The Odyssey: With Illustrations After John Flaxman

by Homer, George Davidson (Introduction), Alexander Pope (Translator)

Overview

The Odyssey is the most enduring classic of western civilization, telling the story of Ulysses and his eventful voyage home after the Trojan War.

This beautiful slipcase edition features Alexander Pope's classic 1726 translation which perfectly captures the lyricism of this epic poem. Featured alongside the text are wonderful illustrations derived from John Flaxman's neoclassical designs, as well as expert Dr Emma Woolerton's useful commentary.

This elegant and timeless hardback edition makes a wonderful collector's item or gift.

ABOUT THE SERIES: Arcturus Slipcased Classics are beautiful foil-stamped gift editions of classic works of literature, presented in a slipcase and decorated with delightful illustrations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789509427
Publisher:	Arcturus Publishing Limited
Publication date:	04/01/2020
Series:	Arcturus Slipcased Classics , #20
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

George Davidson studied languages and linguistics at the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Strasbourg, and is a graduate of Edinburgh University. A former senior editor with Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, he is now a freelance compiler and editor of dictionaries and other reference books. He is an elder of the Church of Scotland, and lives in Edinburgh.

Alexander Pope

George Davidson studied languages and linguistics at the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Strasbourg, and is a graduate of Edinburgh University. A former senior editor with Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, he is now a freelance compiler and editor of dictionaries and other reference books. He is an elder of the Church of Scotland, and lives in Edinburgh.

Read an Excerpt

I

Athene Visits Telemachus

Tell me, Muse, the story of that resourceful man who was driven to wander far and wide after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy. He saw the cities of many people and he learnt their ways. He suffered great anguish on the high seas in his struggles to preserve his life and bring his comrades home. But he failed to save those comrades, in spite of all his efforts. It was their own transgression that brought them to their doom, for in their folly they devoured the oxen of Hyperion the Sun-god and he saw to it that they would never return. Tell us this story, goddess daughter of Zeus, beginning at whatever point you will.

All the survivors of the war had reached their homes by now and so put the perils of battle and the sea behind them. Odysseus alone was prevented from returning to the home and wife he yearned for by that powerful goddess, the Nymph Calypso, who longed for him to marry her, and kept him in her vaulted cave. Not even when the rolling seasons brought in the year which the gods had chosen for his homecoming to Ithaca was he clear of his troubles and safe among his friends. Yet all the gods pitied him, except Poseidon, who pursued the heroic Odysseus with relentless malice till the day when he reached his own country.

Poseidon, however, was now gone on a visit to the distant Ethiopians, in the most remote part of the world, half of whom live where the Sun goes down, and half where he rises. He had gone to accept a sacrifice of bulls and rams, and there he sat and enjoyed the pleasures of the feast. Meanwhile the rest of the gods had assembled in the palace of Olympian Zeus, and the Father of men and gods opened a discussion among them. He had been thinking of the handsome Aegisthus, whom Agamemnon’s far-famed son Orestes killed; and it was with Aegisthus in his mind that Zeus now addressed the immortals:

‘What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own transgressions which bring them suffering that was not their destiny. Consider Aegisthus: it was not his destiny to steal Agamemnon’s wife and murder her husband when he came home. He knew the result would be utter disaster, since we ourselves had sent Hermes, the keen-eyed Giant-slayer, to warn him neither to kill the man nor to court his wife. For Orestes, as Hermes told him, was bound to avenge Agamemnon as soon as he grew up and thought with longing of his home. Yet with all his friendly counsel Hermes failed to dissuade him. And now Aegisthus has paid the final price for all his sins.’

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Odyssey"
by .
Copyright © 2010 E. V. Homer.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction
List of Illustations
Book I: Minerva's Descent to Ithaca
Book II: The Council of Ithaca
Book III: The Interview of Telemachus and Nestor
Book IV: The Conference With Menelaus
Book V: The Departure of Ulysses from Calypso
Book VI: Ulysses and Nausicaa
Book VII: The Court of Alcinous
Book VIII: Demodocus' Songs
Book IX: The Adventures of the Cicons, Lotophagi, and Cyclops
Book X: Adventures with Aelos, the Laestrygons, and Circe
Book XI: The Descent into Hell
Book XII: The Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis
Book XIII: The Arrival of Ulysses in Ithaca
Book XIV: The Conversation with Eumaeus
Book XV: The Return of Telemachus
Book XVI: Telemachus Discovers Ulysses
Book XVII: Ulysses at the Palace
Book XVIII: The Fight of Ulysses and Irus
Book XIX: Euryclea Discovers Ulysses
Book XX: The Suitors' Final Extravagances
Book XXI: The Bending of Ulysses' Bow
Book XXII: The Death of the Suitors
Book XXIII: Ulysses and Penelope
Book XXIV: Peace Eventually Restored

What People are Saying About This

"Edward McCrorie's translation of the Odyssey answers the demands of movement and accuracy in a rendition of the poem. His verse line is brisk and efficient, often captures the rhythm and the sound of the Greek, and functions well as an English equivalent of the Greek hexameter. Unlike most translators, he wishes to preserve at least some of the sound of the Greek, and his rendition of the formula glaukôpis Athene as glow-eyed Athene is inspired. He remains true to the formulae of Homeric verse, and several of his choices—such as rose-fingered daylight or words had a feathery swiftness—delight. Homer, Zeus-like, would have nodded his approval."

Keith Stanley

"This is a fine, fast-moving version of the liveliest epic of classical antiquity. With a bracing economy, accuracy, and poetic control, Edward McCrorie conveys the freshness and challenge of the original in clear, sensitive, and direct language. Instead of the uncertain solemnity of some previous translations or the free re-creation of others, McCrorie has managed a version that will have immediate appeal to this generation of students and general readers alike."

William F. Wyatt

"Edward McCrorie's translation of the Odyssey answers the demands of movement and accuracy in a rendition of the poem. His verse line is brisk and efficient, often captures the rhythm and the sound of the Greek, and functions well as an English equivalent of the Greek hexameter. Unlike most translators, he wishes to preserve at least some of the sound of the Greek, and his rendition of the formula glaukôpis Athene as glow-eyed Athene is inspired. He remains true to the formulae of Homeric verse, and several of his choices—such as rose-fingered daylight or words had a feathery swiftness—delight. Homer, Zeus-like, would have nodded his approval."

Editorial Reviews

"Bold new translation."

Classical Bulletin - Emily Anhalt

"Edward McCrorie's translation of the Odyssey into English hexameter has much to recommend it... I have developed an appreciation for the clarity and briskness of McCrorie's verse."

Bryn Mawr Classical Review - G.S. Bowe

"McCrorie's new translation can be recommended without reservation to the generations of students to whom it is bound to be assigned and to any reader who'd like to get as close to the original as is possible without reading the original Greek. It is refreshing, accurate, and direct."

Bloomsbury Review - Jay Kenney

"McCrorie has produced an epic with its own rhythms, idioms and developing pleasures. "

Anglo-Hellenic Review

"A lively and engaging version of Homer's Odyssey that brilliantly blends pleasurable readability with fidelity to the original... McCrorie has simplified the choice of an English Odyssey even in a field of very skillful competitors (Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Mandelbaum, Fagles, Lombardo), providing the best available verse translation of the Odyssey for Greekless readers."

Choice

[Robert Fitzgerald’s translation is] a masterpiece . . . An Odyssey worthy of the original.” –The Nation

“[Fitzgerald’s Odyssey and Iliad] open up once more the unique greatness of Homer’s art at the level above the formula; yet at the same time they do not neglect the brilliant texture of Homeric verse at the level of the line and the phrase.” –The Yale Review

“[In] Robert Fitzgerald’s translation . . . there is no anxious straining after mighty effects, but rather a constant readiness for what the occasion demands, a kind of Odyssean adequacy to the task in hand, and this line-by-line vigilance builds up into a completely credible imagined world.”
–from the Introduction by Seamus Heaney

From the Publisher

10/15/2017
The enduring character of the epic poem The Odyssey invites repeated attempts at translation, here most recently an energetic verse rendition by Wilson (classical studies, Univ. of Pennsylvania), who has authored books on the nature of tragedy, Socrates, and Seneca, as well as translations of plays by Euripides and Seneca. Wilson's goal is for the work to sound natural to the modern reader without falling into contemporizing anachronisms, such as those found in the translation of Stanley Lombardo. Unlike Robert Fagles or Robert Fitzgerald, Wilson deploys a natural English syntax, while closely following Homer's lines. Like Fagles and Barry P. Powell, she adopts iambic pentameter and seeks a diction that does not sound archaic, using the Latinate version of names and submerging many of the recurrent epithets. Thus Odysseus, "the man of many turns," becomes the "complicated man," or "bright-eyed goddess, Athena" becomes "she looked him straight into the eye," true to the spirit of the text if not always the word. Wilson is particularly sensitive to the tone and description applied to the many women throughout the narrative, especially Helen and Penelope. VERDICT Wilson offers a fluent, straightforward, and accessible version of the Homeric epic; a solid reading edition.—Thomas L. Cooksey, formerly with Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah

Library Journal

2017-09-04
Fresh version of one of the world's oldest epic poems, a foundational text of Western literature.Sing to me, O muse, of the—well, in the very opening line, the phrase Wilson (Classical Studies, Univ. of Pennsylvania) chooses is the rather bland "complicated man," the adjective missing out on the deviousness implied in the Greek polytropos, which Robert Fagles translated as "of twists and turns." Wilson has a few favorite words that the Greek doesn't strictly support, one of them being "monstrous," meaning something particularly heinous, and to have Telemachus "showing initiative" seems a little report-card-ish and entirely modern. Still, rose-fingered Dawn is there in all her glory, casting her brilliant light over the wine-dark sea, and Wilson has a lively understanding of the essential violence that underlies the complicated Odysseus' great ruse to slaughter the suitors who for 10 years have been eating him out of palace and home and pitching woo to the lovely, blameless Penelope; son Telemachus shows that initiative, indeed, by stringing up a bevy of servant girls, "their heads all in a row / …strung up with the noose around their necks / to make their death an agony." In an interesting aside in her admirably comprehensive introduction, which extends nearly 80 pages, Wilson observes that the hanging "allows young Telemachus to avoid being too close to these girls' abused, sexualized bodies," and while her reading sometimes tends to be overly psychologized, she also notes that the violence of Odysseus, by which those suitors "fell like flies," mirrors that of some of the other ungracious hosts he encountered along his long voyage home to Ithaca.More faithful to the original but less astonishing than Christopher Logue's work and lacking some of the music of Fagles' recent translations of Homer; still, a readable and worthy effort.

Kirkus Reviews