long-suffering great Odysseus answered him:
“No, I am not a god. Why liken me to the immortals?
But I am your father, for whose sake you are always grieving
as you look for violence from others, and endure hardships.”
So he spoke, and kissed his son, and the tears running
down his cheeks splashed on the ground. Until now, he was always unyielding.

Here is Fagles, in a freer version, with the shorter line:
“No, I am not a god,”
the long-enduring, great Odysseus returned.
“Why confuse me with one who never dies?
No, I am your father—
the Odysseus you wept for all your days,
you bore a world of pain, and cruel abuse of men.”
And with those words Odysseus kissed his son
and the tears streamed down his cheeks, and wet the ground,
though before he had always reined his emotions back.

Wilson puts it this way:
Long-suffering Odysseus replied,
“I am no god. Why would you think such things?
I am your father, that same man you mourn.
It is because of me that brutal men
are hurting you so badly.”

Then he kissed
his son and cried, tears pouring down his cheeks;
he had been holding back till then.

The most recent translation, by Mendelsohn, returns to the long line of Homer (and Lattimore),
but with some fresh touches:

And then the noble Odysseus, who’d endured so much, replied:
“No one of the gods am I. Why compare me to the immortals?

No, I am your father, on whose account you groan and sigh,
Suffering so much pain and enduring the violence of men.”
So saying, he kissed his son, while down from his cheeks the tears

Poured to the ground; he had always held them back before.

And here is the earliest of these five, by Fitzgerald:
The noble and enduring man replied:
“No god. Why take me for a god? No, no.
I am that father whom your boyhood lacked
and suffered pain for lack of. I am he.”
Held back too long, the tears ran down his cheeks
as he embraced his son.

I have placed Fitzgerald’s lines last because I have always found them very moving, despite the deliberately awkward syntax that your English teacher would circle in blue. I find it hard even now to read them without tears running down my cheeks.

Fitzgerald’s translation would be a good one to start with, even though it is fairly free. He was a fine poet, and he often comes up with striking and memorable passages, like this one.

The choice is yours, of course. You may well find the poem so interesting, and in many places so subtle, that you will want to read it in more versions than one. It’s much better than the movie.

I am happy to hear from readers with questions or comments: mferber@unh.edu.

Michael Ferber moved to New Hampshire in 1987 to join the English Department at UNH, from which he is now retired. Before that he earned his BA in Ancient Greek at Swarthmore College and his doctorate in English at Harvard, taught at Yale, and served on the staff of the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy in Washington, DC. In 1968 he stood trial in Federal Court in Boston for conspiracy to violate the draft law, with the pediatrician Benjamin Spock and three other men. He has published many books and articles on literature, and has a deep interest in linguistics. He is married to Susan Arnold; they have a daughter in San Francisco.

This story was originally published by InDepth NH.