The Odyssey: A New Translation by Peter Green

by Homer, Peter Green (Translator)

Overview

The Odyssey is vividly captured and beautifully paced in this swift and lucid new translation by acclaimed scholar and translator Peter Green. Accompanied by an illuminating introduction, maps, chapter summaries, a glossary, and explanatory notes, this is the ideal translation for both general readers and students to experience The Odyssey in all its glory. Green’s version, with its lyrical mastery and superb command of Greek, offers readers the opportunity to enjoy Homer’s epic tale of survival, temptation, betrayal, and vengeance with all of the verve and pathos of the original oral tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520303362
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	04/23/2019
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	536
Sales rank:	318,249
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Peter Green is Dougherty Centennial Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. One of the most prolific scholars of the ancient world, he is the author of both historical studies and translations of poetry, including The Poems of Catullus, Apollonios's The Argonautika, and Homer's The Iliad, all by UC Press.
 

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The man, Muse — tell me about that resourceful man, who wandered far and wide, when he'd sacked Troy's sacred citadel:
Now the rest, all those who'd escaped from sheer destruction,
But now Poseidon was visiting the remote Aithiopians —
Then the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, responded to him, saying:
Cloud-gatherer Zeus responded to her, saying: "My child,
The goddess, grey-eyed Athene, responded to him, saying:
So she spoke,
That said, he led the way, and Pallas Athene followed.
Then in came the arrogant suitors, and all immediately settled themselves in rows on the seats and benches,
But Telemachos now spoke to grey-eyed Athene, leaning his head close to hers, so that no one else could hear him:
Then the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, responded to him, saying:
Sagacious Telemachos responded to her, saying:
Sagacious Telemachos then responded to her, saying:
Outraged by his statement, Athene responded, saying:
(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction

THE ODYSSEY

Synopsis
Glossary
Select Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

The kind of absorption offered by Green’s translation seems particularly relevant to the reading of a poem from an alien culture and period. It contributes to the opening of the imagination that is surely one of the main pleasures of reading such a work. . . . I recommend this translation not only for its weighty introduction and notes but above all for the sensitivity of its expression.

Manchester Review

"Green's intelligent translation is . . . a superb choice."

The Weekly Standard

"Green brings to the poem the rhetorical directness and historical expertise which worked so well in his translation of The Iliad. Speeches in his version are vigorous and direct. "

London Review of Books

02/15/2018
Green (Dougherty Centennial Professor Emeritus of Classics, Univ. of Texas at Austin), classical historian, translator, and poet, whose many books include a noted biography of Alexander the Great, a history of the Persian War, and translations of the Argonautika and Ovid's Tristia, offers a new verse translation of the Odyssey, the product of many years of reading and thinking. As with his earlier translation of the Iliad, Green aspires to a "declaimable" style, inspired by C. Day Lewis's Aeneid and Richmond Lattimore's Iliad. He avoids the anarchizing tendencies of Stanley Lombardo, following an approach closer to that of Anthony Verity and Robert Fagles. Comparisons to Emily Wilson's recent translation are inevitable. While Wilson seeks a modern, readable version Green wishes to capture the strangeness of Homer's oral language, preserving the repetitive epithets and phraseology, using the transliteration of the Greek names rather than their Latinate forms, and following the linear rhetoric and syntax of the original. VERDICT Both Wilson and Green capture the spirit of the Odyssey, but word-for-word, Green also captures a feel for the Homeric language, an experience closer to the original.—Thomas L. Cooksey, formerly with Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah

Library Journal