The Odyssey
translated by George Herbert Palmer
Boston, 1886

[Sample from the Opening of the Poem]
 
I

THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS AND THE SUMMONS TO TELEMACHUS

SPEAK TO me, Muse, of the adventurous man who wandered long after he sacked the sacred citadel of Troy. Many the men whose towns he saw, whose ways he proved; and many a pang he bore in his own breast at sea while struggling for his life and his men’s safe return.  Yet even so, by all his zeal, he did not save his men; for through their own perversity they perished—fools! who devoured the kine of the exalted Sun.  Wherefore he took away the day of their return.  Of this, O goddess, daughter of Zeus, beginning where thou wilt, speak to us also.
   Now all the others who were saved from utter ruin were at home, safe both from war and sea.  Him only, longing for his home and wife, the potent numph Calypso, a heavenly goddess, held in her hollow grotto desiring him to be her husband.  Nay, when the time had come in the revolving years at which the gods ordained his going home to Ithaca, even then, among his kin, he was not freed from trouble.  Yet the gods felt compassion, all save Poseidon, who steadily strove with god-like Odysseus till he reached his land.
   But Poseidon now was with the far-off Ethiopians, the remotest of mankind, who form two tribes, one at the setting of the Exalted one, one at his rising; awaiting there a sacrifice of buls and rams.  So sitting at the feast he took his pleasure.  The other gods, meanwhile, were gathered in the halls of Zeus upon Olympus, and thus began the father of men and gods; for in his mind he mused of gentle Aegisthus, whom Agamemnon’s far-famed son, Orestes, slew.  Mindful of him, he thus addressed the immortals:
   “Lo, how men blame the gods!  From us, they say, spring troubles.  But through their own perversity, and more than is their due, they meet with sorrow; even as now Aegisthus, pressing beyond his due, married the lawful wife of the son of Atreus and slew her husband on his coming home.  Yet he well knew his own impending ruin; for we ourselves forewarned him, dispatching Hermes, our clear-sighted Speedy-comer, and told him not to slay the man nor woo the wife.  ‘For because of the son of Atreus shall come vengeance from Orestes when he is grown and longs for his own land.’ This Hermes said, but did not turn the purpose of Aegisthus by his kindness.  And now Aegisthus makes atonement for it all.”
 
REVIEW COMMENT
Palmer says in his introduction that he has “approached the Odyssey from the philosophic and poetic side, delighting in Homer’s unique mental attitude . . . . he seems to me to confront the world like a child.”  How this affects the choices he makes in the style is not immediately obvious, yet the prose is clear enough, if generally rather flaccid.  The translation would probably not command much attention these days had it not been given a new life by Dover Publications in its Thrift Books series.  In the interest of reducing costs, Dover often uses old translations of questionable merit.  Palmer’s Odyssey, though not particularly inspiring and certainly very dated, is better than some of the wretched Victorian translations of the classics which have found their way into the Dover offerings (the translations of Aeschylus, for example) and it is still the cheapest text for those who wish to spare their students any additional expense.

Those who would like to access the full text of Palmer's translation should use the following link: Palmer Odyssey.

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