The Odyssey Book One: a Goddess
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05_273-611_Homer 2/Aesop 7/10/00 1:25 PM Page 273 HOMER / The Odyssey, Book One 273 THE ODYSSEY Translated by Robert Fitzgerald The ten-year war waged by the Greeks against Troy, culminating in the overthrow of the city, is now itself ten years in the past. Helen, whose flight to Troy with the Trojan prince Paris had prompted the Greek expedition to seek revenge and reclaim her, is now home in Sparta, living harmoniously once more with her husband Meneláos (Menelaus). His brother Agamémnon, commander in chief of the Greek forces, was murdered on his return from the war by his wife and her paramour. Of the Greek chieftains who have survived both the war and the perilous homeward voyage, all have returned except Odysseus, the crafty and astute ruler of Ithaka (Ithaca), an island in the Ionian Sea off western Greece. Since he is presumed dead, suitors from Ithaka and other regions have overrun his house, paying court to his attractive wife Penélopê, endangering the position of his son, Telémakhos (Telemachus), corrupting many of the servants, and literally eating up Odysseus’ estate. Penélopê has stalled for time but is finding it increasingly difficult to deny the suitors’ demands that she marry one of them; Telémakhos, who is just approaching young manhood, is becom- ing actively resentful of the indignities suffered by his household. Many persons and places in the Odyssey are best known to readers by their Latinized names, such as Telemachus. The present translator has used forms (Telémakhos) closer to the Greek spelling and pronunciation. A slanted accent mark (´) indicates stress; thus Agamémnon is accented on the third syllable. A circumflex accent (ˆ) indicates that the vowel sound is long; thus Kêrês is pronounced “Care-ace.” A dieresis (¨) indi- cates pronunciation as a separate syllable; thus, Thoösa has three syllables rather than two. [Editors’ headnote.] BOOK ONE: A GODDESS INTERVENES Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end, after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy.1 He saw the townlands and learned the minds of many distant men, and weathered many bitter nights and days in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only to save his life, to bring his shipmates home. But not by will nor valor could he save them, 10 for their own recklessness destroyed them all— 1 These lines contain the traditional epic “opening formula” that includes the invocation of the inspiring Muse, the statement of the theme, the identification of the hero (in this case Odysseus), and a glance at the significance of the story. 05_273-611_Homer 2/Aesop 7/10/00 1:25 PM Page 274 274 The Ancient World children and fools, they killed and feasted on the cattle of Lord Hêlios,2 the Sun, and he who moves all day through heaven took from their eyes the dawn of their return. Of these adventures, Muse, daughter of Zeus, tell us in our time, lift the great song again. Begin when all the rest who left behind them headlong death in battle or at sea had long ago returned, while he alone still hungered 20 for home and wife. Her ladyship Kalypso clung to him in her sea-hollowed caves— a nymph, immortal and most beautiful, who craved him for her own. And when long years and seasons wheeling brought around that point of time ordained for him to make his passage homeward, trials and dangers, even so, attended him even in Ithaka,3 near those he loved. Yet all the gods had pitied Lord Odysseus, 4 all but Poseidon, raging cold and rough 30 against the brave king till he came ashore at last on his own land. But now that god had gone far off among the sunburnt races, most remote of men, at earth’s two verges, in sunset lands and lands of the rising sun, to be regaled by smoke of thighbones burning, haunches of rams and bulls, a hundred fold. He lingered delighted at the banquet side. In the bright hall of Zeus upon Olympos the other gods were all at home, and Zeus, 40 the father of gods and men, made conversation. For he had meditated on Aigísthos,5 dead by the hand of Agamémnon’s son, Orestês, and spoke his thought aloud before them all: “My word, how mortals take the gods to task! All their afflictions come from us, we hear. 2 The offense against Hêlios is described in Book XII. 3Odysseus’ island homeland, in the Ionian Sea off western Greece (sometimes the spelling is Ithaca). 4God of the ocean and brother of the chief of the gods who dwelled on Mount Olympos (Olympus), Zeus. 5 While the Greek commander Agamémnon was away fighting against Troy, Aigísthos (Aegisthus) entered into an adulterous union with Klytaimnéstra (Clytaemnestra), Agamémnon’s wife; they murdered Agamémnon upon his return. The murder was later avenged by Orestês, son of Agamémnon and Klytaimnéstra, as is related in Aeschylus’ trilogy of plays known as the Oresteia. 05_273-611_Homer 2/Aesop 7/10/00 1:25 PM Page 275 HOMER / The Odyssey, Book One 275 And what of their own failings? Greed and folly double the suffering in the lot of man. See how Aigísthos, for his double portion, stole Agamémnon’s wife and killed the soldier 50 on his homecoming day. And yet Aigísthos knew that his own doom lay in this. We gods had warned him, sent down Hermês Argeiphontês,6 our most observant courier, to say: ‘Don’t kill the man, don’t touch his wife, or face a reckoning with Orestês the day he comes of age and wants his patrimony.’ Friendly advice—but would Aigísthos take it? Now he has paid the reckoning in full.” The grey-eyed goddess Athena replied to Zeus: 60 “O Majesty, O Father of us all, that man is in the dust indeed, and justly. So perish all who do what he had done. But my own heart is broken for Odysseus, the master mind of war, so long a castaway upon an island in the running sea; a wooded island, in the sea’s middle, and there’s a goddess in the place, the daughter of one whose baleful mind knows all the deeps 7 of the blue sea—Atlas, who holds the columns 70 that bear from land the great thrust of the sky. His daughter will not let Odysseus go, poor mournful man; she keeps on coaxing him with her beguiling talk, to turn his mind from Ithaka. But such desire is in him merely to see the hearthsmoke leaping upward from his own island, that he longs to die. Are you not moved by this, Lord of Olympos? Had you no pleasure from Odysseus’ offerings 8 beside the Argive ships, on Troy’s wide seaboard? 80 O Zeus, what do you hold against him now?” To this the summoner of cloud replied: “My child, what strange remarks you let escape you. Could I forget that kingly man, Odysseus? There is no mortal half so wise; no mortal gave so much to the lords of open sky. Only the god who laps the land in water, 6 God of messengers and messenger of the gods; he was also associated sometimes with the wind. “Argeiphontês” connotes brightness or the ability to clear the sky of clouds. 7 In myth, Atlas is the titanic being who supports the sky. Here he is described as father of the nymph Kalypso, who is holding Odysseus prisoner on her island, Og´ygia. 8 The collective name for the Greek forces who fought under Agamémnon against Troy. 05_273-611_Homer 2/Aesop 7/10/00 1:25 PM Page 276 276 The Ancient World Poseidon, bears the fighter an old grudge since he poked out the eye of Polyphêmos, 9 brawniest of the Kyklopês. Who bore 90 that giant lout? Thoösa, daughter of Phorkys, an offshore sea lord: for this nymph had lain with Lord Poseidon in her hollow caves. Naturally, the god, after the blinding— mind you, he does not kill the man; he only buffets him away from home. But come now, we are all at leisure here, let us take up this matter of his return, that he may sail. Poseidon must relent for being quarrelsome will get him nowhere, 100 one god, flouting the will of all the gods.” The grey-eyed goddess Athena answered him: “O Majesty, O Father of us all, if it now please the blissful gods that wise Odysseus reach his home again, let the Wayfinder, Hermês, cross the sea to the island of Og´ygia; let him tell our fixed intent to the nymph with pretty braids, and let the steadfast man depart for home. For my part, I shall visit Ithaka 110 to put more courage in the son, and rouse him to call an assembly of the islanders, Akhaian10 gentlemen with flowing hair. He must warn off that wolf pack of the suitors who prey upon his flocks and dusky cattle. I’ll send him to the mainland then, to Sparta by the sand beach of Pylos;11 let him find news of his dear father where he may and win his own renown about the world.” She bent to tie her beautiful sandals on, 120 ambrosial, golden, that carry her over water or over endless land on the wings of the wind, and took the great haft of her spear in hand— that bronzeshod spear this child of Power can use to break in wrath long battle lines of fighters.