The Odyssey (Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection) Read online

  The Odyssey

  The Odyssey has its roots in an ancient tradition of oral poetry, which flourished in the 8th and 7th centuries bc. Nothing certain is known about Homer, who was depicted by the Greeks as a blind beggar and divine singer; they considered him to be the greatest poet that ever lived. To him are credited two astonishing works of genius, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

  Twenty years after setting out to fight in the Trojan War, Odysseus is yet to return home to Ithaca. His household is in disarray: a horde of over 100 disorderly and arrogant suitors are vying to claim Odysseus’ wife Penelope, and his young son Telemachus is powerless to stop them. Meanwhile, Odysseus is driven beyond the limits of the known world, encountering countless divine and earthly challenges. But Odysseus is ‘of many wiles’ and his cunning and bravery eventually lead him home, to reclaim both his family and his kingdom.

  The Odyssey rivals the Iliad as the greatest poem of Western culture and is perhaps the most influential text of classical literature. This elegant and compelling new translation is accompanied by a full introduction and notes that guide the reader in understanding the poem and the many different contexts in which it was performed and read.

  ANTHONY VERITY was Master of Dulwich College before his retirement. His previous translations include Theocritus, The Idylls (2002), Pindar, The ­Complete Odes (2007), and Homer, The Iliad (2011).

  WILLIAM ALLAN is McConnell Laing Fellow and Tutor in Classical Languages and Literature at University College, Oxford. His previous publications include The Andromache and Euripidean Tragedy (2000), Euripides: The Children of Heracles (2001), Euripides: Medea (2002), Euripides: Helen (2008), Homer: The Iliad (2012), and Classical Literature: A Very Short Introduction (2014).

  Cover image: © Shutterstock.com

  HOMER

  THE

  ODYSSEY

  Translated by

  ANTHONY VERITY

  With an Introduction and Notes by

  WILLIAM ALLAN

  Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom

  Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

  Translation © Anthony Verity 2016

  Introduction, select bibliography, explanatory notes, index © William Allan 2016

  The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

  First published in 2016

  Impression: 1

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  Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Data available

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016932529

  ISBN 978–0–19–966910–3

  ebook ISBN 978–0–19–164651–5

  Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

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  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Note on the Text and Explanatory Materials

  Note on the Translation

  Select Bibliography

  Map

  THE ODYSSEY

  book one

  book two

  book three

  book four

  book five

  book six

  book seven

  book eight

  book nine

  book ten

  book eleven

  book twelve

  book thirteen

  book fourteen

  book fifteen

  book sixteen

  book seventeen

  book eighteen

  book nineteen

  book twenty

  book twenty-one

  book twenty-two

  book twenty-three

  book twenty-four

  Explanatory Notes

  Index of Personal Names

  INTRODUCTION

  The Odyssey rivals the Iliad as the greatest poem of Western culture and is perhaps the most influential text of classical literature. Its characters and plot continue to inspire artists in the various media of modern culture, ranging from popular fiction and comic books to classical music and opera. The aim of this brief introduction is to situate the poem in its original cultural context, especially the world of the itinerant epic bard and his audiences, and to consider some of the major themes of the narrative, including hospitality and recognition, the nature of heroism, the relationship between humans and their gods, and the pleasures and tensions of family life.

  The Odyssey and early Greek epic

  The Odyssey, like the Iliad, seems to embody a double paradox, since Homer’s poems are not only the earliest works of Greek literature, but also the best; and Homer is arguably the greatest poet who ever lived, and yet nothing certain is known about him. As we shall see, however, the Iliad and Odyssey may be the earliest Greek literature to survive, but they are in fact the culmination of a centuries-old tradition of oral epic poetry. Homer’s silence about himself, meanwhile, is entirely deliberate and productive, for rather than being a specific person tied to a particular place, the enigmatic narrator becomes a conduit of divine knowledge, inspired by the Muses, whose authority is universal.

  Although we do not know who Homer was, there is clearly a single creative intelligence behind each epic. In contrast to nearly all ancient readers, most modern scholars believe that the Iliad poet and the Odyssey poet are different people (for a variety of linguistic, theological, and geographical reasons). However, as with the identity of Homer (whose poems we can enjoy and interpret without knowing any ‘facts’ about him), the question of whether he is one person or two is much less important than it seems. For all that really matters is the Iliad and Odyssey themselves and their shaping by a master poet or poets, who (for the sake of convenience) we will call Homer.

  Composed in the late eighth or early seventh century bc, the Homeric epics are the work of a master of the epic tradition. This tradition was the storehouse of epic phrases and characters (such as ‘much-enduring Odysseus’ or ‘Menelaus, master of the war-cry’) and story-patterns (for example, ‘the hero’s return home from war’) inherited, and added to, by each generation of epic bards. This ‘oral’ poetry was not only performed live, but also reshaped every time to suit the occasion and the audience’s tastes. In other words, the bard may have sung a version of his story many times before, but his success lay in creating it anew for each performance. The word used by Homer to describe these epic stories is oimē, meaning ‘path’, referring to the ‘path of song’ which the poet (and his audience) would travel along. Homer gives examples of bards at work in his own poetry. Thus, in the Odyssey the bard Demodocus at one point selects the oimē of the quarrel of Odys
seus and Achilles, moving Odysseus himself to tears at the recollection of his own past (8.73–6). The poet plots his own ‘path’ through the forests of Greek heroic myth, and his audience admires his skill in doing so.

  An itinerant artist, keen to drum up future patronage, Homer takes care to advertise his own skill: the bard Phemius in the Odyssey asserts that such skill comes through hard practice as well as divine inspiration: ‘My only teacher is myself; some god has planted varied song-paths (oimas) in my mind’ (22.347–8). And it is no coincidence that Odysseus himself is compared to a bard stringing his lyre as he strings his bow for vengeance against the suitors (21.406–11). The ideal effect of an epic performance is the ‘enchantment’ (kēlēthmos) of the listeners, who are transported back to the world of the heroes and their mighty deeds. To achieve this enchantment the poet must make his account as vivid and authentic as possible, as if he himself had witnessed the events. Thus Odysseus praises the bard Demodocus because he sings of the Greeks’ deeds and sufferings at Troy ‘as if you had somehow been there yourself, or heard it from one who was’ (8.491) — a real compliment, coming from one of those suffering Greek heroes. So, despite his reticence about himself, Homer’s presentation of Phemius and Demodocus in the Odyssey conveys his conception of both poetry’s value and the bard’s authority and authenticity in singing of the heroic past.

  Unlike Phemius and Demodocus, however, who in his poem are court poets, attached to particular royal families, Homer himself is likely to have been itinerant, performing in a variety of contexts: the halls of wealthy chieftains (especially after feasts, as in the Odyssey), but also at weddings, funerals, and public festivals of various kinds. As with his own identity, Homer is deliberately silent about the performance context of his poetry, and for similar reasons: for he wants his work to be as universal as possible, so that it appeals not to one specific family, clan, or city but to all Greek-speaking communities. In that way Homer can perform all over the Greek world, making his poems more portable, flexible, and profitable. Similarly, the Odyssey’s varied cast of characters, ranging from kings and aristocrats to pig-farmers and servants, points to the mixed audience of the poem and to its balanced ideology, which praises both rich and poor so long as they are good and condemns both groups too if they behave badly, as with the decadent aristocratic suitors and the servants in Odysseus’ home who connive with them. The poem ends with ‘normal’ social and political hierarchy restored, with loyal servants and kind masters triumphant, so it is far from being a revolutionary tale, but its condemnation of arrogance and cruelty is no less powerful and compelling.

  The Odyssey is a variation on the tale of the wandering and returning hero which is known from many cultures around the world. In this story-pattern the hero is typically stranded far from home, and his family suffer in his absence, yet the hero battles against the odds and reclaims his wife and household. Thus the Odyssey begins ten years after the end of the Trojan War, but Odysseus has still not returned and his household is in disarray: a gang of over a hundred disorderly and arrogant suitors is vying with one another to claim Odysseus’ wife Penelope, and his young son Telemachus is unable to stop them.

  In taking up the tale of Odysseus, the Odyssey can be seen in some ways as a sequel to the Iliad, not least in its frequent references to the fall of Troy and the fate of the other Greek heroes. But whereas the Iliad portrays the tragic destruction of an entire society (the kingdom of Troy), the Odyssey is a more romantic and optimistic tale of a hero whose return to his community restabilizes it. Nonetheless, despite its more domestic setting, the Odyssey is still concerned with the same concepts of honour and revenge that dominate the Iliad, for the shameful behaviour of the suitors cannot go unpunished. Ignoring repeated warnings, the suitors persist in their outrageous abuse of the hospitality of Odysseus’ household, and even scheme to murder ­Telemachus. Their complete destruction has struck some modern critics as excessive, but is fully in line with moralizing stories of this kind and with the ethics of ancient Greek society, where punishment is harsh but predictable (the suitors know well the liberties they are taking) and therefore justified.

  The many interconnections between the two poems mean that even if not composed by the same bard, they evolved as part of a shared tradition of epic performance. Moreover, the Odyssey engages not only with the Iliad but also with the wider tradition of early Greek epic, transforming other heroic tales beyond the Trojan War. So as well as referring, for example, to the post-war returns of other Greek heroes, especially the murder of Agamemnon by his wife ­Clytemnestra (which serves as a foil to the successful homecoming of Odysseus and his reunion with Penelope: cf. 1.29–43, 298–300; 3.248–312; 4.512–37, etc.), the Odyssey interacts with the epic tale of the Argonauts, alluding to ‘the storied ship Argo’ (12.70), and adapting the Argonauts’ adventures to expand Odysseus’ own wanderings.

  In terms of its basic structure, the Odyssey falls into two almost equal halves (1.1–13.92, 13.93–24.548). After introducing us to the situation in Ithaca and the crisis facing Telemachus and Penelope, the first half presents Odysseus’ adventures since the fall of Troy, and we see his return to Ithaca repeatedly threatened: in the land of the Lotus-Eaters, for example, whose delicious lotus fruit makes the eater lose all memory of home, or in the cave of the monstrous Cyclops, Polyphemus, who kills and eats many of Odysseus’ crew, or on the island of the witch Circe, who turns his men into pigs and keeps the hero as her lover for a year. The second half presents Odysseus’ struggle on Ithaca, disguised as a beggar, to regain his kingdom, as he and Telemachus slaughter the suitors, and Odysseus and Penelope are finally reunited after twenty years apart. The fundamental structural division thus enhances our sense of the challenge facing Odysseus if he is to reclaim his original status and heroic identity.

  The two halves contain three main storylines — centring upon ­Telemachus, Ithaca (that is, Penelope and the suitors), and Odysseus himself — and the three gradually merge, as Odysseus and Tele­machus are reunited on Ithaca in Book 16 and plot their revenge upon the suitors. The narrative is handled with great skill throughout, as when the poet delays the introduction of his central hero until Book 5 (where we find him detained by the goddess Calypso and furthest from home), or has Odysseus recall his post-war sufferings in an extended flashback (Books 9–12). Thus, although the poem’s main plot covers only forty-one days in the twentieth year after the Greeks set out for Troy, its use of embedded stories allows the bard to present his hero’s tale on a grand scale, from Odysseus’ youth to his gentle death at a great age.

  Hospitality and recognition

  I mentioned above the poet’s adaptation of traditional story-patterns to create his own distinctive version of the heroic past. So, for ex­ample, we see Odysseus encountering a succession of rebellious young men (Phaeacian youths, his own crew, the suitors), whose threat to his heroic status and homecoming must be overcome. But two story-­patterns in particular are central to the shaping of the poem: hospitality and recognition. The code of hospitality (xenia) governs the proper conduct of host and guest, and the poem’s basic morality is articulated through good hosts (such as Nestor, Menelaus, Eumaeus) and bad ones (like Polyphemus or Circe), as well as by good and bad guests (most notably the suitors). As Eumaeus remarks, guests are sacred to Zeus, the patron god of strangers (14.388–9), but this protection also entails responsibility (to respect the host and his family), and thus the suitors’ violation of such a basic ethical and religious principle is inevitably punished, and rightly so.

  The early books of the poem chart Telemachus’ travels to find out what happened to his father, and here the poet introduces us to the importance of hospitality, as the young man visits the courts of his father’s friends and is received by them. Indeed, the importance of hospitality is made explicit by Menelaus, who tells Telemachus (15.69–74):

   I would indeed

  disapprove of any host who is either over-hospitable or

  too
lacking in civility; moderation in all things is best. It is,

  I think, an equal failing to speed a guest’s departure when he

  is reluctant

  to leave and to detain him when eager to go. One must

  care for the guest in one’s house, but send him on when he wishes.

  This respectful relationship between guest and host stands in contrast to the chaos on Ithaca, where the suitors abuse their position as guests by consuming Odysseus’ wealth in his absence and disrespecting his wife and son. In Odysseus’ account of his adventures (Books 9–12) we find these ideas of hospitality explored in a more allegorical fashion, since many of the challenges Odysseus faces can be seen as perversions of the guest–host relationship. Thus, for example, the Cyclops Polyphemus is a host who is not merely unwelcoming but murderous, and rather than offering his guests a meal, he makes a meal of them. Conversely, Circe and Calypso are over-welcoming hosts, who trap their guests rather than facilitating their desire to leave. But guests as well as hosts are responsible for the smooth running of the system, and it is no coincidence that the greatest crime committed by Odysseus’ men is the consumption of the cattle of the Sun (12.294–373), which leads to the complete destruction of the fleet. In doing this, the men act like guests who abuse hospitality by consuming the host’s resources. That this is punished so fearsomely by the gods helps the audience understand how serious the suitors’ transgressions in Odysseus’ household in Ithaca are, and so prepares us for Odysseus’ vengeance against them.

  Similarly pervasive is the story-pattern of recognition, as a succession of characters (Telemachus, Odysseus’ dog Argus, Eurycleia, Eumaeus, the suitors, Penelope, and finally Odysseus’ father Laertes) come to realize who the mysterious beggar actually is. Odysseus uses his disguise to test others, a test failed by the suitors and his disloyal servants. The climactic reunion of Odysseus and Penelope is fittingly the most elaborate recognition scene of all, and varies the standard pattern, as Penelope takes control of the process, outwits Odysseus, and tricks him into confirming his identity by pretending that she has destroyed the marital bed he made for them (23.173–230). In beating Odysseus at his own game of disguise and trickery, Penelope proves that she is a worthy match for him, and confirms the validity of their relationship.