Odyssey
translated by
Martin Hammond
London, 2000

Book I

The Gods, Athene, and Telemachos

Muse, tell me of a man: a man of much resource, who was made to wander far and long, after he had sacked the sacred city of Troy. Many were the men whose lands he saw and came to know their thinking: many too the miseries at sea which he suffered in his heart, as he sought to win his own life and the safe return of his companions. But even so, for all his efforts, he could not save his companions. They perished through their own arrant folly—the fools, they ate the cattle of Hyperion the Sun, and he took away the day of their return.

Start the story where you will, goddess, daughter of Zeus, and share it now with us.

At that time all the others, all those who had escaped stark destruction, were in their homes, safe from war and sea. He alone was still yearning for his return to home and wife. The great nymph Kalypso, queen among goddesses, was keeping him in her hollow cave, eager to make him her husband. But when, as the years revolved, the time came which the gods had fated for his return home to Ithaka, even there he was not free from trials, even among his own people. And now all the gods felt pity for him, except Poseidon: he was ceaseless in his anger at godlike Odysseus before he reached his own land.

But Poseidon had gone to visit the Ethiopians far away—the Ethiopians who are split in two divisions, remote from other men: some live by the setting sun, and others where it rises. There he had gone to receive a full sacrifice of bulls and rams and was seated at the feast taking his pleasure. But the other gods were gathered together in the house of Olympian Zeus, and the father of men and gods began to speak to them. His thought had turned to noble Aigisthos, killed by the son of Agamemnon, famous Orestes. With him in mind he spoke to the immortals:

‘Oh, look how men are always blaming the gods! They say their troubles come from us. But is they themselves, through their own arrant folly, who bring further misery on themselves beyond what we destine for them. So it was beyond his destiny that Aigisthos took the wife of Agamemnon’s marriage, and killed the son of Atreus on his return. He knew it was his own stark destruction. We had told him before. We had sent Hermes the sharp-sighted, the slayer of Argos, telling him not to kill the man or woo his wife: there would be vengeance from Orestes for the son of Atreus, when Orestes reached manhood and felt the desire for his own country. That is what Hermes said, but his good advice did not sway Aigisthos’ mind. And now Aigisthos has paid it all in full.’

REVIEW COMMENT

Hammond’s translation is very clear, straightforward, and accurate. Its language is readily comprehensible and suffers from no infections of olde worlde English or Arthurian nostalgia. Thus, anyone seeking a prose version of the Odyssey should certainly sample it. Personally, I find Hammond prose, for all the welcome characteristics noted above, curiously inert, especially in the speeches. The accuracy and clarity are there, but what has happened to the colloquial vitality? Other readers, however, may well disagree.

For a Review Comment on Hammond's Iliad, please use the following link: Hammond Iliad.

To  read a review of the Hammond Odyssey, use the following link: Hammond Odyssey (Bryn Mawr Classical Review)

List of Published English Translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey