Homer

The Odyssey

Translated by William Sotheby
London 1834

[Selection from the Opening of the Poem]

MUSE! sing the Man by long experience tried,
Who, fertile in resources, wander’d wide,
And when Troy’s sacred walls in dust were laid,
Men’s varying moods and many a realm survey’d.
He much endured on ocean’s stormy wave,
Intent his followers, and himself to save,
In vain:—they perish’d by their guilt undone;
Fools! Who devour’d the bullocks of the Sun—

The God, in vengeance for his cattle slain,
In their return destroy’d them on the main.
Daughter of Jove! Deign thou to us disclose,
Celestial Muse, a portion of their woes.

All who that death had ’scaped, at home once more
Dwelt free from battle and the ocean roar:
All, save Ulysses, whom, compell’d to stay
Regretful of his wife, and homeward way,
In her bright cave, a nymph by love subdued,
The fair Calypso for her consort woo’d.
But when long years had o’er him slowly roll’d,
And beam’d on his return the day foretold,
E’en in his Ithaca, his native soil,
E’en ’mid his friends his course was cross’d by toil,
Tho’ every god his woe with pity view’d,
Save Neptune, whose stern rage the chief pursued—
But now that wrathful God had pass’d alone
Where dwelt the Æthiops on earth’s furthest zone,
These, at the sun-rise, those, at day’s decline:
And there ’mid hecatombs that heap’d his shrine,

Glad Neptune shared the feast:—the rest, above,
Met in the palace of Olympian Jove.
’Mid these the God revolving in his mind
The guilt by base Ægisthus’ wile design’d,
The wretch who perish’d by Orestes slain:—
Indignant thus address’d heaven’s listening train:

‘Gods!—How these mortals dare the immortals blame!

‘And charge on us each ill they blindly frame;
‘By their own fault, not fate, their ruin bred.
‘Not fate, foul passion bade Ægisthus wed
‘Atrides’ wife, and make his hearth his tomb,

‘Tho’ warn’d by me of death’s impending doom.
‘The Argicide declared by strict command:
‘Touch not his wife,nor raise ’gainst him thy hand.

‘O’er thee dire vengeance from Orestes flames,
‘When in man’s strength the son his kingdom claims:
‘Thus Hermes spoke: Ægisthus disobey’d—

‘Lo! On his brow, all, all his crime repaid.’

REVIEW COMMENT

Sotheby’s Homer translations were eagerly anticipated and well received in his time, as the following review suggests:

As compared with Cowper, Mr. Sotheby is to be preferred, in consequence of giving us something like the fire and felicity of Homer, in the rhymed verse in which our poetry delights—and, as compared with Pope, he is to be still more readily preferred on account of that fidelity to their common principal, which Pope had irretrievably violated. (The Monthly Review, Vol. 14)

(Note that this review was based on a selection of Sotheby’s translation of the Iliad, published in 1830, not on the complete text).

As the review rightly stresses, rhyme was a much more popular feature of long poems than it is today, when we (or most of us, I suspect) would find Cowper’s objections to rhyme in translations of epic poetry more persuasive (the above review quotes the following passage and discusses the issue):

‘I will venture to assert that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme, is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing, at the same time, the full sense, and only the full sense of the original. The translator’s ingenuity, indeed, in this case, becomes itself a snare: and the readier he is at invention and expedient, the more likely he is to be betrayed into the widest departures from the guide whom he professes to follow.’

For the complete text of Sotheby’s Odyssey, use the following link: Sotheby Odyssey.

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