The
Odyssey of Homer
Translated into English Verse
With Notes and Parallel Passages
by
Sir Charles du Cane
(Edinburgh and London 1888)

[Sample from the Opening of Book I]

MUSE! of that hero versatile indite to me the song,
Doomed, when he sacred Troy had sacked, to wander far and long,
Who saw the towns of many men, much knowledge did obtain
Anent their ways, and with much woe was heart-wrung on the main,
Seeking his own life to preserve, his friends’ return to gain. 5
E’en so he rescued not his friends, though eagerly he strove,
For them their own infatuate deed to direful ending drove.
Fools, who the sun-god’s sacred beeves dared madly to devour,
Doomed by his anger ne’er to see of glad return the hour.
Sing, goddess, child of mighty Jove, of these events, I pray, 10
And from what starting-point thou wilt begin we me the lay.
Now all the rest, whose lot it was destruction sheer to fell,
Had reached their homes, unscathed by war, or peril of the sea.
But him alone, for wife and home consumed with longing sore,
The nymph divine, Calypso, kept upon her island shore, 15
And fain would keep in hollow cave her lord for evermore.
But when, as seasons went their round, at length the year had come
Wherein the gods willed his return to Ithaca and home,
Not even then might he escape from trouble and from toil,
Not though he stood amidst his friends, upon his native soil. 20
Yet save, save Poseidon, all the gods felt pity for his woe,
He only to the godlike chief relentless hate did show,
E’en till he reached his fatherland, nor would his wrath forego.
But great Poseidon for the nonce on other route had gone,
For he had sought the Æthiops’ land, who far from others wonne: 25
Who, sundered into regions twain, inhabit earth’s extreme—
Some toward the setting of the sun, some toward his rising gleam.
There of a hecatomb of bulls and lambs to take his part
The god had gone, and at the board sat joying in his heart.
In solemn conclave, him except, meanwhile th’ Immortals all 30
Of the great Sire, Olympian Jove, were gathered in the hall.
To them the Lord of heaven and earth straightway his speech addressed,
For thought of dead Ægisthus then was stirring in his breast,
Whose life Atrides’ far-famed son, Orestes, late did take,—
Of whom bethinking him, the Sire thus to th’ Immortals spake: 35
“Oh strange! upon immortal gods what blame do mortals throw,
Who say that we are unto them the source of every woe,
When by their own infatuate deeds they on their own heads bring,
E’en beyond that which Fate decrees, a load of suffering!
For so Ægisthus, by no Fate’s resistless impulse led, 40
Chose with Atrides’ lawful wife unlawfully to wed,
And slew Atrides, fresh returned to his own palace hall,
Though well he knew that on himself would retribution fall.
For timely warning to his ear of all that would betide,
Ourselves did Hermes charge to gear, the watchful Argicide. 45
We bade him nor the monarch kill nor dare his wife to wed,
Since vengeance for Atrides slain would fall upon his head,
Soon as Orestes, his dear son, to prime of manhood come,
Should yearn in heart for sweet return to fatherland and home.
This Hermes told, yet did not all his warning wise persuade 50
Ægisthus, who for all hath now by one atonement paid.”

REVIEW COMMENT

Sir Charles du Cane’s translation does not really qualify for inclusion on this site, because it contains only the first twelve books of the Odyssey. However, I include it here for two reasons: first, du Cane is the first translator of Homer since Chapman (in his translation of the Iliad) to use rhyming fourteen-foot lines—what du Cane calls the “ballad metre,” a verse form for which he offers a rather limp defence; second, du Cane is a good example of some of the worst excesses of Victorian translations of Homer—and thus provides some useful insight into what Arnold is talking about in his essays on translating Homer. Du Cane is aware of Arnold’s essays (published almost twenty years earlier), but simply brushes Arnold’s advice to one side, on the ground that Arnold’s is setting an impossibly high standard: “. . . I fear further, that so high an aim will be found to be as unattainable in the future as it has been in the past.”

Du Cane’s translation also contains “Notes and Parallel Passages” at the foot of each page—short quotations from Latin and English authors who have drawn on Homer’s poetry in their own work, passages “which I have fallen in with and noted down from time to time in the course of my reading. No doubt those that I have quoted might be multiplied by hundreds, but they are, I think, sufficiently numerous to give some faint idea of how the spirit of Homer has pervaded the poetry of all ages, from the days of Virgil to the present period.”

For the complete text of the du Cane Odyssey, use the following link: du Cane Odyssey

For a contemporary review of du Cane’s translation, use the following link: Athenaeum (September 1880).

[List of Published English Translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey]