The Odysses
Translated by Thomas Hobbes
London 1674
[Sample from the Opening of the Poem]
TELL me, O
Muse, th’ adventures of the man
That having sack’d
the sacred town of Troy,
Wander’d so long
at sea; what course he ran
By winds and tempests driven from
his way:
That saw the cities,
and the fashions knew
Of many men, but suffer’d grievous pain
To save his own life, and bring
home his crew;
Though for his crew, all he could
do was vain,
They lost themselves by their own
insolence,
Feeding, like fools, on the Sun’s
sacred kine;
Which did the splendid deity incense
To their
dire fate. Begin, O Muse divine.
The Greeks from Troy were all
returned home,
All that the war and winds had spar’d, except
The discontent Ulysses only; whom
In hollow caves the nymph Calypso
kept.
But when the years and days were
come about,
Wherein was woven his return by
fate
To Ithaca (but neither there without
Great pain), the Gods then pitied
his estate,
All saving Neptune; who did never
cease
To hinder him from reaching his
own shore,
And persecute him still upon the
seas
Till he got home, then troubled
him no more.
Neptune was now far off in Black-moor
land;
The Black-moors are the utmost of
mankind,
As far as east and west asunder
stand,
So far the Black-moors’ borders
are disjoin’d.
Invited there to feast on ram and
bull,
There sat he
merry. Th’ other Gods were then
Met on Olympus in a synod full,
In th’
house of Jove, father of Gods and men.
And first spake
Jove, whose thoughts were now upon
Ægistus’ death,
which he but then first knew,
By th’
hand of Agamemnon’s valiant son,
Who to revenge his father’s blood
him slew.
Ha! how
dare mortals tax the Gods, and say,
Their harms do all proceed from
our decree,
And by our setting; when by their
crimes they
Against our wills make their own
destiny?
As now Ægistus
did Atrides kill
Newly come home, and married his
wife;
Although he knew it was against
my will,
And that it would cost him one
day his life.
Sent we not Hermes to him to
forbid
The murder,
and the marriage of the wife;
Orestes should revenge it on his
life?
All this said Hermes, as we bade
him. But
Ægistus, for all
this, was not afraid
His lust
in execution to put.
And therefore now has dearly for
it paid.