Sample from the Opening of the Poem

GODDESS of song, teach me the story of a hero.

    This was the man of wide-ranging spirit who had sacked the sacred town of Troy and who wandered afterwards long and far. Many were those who cities he viewed and whose minds he came to know, many the troubles that vexed his heart as he sailed the seas, labouring to save himself and to bring his comrades home. But his comrades he could not keep from ruin, strive as he might; they perished instead by their own presumptuousness. Fools, they devoured the cattle of Hyperion, and he, the sun-god, cut off from them the day of their homecoming.

     Goddess, daughter of Zeus, to me in turn impart some knowledge of all these things, beginning where you will.

     The tale begins when all those others who had escaped the pit of destruction were safe in their own lands, spared by the wars and seax.

Only Odysseus was held elsewhere, pining for home and wife; the nymph Calypso, a goddess of strange power and beauty, had kept him captive within her arching caverns, yearning for him to be her husband. And when there came with revolving seasons the year that the gods had set for his journey home to Ithaca, not even then was he past his troubles, not even then was he with his own people. For though all the gods beside had compassion on him, Poseidon's anger was unabated against the hero until he returned to his own land.

But now Poseidon had gone to visit the Ethiopians, those distant Ethiopians whose nation is parted within itself, so that some are near the settting and some near the rising sun, but all alike are at the world's end; to these he had gone to receive a great offering of bulls and rams, and there he was taking his pleasure now, seated at the banquet. But the other gods were gathered together in the palace of Olympian Zeus, and the father of gods and men began to speak to them. His mind was full of Lord Aegisthus, slain by renowned Orestes, the child of Agamemnon; with him in mind Zeus began to speak to the Deathless Ones.

'O the waywardness of these nortals! They accuse the gods, they say that their troubles come from us, and yet by their own presumptuousness they draw down sorrow upon themselves that outruns their allotted portion. So now, Aegisthus outran his allotted portion by taking in marriage the wedded wife of the son of Atreus and killing her husband when he returned. Yet he knew what pit of destruction was before him, because we ourselves warned him of it. We sent him Hermes, the Keen Watcher, the Radiant One; we forbade him to kill the king or to woo his wife, under pain of vengeance for Agamemnon that would come upon him from Orestes when the boy grew up and felt a longing for his own country. Thus Hermes warned him, wishing him well, but Aegisthus' heart would not hear reason, and how he has paid all his debts at once.'

REVIEW COMMENT

Shewring offers an accurate and direct English Odyssey in (generally) idiomatic English.  And he offers interesting footnotes throughout. Those looking for a prose translation should certainly consider using this text. 

Reader who would like a preview of Shewring’s text should use the following link: Shewring Odyssey.