Customer Reviews

The Odyssey of Homer

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This review will focus upon the translation of "The Odyssey" more than the work itself. Having withstood the test of time and considered the first great work of the Western tradition, "The Odyssey" can do well enough without my two cents.

This translation is among the most accurate on the market. Though I speak no Greek myself, classics professors have urged me to read this translation, the best English source available. Despite the usual popularity of the Fitzgerald translation, the Lattimore version provides a more literal translation with consistent themes of word choice running throughout. "They put their hands to the good things that lay ready before them," for example, will come up over and over again because, quite simply, the phrase comes up over and over again. And we have the same adjectives consistently before each of the major players: resourceful Odysseus, thoughtful Telemachos, and circumspect Penelope, along with the gray-eyed Athene. Lattimore explains how he chooses to translate the work, and his translation is a literal work of a genius. He retains the lyric style in form throughout the work, aligning this translation even more closely with the original text.

For those who desire the most accurate translation of this great work, I would highly recommend the Lattimore translation of "The Odyssey of Homer."

This Lattimore translation of "The Odyssey" was the first book I read last quarter for my Comparative Literature class, and it became a preview of coming wonders. I had neglected the old classics out of ignorance and prejudice (these two tend to go together) and "The Odyssey" was one of those books that forced me to look at an entire collection of genres and literary epochs in a different, far more positive way. I do not know Greek, therefore I cannot say whether the translation is absolutely faithful to the original, but it flows well when read silently and it sounds even better when I read it aloud, alone at night. This is the story of Odysseus, King of Ithaka, Captain of the Greeks, who must return to his homeland and his family after helping defeat the Trojans. Amazingly enough, many people seem to have bought entirely into the idea of Odysseus as a noble, courageous, and honorable leader of men who gets sidetracked solely because of the wrath of Poseidon. I finished this poem with an entirely different view of its protagonist. To me, Odysseus was an arrogant liar, a murderer and a rapist who did not hesitate to attack people who were not his enemies (the Kikonians on his way back after sacking Troy and killing and/or enslaving most of its people, as reads in Book IX, page 138), and who did not hesitate to endanger the lives of his men just to boast of his deeds (same Book, page 150). This "hero" eventually makes it to Ithaka and ends up drenched in the blood of the suitors of his wife, ordering the torture and death of the serving women who had become lovers of the suitors. His son Telemachos becomes a murderer as well: he kills a man by stabbing him on the back with a javelin. Since the suitors represented the youth of Ithaka's noble families, Odysseus has arranged to create a blood feud with everyone on the island. Only the intervention of Athena will save the day, and after all the bloodshed, all the lies, the pillaging, and the murders, he leaves Ithaka and Penelope once more to wander in other lands and thus follow a prophecy regarding his own death.

"The Odyssey" is a great poem. It is never boring and only after reading it complete one understands how little the film and TV productions kept of the original work, and how poorly we have been served with such adaptations. My reading of this timeless classic is rather different to that of other people who may have much better qualifications in this area. What I got out of it was the impression that Homer, whomever he was, used irony to drive home a message regarding his "hero," and this irony, together with the folklore that surrounded the Trojan War and its participants, helped Euripides, by the Fifth century BC, paint a far more direct and damaging picture of the Greek victors in his "Trojan Women."

I now consider "The Odyssey" necessary reading. Even if you read it and arrive to a different understanding of the poem, I think it will be an extremely valuable experience.

Overall, the best translation available -- here presented in a new approach with Reading Group questions at the end. I am not sure how many reading groups are going to read The Odyssey, and most of those reading, either for solitary pleasure or in a classroom setting where better questions are going to be discussed make the past few pages really somewhat worthless -- but overall, this is the finest translation you can get. If you read this in High School and haven't picked it up in 20 years, take the leap -- and enjoy reading it in a way you never recalled while in HS....complement this with the authors translation of The Illiad and you have a summer of reading ahead of you.

That is the question which most non-specialists will be asking themselves as they go through these reviews. After reading Lattimore's translation, I would have to say they could do worse than choosing this one.

This version of Homer's Odyssey tries to stay true to the original, allowing those of us that do not speak Homeric greek to catch a glimpse of the true structure of the poem.

Some will say that Lattimore's literalness makes for dull reading. Not so. I feel it preserves the raw beauty of a three thousand year old poem, in which base, fundamentally human, emotional states are explored.

Modern moral standards should in no way be used to mask, by means of saccharine lyricism, the power, indeed brutality, of many of the scenes described by Homer.

Overall, a great book.

Since reading Lattimore's translation of the Odyssey this past summer, I haven't been able to read ANYTHING ELSE with the same interest and enthusiasm. Homer's Odyssey needs no endorsement from me. It sits at the very heart and genesis of the Western literary tradition and will forever continue to do so. If you haven't read the Odyssey, you should: it's an important part of our human heritage. It's also incredibly fascinating for its age. Almost three thousand years old now, the Odyssey transports you into another strangely foreign time, imagination, and culture.

The Odyssey is also a compelling narrative in its own right. It's simply an amazing and beautiful story, and this is certainly what accounts for its continued influence throughout history. The prose, beautifully and faithfully rendered in this edition by Lattimore, are captivating and rythmically satisfying. The world is rich, awe-inspiring, but not over-indulgently described. Odysseus is a hero in the truest sense of the word. Everything you want is there but not in over-abundance. The Odyssey is just sparse enough to leave you yearning for more, which is why I haven't been able to read much else lately. I figure Lattimore's translation of the Illiad is my next stop. I'll let you know how that goes.

I own and have read translations of The Iliad & The Odyssey by Fagles, Fitzgerald, and Lattimore. I rate them as follows:
1. Lattimore
2. Fitzgerald
3. Fagles
Fitzgerald's translations are often the most enjoyable. However, I feel that Lattimore's clarity facilitates greater understanding of the story by the reader.

Lattimore's translation is both beautiful and accurate. There are two annoying aspects to this book, however. First, the font is too small. Second, the pages do not identify which book the lines it contains are from, which makes reference to the text a real pain. The whole thing looks like a photocopy of the original reprinted on cheap paper, with some attempt to add value by adding some stuff on Lattimore at the end. It would be nice to see a proper new edition for this price.

I have delved into the classics (western) as of late and purposefully saved this one for last...and much like dessert is the last and sweetest part of the meal, so was "the odyssey" after reading other classics. One of the first things that stood out in Lattimore's intro was his comment about the fantastic character development occuring throughtout the text. After reading "the iliad," i was expecting similar flat characters, but Odysseus, Telemachos and Penelope were indeed richly developed throughout the epic making the reader yearn for the climax when Odysseus is finally united with his family. The character development of "odyssey" also allowed characters from "the iliad" to be given more substance in this translation. In particular, I am thinking of Agamemnon when Odysseus visits the underworld. Because of the character development earlier in the poem this scene was chilling and meaningful.

I also enjoyed Lattimore's conjecture regarding the original author or authors of "the iliad" and "the odyssey." In particular I laughed out loud when he proposed that perhaps the author of "the odyssey" might have parodied "the iliad" when he wrote the part in "odyssey" where Telemachos sneezes and abruptly rattles his armour about him, which would poke fun of the soldiers crashing to the ground in their armour in "the iliad."

I have only read this translation of "the odyssey," but after reading "the iliad" and "the aeneid" by different translators, i feel that this one was so well done that it seems like it easily could have been an original English poem. Lattimore provides a wonderfully extensive glossery of characters from Greek mythology and poetry elaborating on their parentage.

I've read other translations of the Odyssey but Lattimore's is the most readable and clear. Fitzgerald's translation occasionally clarifies a point of two but for the most part I depend upon Lattimore's.

It's been three thousand years since the time of Homer, but we still read his works for two reasons: incredible storytelling and human nature. I've read a lot in my time, but to me The Illiad and The Odyssey are the best our civilization has to offer, surpassing Dante, surpassing Shakespeare. And similar to these two, Homer still teaches us about life even today.

I think we've all been Telemachus at one point or another: awkward, self-conscious and feeling slightly adrift in the face of life. Likewise, I believe Odysseus represents many ideals even for today's world. Through the Odyssey he displays a somewhat paradoxical nature, at one time a reckless braggart, then again a calculating trickster. But in the end he exhibits faith, loyalty, honor and a sense of family which trumps all else. He relied on his brains as much as his strength, when without either he would have died several times over. The Odyssey can be pretty funny at times as well. I get the sense I'm reading a sitcom whenever a suitor throws a stool across the room or a drunk falls off Circe's roof. Bizarre! Those types of actions are a little part of what makes this book so human.

Lattimore won me over with this translation; it is a credit to his career. Read this book young, but not too young. It will help you along. The internal growth Achilles experienced in Book 9 of the Iliad wasn't on display fully then, but those inward qualities do take the fore for Odysseus. One last thing I've noticed about Homer is that paralells occur often, and some events seem cyclical or complimentry. Without getting too specific and ruining it for you, I would say that the ending the Epic cycle (the story of the Trojan war) matches up appropiately with its beginning. I like to pretend the Odyssey's follow-up - Eugamon's 'Telegony' - never happened.