The Odyssey

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The Odyssey

rendered into English prose
for the use of those who
cannot read the original

By Samuel Butler

Preface to First Edition

This translation is intended to supplement a work entitled "The
Authoress of the Odyssey", which I published in 1897. I could
not give the whole "Odyssey" in that book without making it
unwieldy, I therefore epitomised my translation, which was
already completed and which I now publish in full.

I shall not here argue the two main points dealt with in the work
just mentioned; I have nothing either to add to, or to withdraw from,
what I have there written. The points in question are:

(1) that the "Odyssey" was written entirely at, and drawn
entirely from, the place now called Trapani on the West Coast of
Sicily, alike as regards the Phaeacian and the Ithaca scenes;
while the voyages of Ulysses, when once he is within easy reach
of Sicily, solve themselves into a periplus of the island,
practically from Trapani back to Trapani, via the Lipari islands,
the Straits of Messina, and the island of Pantellaria;

(2) That the poem was entirely written by a very young woman,
who lived at the place now called Trapani, and introduced
herself into her work under the name of Nausicaa.

The main arguments on which I base the first of these somewhat
startling contentions, have been prominently and repeatedly
before the English and Italian public ever since they appeared
(without rejoinder) in the "Athenaeum" for January 30 and
February 20, 1892. Both contentions were urged (also without
rejoinder) in the Johnian "Eagle" for the Lent and October terms
of the same year. Nothing to which I should reply has reached me
from any quarter, and knowing how anxiously I have endeavoured
to learn the existence of any flaws in my argument, I begin to
feel some confidence that, did such flaws exist, I should have
heard, at any rate about some of them, before now. Without,
therefore, for a moment pretending to think that scholars
generally acquiesce in my conclusions, I shall act as thinking
them little likely so to gainsay me as that it will be incumbent
upon me to reply, and shall confine myself to translating the
"Odyssey" for English readers, with such notes as I think will
be found useful. Among these I would especially call attention
to one on xxii. 465-473 which Lord Grimthorpe has kindly allowed
me to make public.

I have repeated several of the illustrations used in "The
Authoress of the Odyssey", and have added two which I hope may
bring the outer court of Ulysses' house more vividly before the
reader. I should like to explain that the presence of a man and
a dog in one illustration is accidental, and was not observed by
me till I developed the negative. In an appendix I have also
reprinted the paragraphs explanatory of the plan of Ulysses'
house, together with the plan itself. The reader is recommended
to study this plan with some attention.

In the preface to my translation of the "Iliad" I have given my
views as to the main principles by which a translator should be
guided, and need not repeat them here, beyond pointing out that
the initial liberty of translating poetry into prose involves
the continual taking of more or less liberty throughout the
translation; for much that is right in poetry is wrong in prose,
and the exigencies of readable prose are the first things to be
considered in a prose translation. That the reader, however, may
see how far I have departed from strict construe, I will print
here Messrs. Butcher and Lang's translation of the sixty lines
or so of the "Odyssey." Their translation runs:

Tell me, Muse, of that man, so ready at need, who wandered
far and wide, after he had sacked the sacred citadel of
Troy, and many were the men whose towns he saw and whose
mind he learnt, yea, and many the woes he suffered in his
heart on the deep, striving to win his own life and the
return of his company. Nay, but even so he saved not his
company, though he desired it sore. For through the
blindness of their own hearts they perished, fools, who
devoured the oxen of Helios Hyperion: but the god took from
them their day of returning. Of these things, goddess,
daughter of Zeus, whencesoever thou hast heard thereof,
declare thou even unto us.

Now all the rest, as many as fled from sheer destruction,
were at home, and had escaped both war and sea, but
Odysseus only, craving for his wife and for his homeward
path, the lady nymph Calypso held, that fair goddess, in her
hollow caves, longing to have him for her lord. But when
now the year had come in the courses of the seasons,
wherein the gods had ordained that he should return home to
Ithaca, not even there was he quit of labours, not even
among his own; but all the gods had pity on him save
Poseidon, who raged continually against godlike Odysseus,
till he came to his own country. Howbeit Poseidon had now
departed for the distant Ethiopians, the Ethiopians that are
sundered in twain, the uttermost of men, abiding some where
Hyperion sinks and some where he rises. There he looked to
receive his hecatomb of bulls and rams, there he made merry
sitting at the feast, but the other gods were gathered in
the halls of Olympian Zeus. Then among them the father of
men and gods began to speak, for he bethought him in his
heart of noble Aegisthus, whom the son of Agamemnon,
far-famed Orestes, slew. Thinking upon him he spake out among
the Immortals:

'Lo you now, how vainly mortal men do blame the gods! For of
us they say comes evil, whereas they even of themselves,
through the blindness of their own hearts, have sorrows
beyond that which is ordained. Even as of late Aegisthus,
beyond that which was ordained, took to him the wedded wife
of the son of Atreus, and killed her lord on his return,
and that with sheer doom before his eyes, since we had
warned him by the embassy of Hermes the keen-sighted, the
slayer of Argos, that he should neither kill the man, nor
woo his wife. For the son of Atreus shall be avenged at the
hand of Orestes, so soon as he shall come to man's estate
and long for his own country. So spake Hermes, yet he
prevailed not on the heart of Aegisthus, for all his good
will; but now hath he paid one price for all.'

And the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, answered him, saying: 'O
father, our father Cronides, throned in the highest; that
man assuredly lies in a death that is his due; so perish
likewise all who work such deeds! But my heart is rent for
wise Odysseus, the hapless one, who far from his friends
this long while suffereth affliction in a sea-girt isle,
where is the navel of the sea, a woodland isle, and
therein a goddess hath her habitation, the daughter of the
wizard Atlas, who knows the depths of every sea, and
himself upholds the tall pillars which keep earth and sky
asunder. His daughter it is that holds the hapless man in
sorrow: and ever with soft and guileful tales she is
wooing him to forgetfulness of Ithaca. But Odysseus
yearning to see if it were but the smoke leap upwards from
his own land, hath a desire to die. As for thee, thine
heart regardeth it not at all, Olympian! What! Did not
Odysseus by the ships of the Argives make thee free
offering of sacrifice in the wide Trojan land? Wherefore
wast thou then so wroth with him, O Zeus?'

The "Odyssey" (as every one knows) abounds in passages borrowed
from the "Iliad"; I had wished to print these in a slightly
different type, with marginal references to the "Iliad," and had
marked them to this end in my MS. I found, however, that the
translation would be thus hopelessly scholasticised, and
abandoned my intention. I would nevertheless urge on those who
have the management of our University presses, that they would
render a great service to students if they would publish a Greek
text of the "Odyssey" with the Iliadic passages printed in a
different type, and with marginal references. I have given the
British Museum a copy of the "Odyssey" with the Iliadic passages
underlined and referred to in MS.; I have also given an "Iliad"
marked with all the Odyssean passages, and their references; but
copies of both the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" so marked ought to be
within easy reach of all students.

Any one who at the present day discusses the questions that have
arisen round the "Iliad" since Wolf's time, without keeping it
well before his reader's mind that the "Odyssey" was
demonstrably written from one single neighbourhood, and hence
(even though nothing else pointed to this conclusion) presumably
by one person only--that it was written certainly before 750,
and in all probability before 1000 B.C.--that the writer of this
very early poem was demonstrably familiar with the "Iliad" as we
now have it, borrowing as freely from those books whose
genuineness has been most impugned, as from those which are
admitted to be by Homer--any one who fails to keep these
points before his readers, is hardly dealing equitably by
them. Any one on the other hand, who will mark his "Iliad" and
his "Odyssey" from the copies in the British Museum above
referred to, and who will draw the only inference that common
sense can draw from the presence of so many identical passages
in both poems, will, I believe, find no difficulty in assigning
their proper value to a large number of books here and on the
Continent that at present enjoy considerable reputations.
Furthermore, and this perhaps is an advantage better worth
securing, he will find that many puzzles of the "Odyssey" cease
to puzzle him on the discovery that they arise from
over-saturation with the "Iliad."

Other difficulties will also disappear as soon as the
development of the poem in the writer's mind is understood. I
have dealt with this at some length in pp. 251-261 of "The
Authoress of the Odyssey". Briefly, the "Odyssey" consists of
two distinct poems: (1) The Return of Ulysses, which alone the
Muse is asked to sing in the opening lines of the poem. This
poem includes the Phaeacian episode, and the account of Ulysses'
adventures as told by himself in Books ix.-xii. It consists of
lines 1-79 (roughly) of Book i., of line 28 of Book v., and
thence without intermission to the middle of line 187 of Book
xiii., at which point the original scheme was abandoned.

(2) The story of Penelope and the suitors, with the episode of
Telemachus' voyage to Pylos. This poem begins with line 80
(roughly) of Book i., is continued to the end of Book iv., and
not resumed till Ulysses wakes in the middle of line 187, Book
xiii., from whence it continues to the end of Book xxiv.

In "The Authoress of the Odyssey", I wrote:

the introduction of lines xi., 115-137 and of line ix.,
535, with the writing a new council of the gods at the
beginning of Book v., to take the place of the one that was
removed to Book i., 1-79, were the only things that were
done to give even a semblance of unity to the old scheme
and the new, and to conceal the fact that the Muse, after
being asked to sing of one subject, spend two-thirds of her
time in singing a very different one, with a climax for
which no-one has asked her. For roughly the Return occupies
eight Books, and Penelope and the Suitors sixteen.

I believe this to be substantially correct.

Lastly, to deal with a very unimportant point, I observe that
the Leipsic Teubner edition of 894 makes Books ii. and iii. end
with a comma. Stops are things of such far more recent date
than the "Odyssey," that there does not seem much use in
adhering to the text in so small a matter; still, from a spirit
of mere conservatism, I have preferred to do so. Why [Greek] at
the beginnings of Books ii. and viii., and [Greek], at the
beginning of Book vii. should have initial capitals in an
edition far too careful to admit a supposition of inadvertence,
when [Greek] at the beginning of Books vi. and xiii., and
[Greek] at the beginning of Book xvii. have no initial
capitals, I cannot determine. No other Books of the "Odyssey"
have initial capitals except the three mentioned unless the
first word of the Book is a proper name.

S. BUTLER.
July 25, 1900.

Preface to Second Edition

Butler's Translation of the "Odyssey" appeared originally in
1900, and The Authoress of the Odyssey in 1897. In the preface
to the new edition of "The Authoress", which is published
simultaneously with this new edition of the Translation, I have
given some account of the genesis of the two books.

The size of the original page has been reduced so as to make
both books uniform with Butler's other works; and, fortunately,
it has been possible, by using a smaller type, to get the
same number of words into each page, so that the references
remain good, and, with the exception of a few minor alterations
and rearrangements now to be enumerated so far as they affect
the Translation, the new editions are faithful reprints of the
original editions, with misprints and obvious errors corrected--
no attempt having been made to edit them or to bring them up
to date.

(a) The Index has been revised.

(b) Owing to the reduction in the size of the page it has been
necessary to shorten some of the headlines, and here advantage
has been taken of various corrections of and additions to the
headlines and shoulder-notes made by Butler in his own copies
of the two books.

(c) For the most part each of the illustrations now occupies
a page, whereas in the original editions they generally appeared
two on the page. It has been necessary to reduce the plan of
the House of Ulysses.

On page 153 of "The Authoress" Butler says: "No great poet
would compare his hero to a paunch full of blood and fat,
cooking before the fire (xx, 24-28)." This passage is not given
in the abridged Story of the "Odyssey" at the beginning of the
book, but in the Translation it occurs in these words:

"Thus he chided with his heart, and checked it into endurance,
but he tossed about as one who turns a paunch full of blood and fat
in front of a hot fire, doing it first on one side then on the other,
that he may get it cooked as soon as possible; even so did he turn
himself about from side to side, thinking all the time how, single-
handed as he was, he should contrive to kill so large a body of men
as the wicked suitors."

It looks as though in the interval between the publication of
"The Authoress" (1897) and of the Translation (1900) Butler had
changed his mind; for in the first case the comparison is between
Ulysses and a paunch full, etc., and in the second it is between
Ulysses and a man who turns a paunch full, etc. The second
comparison is perhaps one which a great poet might make.

In seeing the works through the press I have had the invaluable
assistance of Mr. A. T. Bartholomew of the University Library,
Cambridge, and of Mr. Donald S. Robertson, Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge. To both these friends I give my most
cordial thanks for the care and skill exercised by them. Mr.
Robertson has found time for the labour of checking and
correcting all the quotations from and references to the "Iliad"
and "Odyssey," and I believe that it could not have been
better performed. It was, I know, a pleasure for him; and it
would have been a pleasure also for Butler if he could have
known that his work was being shepherded by the son of his old
friend, Mr. H. R. Robertson, who more than half a century ago
was a fellow-student with him at Cary's School of Art in
Streatham Street, Bloomsbury.

HENRY FESTING JONES.
120 MAIDA VALE, W.9.
4th December, 1921.

The Odyssey

Book I

THE GODS IN COUNCIL--MIVERVA'S VISIT TO ITHACA--THE CHALLENGE
FROM TELEMACHUS TO THE SUITORS.

Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and
wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities
did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and
customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea
while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home;
but do what he might he could not save his men, for they
perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of
the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever
reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, oh daughter
of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.

So now all who escaped death in battle or by shipwreck had got
safely home except Ulysses, and he, though he was longing to
return to his wife and country, was detained by the goddess
Calypso, who had got him into a large cave and wanted to marry
him. But as years went by, there came a time when the gods
settled that he should go back to Ithaca; even then, however,
when he was among his own people, his troubles were not yet
over; nevertheless all the gods had now begun to pity him except
Neptune, who still persecuted him without ceasing and would not
let him get home.

Now Neptune had gone off to the Ethiopians, who are at the
world's end, and lie in two halves, the one looking West and the
other East. {1} He had gone there to accept a hecatomb of sheep
and oxen, and was enjoying himself at his festival; but the
other gods met in the house of Olympian Jove, and the sire of
gods and men spoke first. At that moment he was thinking of
Aegisthus, who had been killed by Agamemnon's son Orestes; so he
said to the other gods:

"See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all
nothing but their own folly. Look at Aegisthus; he must needs
make love to Agamemnon's wife unrighteously and then kill
Agamemnon, though he knew it would be the death of him; for I
sent Mercury to warn him not to do either of these things,
inasmuch as Orestes would be sure to take his revenge when he
grew up and wanted to return home. Mercury told him this in all
good will but he would not listen, and now he has paid for
everything in full."

Then Minerva said, "Father, son of Saturn, King of kings, it
served Aegisthus right, and so it would any one else who does as
he did; but Aegisthus is neither here nor there; it is for
Ulysses that my heart bleeds, when I think of his sufferings in
that lonely sea-girt island, far away, poor man, from all his
friends. It is an island covered with forest, in the very middle
of the sea, and a goddess lives there, daughter of the magician
Atlas, who looks after the bottom of the ocean, and carries the
great columns that keep heaven and earth asunder. This daughter
of Atlas has got hold of poor unhappy Ulysses, and keeps trying
by every kind of blandishment to make him forget his home, so
that he is tired of life, and thinks of nothing but how he may
once more see the smoke of his own chimneys. You, sir, take no
heed of this, and yet when Ulysses was before Troy did he not
propitiate you with many a burnt sacrifice? Why then should you
keep on being so angry with him?"

And Jove said, "My child, what are you talking about? How can I
forget Ulysses than whom there is no more capable man on earth,
nor more liberal in his offerings to the immortal gods that live
in heaven? Bear in mind, however, that Neptune is still furious
with Ulysses for having blinded an eye of Polyphemus king of the
Cyclopes. Polyphemus is son to Neptune by the nymph Thoosa,
daughter to the sea-king Phorcys; therefore though he will not
kill Ulysses outright, he torments him by preventing him from
getting home. Still, let us lay our heads together and see how
we can help him to return; Neptune will then be pacified, for if
we are all of a mind he can hardly stand out against us."

And Minerva said, "Father, son of Saturn, King of kings, if,
then, the gods now mean that Ulysses should get home, we should
first send Mercury to the Ogygian island to tell Calypso that we
have made up our minds and that he is to return. In the meantime
I will go to Ithaca, to put heart into Ulysses' son Telemachus;
I will embolden him to call the Achaeans in assembly, and speak
out to the suitors of his mother Penelope, who persist in eating
up any number of his sheep and oxen; I will also conduct him to
Sparta and to Pylos, to see if he can hear anything about the
return of his dear father--for this will make people speak well
of him."

So saying she bound on her glittering golden sandals,
imperishable, with which she can fly like the wind over land or
sea; she grasped the redoubtable bronze-shod spear, so stout and
sturdy and strong, wherewith she quells the ranks of heroes who
have displeased her, and down she darted from the topmost
summits of Olympus, whereon forthwith she was in Ithaca, at the
gateway of Ulysses' house, disguised as a visitor, Mentes, chief
of the Taphians, and she held a bronze spear in her hand. There
she found the lordly suitors seated on hides of the oxen which
they had killed and eaten, and playing draughts in front of the
house. Men-servants and pages were bustling about to wait upon
them, some mixing wine with water in the mixing-bowls, some
cleaning down the tables with wet sponges and laying them out
again, and some cutting up great quantities of meat.

Telemachus saw her long before any one else did. He was sitting
moodily among the suitors thinking about his brave father, and
how he would send them flying out of the house, if he were to
come to his own again and be honoured as in days gone by. Thus
brooding as he sat among them, he caught sight of Minerva and
went straight to the gate, for he was vexed that a stranger
should be kept waiting for admittance. He took her right hand
in his own, and bade her give him her spear. "Welcome," said
he, "to our house, and when you have partaken of food you shall
tell us what you have come for."

He led the way as he spoke, and Minerva followed him. When they
were within he took her spear and set it in the spear-stand
against a strong bearing-post along with the many other spears
of his unhappy father, and he conducted her to a richly
decorated seat under which he threw a cloth of damask. There was
a footstool also for her feet,{2} and he set another seat near
her for himself, away from the suitors, that she might not be
annoyed while eating by their noise and insolence, and that he
might ask her more freely about his father.

A maid servant then brought them water in a beautiful golden
ewer and poured it into a silver basin for them to wash their
hands, and she drew a clean table beside them. An upper servant
brought them bread, and offered them many good things of what
there was in the house, the carver fetched them plates of all
manner of meats and set cups of gold by their side, and a
manservant brought them wine and poured it out for them.

Then the suitors came in and took their places on the benches
and seats. {3} Forthwith men servants poured water over their
hands, maids went round with the bread-baskets, pages filled the
mixing-bowls with wine and water, and they laid their hands upon
the good things that were before them. As soon as they had had
enough to eat and drink they wanted music and dancing, which are
the crowning embellishments of a banquet, so a servant brought a
lyre to Phemius, whom they compelled perforce to sing to them.
As soon as he touched his lyre and began to sing Telemachus
spoke low to Minerva, with his head close to hers that no man
might hear.

"I hope, sir," said he, "that you will not be offended with what
I am going to say. Singing comes cheap to those who do not pay
for it, and all this is done at the cost of one whose bones lie
rotting in some wilderness or grinding to powder in the surf. If
these men were to see my father come back to Ithaca they would
pray for longer legs rather than a longer purse, for money would
not serve them; but he, alas, has fallen on an ill fate, and
even when people do sometimes say that he is coming, we no
longer heed them; we shall never see him again. And now, sir,
tell me and tell me true, who you are and where you come from.
Tell me of your town and parents, what manner of ship you came
in, how your crew brought you to Ithaca, and of what nation they
declared themselves to be--for you cannot have come by land.
Tell me also truly, for I want to know, are you a stranger to
this house, or have you been here in my father's time? In the
old days we had many visitors for my father went about much
himself."

And Minerva answered, "I will tell you truly and particularly
all about it. I am Mentes, son of Anchialus, and I am King of
the Taphians. I have come here with my ship and crew, on a
voyage to men of a foreign tongue being bound for Temesa {4}
with a cargo of iron, and I shall bring back copper. As for my
ship, it lies over yonder off the open country away from the
town, in the harbour Rheithron {5} under the wooded mountain
Neritum. {6} Our fathers were friends before us, as old Laertes
will tell you, if you will go and ask him. They say, however,
that he never comes to town now, and lives by himself in the
country, faring hardly, with an old woman to look after him and
get his dinner for him, when he comes in tired from pottering
about his vineyard. They told me your father was at home again,
and that was why I came, but it seems the gods are still keeping
him back, for he is not dead yet not on the mainland. It is more
likely he is on some sea-girt island in mid ocean, or a prisoner
among savages who are detaining him against his will. I am no
prophet, and know very little about omens, but I speak as it is
borne in upon me from heaven, and assure you that he will not be
away much longer; for he is a man of such resource that even
though he were in chains of iron he would find some means of
getting home again. But tell me, and tell me true, can Ulysses
really have such a fine looking fellow for a son? You are indeed
wonderfully like him about the head and eyes, for we were close
friends before he set sail for Troy where the flower of all the
Argives went also. Since that time we have never either of us
seen the other."

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