Product Description

The most eloquent translation of Homer's Odyssey into modern English.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55679 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
"The best...translator of Greek poetry into English is Richmond

Lattimore...This is the best Odyssey in modern English."

-- -- Gilbert Highet

"[Lattimore's] Odyssey is his masterpiece."

-- -- Walter Kaufmann

"In this Odyssey Professor Lattimore has achieved his chef d'oeuvre as a translator...[A] dazzling and well-nigh flawless performance...Here is a master in perfect control of his medium...A landmark in the history of modern translation...It would be a crime to underestimate the miraculous and self-effacing artistry with which Professor Lattimore has reanimated Homer for this generation, and perhaps for other generations to come." -- Times Literary Supplement (London)

"Lattimore's translation of Homer's Odyssey is the most eloquent, persuasive, and imaginative I have seen. It reads as if the poem had originally been written in English." -- Paul Engle

"The best...translator of Greek poetry into English is Richmond Lattimore...This is the best Odyssey in modern English." -- Gilbert Highet

"[Lattimore's] Odyssey is his masterpiece." -- Walter Kaufmann

"[Lattimore's] complete Homer is indeed a splendid achievement, and I shall be very far from being alone in regarding it...as the best translation there is of a great, perhaps the greatest, poet." -- Rex Warner, New York Times Book Review

About the Author
Richmond Lattimore was born in 1906. He was considered one of the leading translators of Greek classical literature. He died in 1984

Customer Reviews

A fantastic translation
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."

The stuff that heroes are made of?
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.

Which translation to buy?
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.