ARGUMENT

Council of the Gods in Olympus—Minerva visits Telemachus at Ithaca—The Suitors

DAY 1.

SING Muse the hero versatile, who roved
So far, so long, after he overthrew
Troy’s holy citadel; of many men
He saw the cities, and their manners learned;
And woes he suffered on the deep; he strove                              5
To win his comrades’ lives, and safe return,
But all his striving failed to rescue them:
They perished for their witless sacrilege,
Who ate the oxen of Hyperion Sun;
Hence never more saw they their native land.                             10
Daughter of Jove, help us to tell the tale.
   All had reached home, escaping war and flood,
Whom sheer destruction spared, save one alone;
Him only—pining for his wife and home,
Calypso, lovely goddess, held enthralled                                     15
In her arched grots, hoping to win his love.
But when the circling years brought round the time
In which the gods had willed his home return
To Ithaca, not then, e’en midst his friends
Escaped he trials sore; the gods themselves                                20
All pitied him, save Neptune; who alone
With unrelenting anger still pursued
Godlike Ulysses, ere he reached his home.
   But now the god had gone to Æthiops’ land,
The distant Æthiops—whose tribes are twain,                            25
One towards the setting, one the rising sun:
There he was present at the sacrifice
Of lambs and oxen, and enjoyed the feast:
Meanwhile the other gods assembled were
In Jove’s Olympian halls; when thus to them                              30
The father of gods and men to speak began;
For he bethought him of Ægisthus’ fate,
Whom Agamemnon’s son Orestes slew:
Remembering this, the immortals he addressed:
   “How strange it is that mortals throw the blame                      35
Of all their ills on us, the gods; when they
By their misdeeds bring on themselves their woes,
In spite of fate; ’twas thus Ægisthus stole
The wife of Atreus’ son, and murdered him
On his return; although full well he knew                                    40
Vengeance awaited him, forewarned by us;
Who sent to him the wrathful Argus-slayer,
Hermes, to bid him not to slay the chief,
Nor violate his wife; for vengeance sure
Would from Orestes fall when he should reach                          45
The prime of youth, and for his birthright long:
Thus counselled Hermes well, but failed to sway
Ægisthus’ mind; who paid full penalty.”

REVIEW COMMENT

In a very brief preface, General Schomberg offers a reason for using unrhymed iambic pentameter verse and, at the same time, laments the fact that “even in hands far more able than mine, blank Iambics can hardly give the picturesque variety, and broken light and shadow of the Homeric Hexameter of the Odyssey; of which I have endeavoured, how vainly I fear,—to catch some reflection.”

Readers who would like to look at the text of Volume I of Schomberg’s translation should use the following link: Schomberg Odyssey.

For contemporary reviews of General Schomberg’s translation, please use the following links: Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, Volume 47 (1879); Quarterly Review, Vols. 146-7 (1879).

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