Odyssey
Homer

Translated by Stanley Lombardo
Indianapolis 2000

[Sample from the Opening of the Poem]

SPEAK, MEMORY—

Of the cunning hero,
The Wanderer, blown off course time and again
After he plundered Troy’s sacred Heights.

Speak
Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped,
The suffering deep in his heart at sea 5
As he struggled to survive and bring his men home
But could not save them, hard as he tried—
The fools—destroyed by their own recklessness
When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun,
And that god snuffed out their day of return. 10

Of these things,

Speak, Immortal One,
And tell the tale once more in our time.

By now, all the others who had fought at Troy—
At least those who had survived the war and the sea—
Were safely back home. Only Odysseus 15
Still longed to return to his home and his wife.
The nymph Calypso, a powerful goddess—
And beautiful—was clinging to him
In her caverns and yearned to possess him.
The seasons rolled by, and the year came 20
In which the gods spun the thread
For Odysseus to return home to Ithaca,
Though not even there did his troubles end,
Even with his dear ones around him.
All the gods pities him, except Poseidon, 25
Who stormed against the godlike hero
Until he finally reached his own native land.

But Poseidon was away now, among the Ethiopians,
Those burnished people at the ends of the earth—
Some near the sunset, some near the sunrise— 30
To receive a grand sacrifice of rams and bulls.
There he sat, enjoying the feast.
The other gods
Were assembled in the halls of Olympian Zeus,
And the Father of Gods and Men was speaking.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Aegisthus, 35
Whom Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, had killed:

“Mortals! They are always blaming the gods
For their troubles, when their own witlessness
Causes them more than they were destined for!
Take Aegisthus now. He marries Agamemnon’s 40
lawful wife and murders the man on his return
Knowing it meant disaster—because we did warn him,
Sent our messenger, quicksilver Hermes,
To tell him not to kill the man and marry his wife,
Or Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, would pay him back 45
When he came of age and wanted his inheritance.
Hermes told him all that, but his good advice
Meant nothing to Aegisthus. Now he’s paid in full.”

REVIEW COMMENT

The first task of a translation of Homer (especially one designed for students) is to seize the imagination of the inexperienced reader quickly. This Lombardo’s translation does very effectively. The language is clear, energetic, vivid, and colloquial—and the poetic rhythms keep one moving through it extremely well. This translation has a distinctly modern tone that is crisp and exciting—and very refreshing.

The second task of a translation is to allow the reader who has established imaginative contact with the poem to retain that essential quality. Here Lombardo’s vocabulary often creates problems for me (especially in the speeches) because he is determined to inject into his translation of this ancient epic (as in his translation of the Iliad) distinctively modern expressions: for example, the very colloquial (and American?) use of “man” to address someone (as in, “Don’t do it, man”), or “pile of shit” or “got some nerve,” “be a pal,” and so on. These immediately interrupt my imaginative contact with the poem. Rather than adding something poetically apt, they register as an incongruous attempt at an unnecessarily “hip” modernity.

Different readers will have different responses to this feature of the language, so anyone considering the Lombardo translation should certainly preview it at some length to see whether or not he or she shares my concerns.

For a longer preview of Lombardo’s translation, use the following link: Lombardo Odyssey (Amazon)

For reviews of Lombardo please use these links: Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews; New York Times.

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