Homer
Odyssey
Translated by
Stanley Lombardo
(Hackett, 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
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.

                                       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
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
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 one around him.
All the gods pitied him, except Poseidon,
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--
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,
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
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
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."

For a longer preview (at Amazon), use the following link: Lombardo Odyssey

For a Review Comment on Lombardo's translation of the Iliad, use the following link: Lombardo Iliad

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