The Odyssey

...they hauled him out through the doorway into the court,
lopped his nose and ears with a ruthless knife,
tore his genitals out for the dogs to eat raw
and in manic fury hacked off hands and feet.
then once they’d washed their own hands and feet
they went inside again to join ody

...they hauled him out through the doorway into the court,
lopped his nose and ears with a ruthless knife,
tore his genitals out for the dogs to eat raw
and in manic fury hacked off hands and feet.
then once they’d washed their own hands and feet
they went inside again to join odysseus.
their work was done here now.

Then forth they led [______], and began
Their bloody work; they lopp’d away the man,
Morsel for dogs! then trimm’d with brazen shears
The wretch, and shorten’d of his nose and ears;
His hands and feet last felt the cruel steel;
He roar’d, and torments gave his soul to hell.
They wash, and to Ulysses take their way:
So ends the bloody business of the day.

This translation, by Robert Fagles, is of the Greek text edited by David Monro and Thomas Allen, first published in 1908 by the Oxford University Press. This two-​volu

This translation, by Robert Fagles, is of the Greek text edited by David Monro and Thomas Allen, first published in 1908 by the Oxford University Press. This two-​volume edition is printed in a Greek type, complete with lower- and uppercase letters, breathings and accents, that is based on the elegant handwriting of Richard Porson, an early-​nineteenth-​century scholar of great brilliance, who was also an incurable alcoholic as well as a caustic wit. This was of course not the first font of Greek type; in fact, the first printed edition of Homer, issued in Florence in 1488, was composed in type that imitated contemporary Greek handwriting, with all its complicated ligatures and abbreviations. Early printers tried to make their books look like handwritten manuscripts because in scholarly circles printed books were regarded as vulgar and inferior products — cheap paperbacks, so to speak.

And young Telemachus cautiously replied, / “I’ll try, my friend to give you a frank answer. / Mother has always told me I’m his son, it’s true, / but I am not so certain. Who, on his own, / has ever really known who gave him life? / Would to god I’d been the son of a happy man / whom old age overtook in the midst of his possessions! / Now, think of the most unlucky mortal ever born – / since you ask me, yes, they say I am his son (1.247-55).

Enough. Don’t let me see more offenses in my house, / not from anyone! I’m alive to it all, now, / the good and the bad – the boy you knew is gone. (21.344-7)

…they marched the women out of the great hall – between / the roundhouse and the courtyard’s strong stockade – / crammed them into a dead end, no way out from there, / and stern Telemachus gave the men their orders: / “No clean death for the likes of them, by god! / Not from me – they showered abuse on my head, / my mother’s too / You sluts – the suitors’ whores!” (22.484-90)

The wind drove me out of Ilium on to Ismarus, / the Cicones’ stronghold. There I sacked the city, / killed the men, but as for the wives and plunder, / that rich haul we dragged away from the place – / we shared it round so no one, not on my account, / would go deprived of his fair share of spoils (9.44-9)

With that the powerful giant-killer sped away. / The queenly nymph sought out the great Odysseus – / the commands of Zeus still ringing in her ears – / and found him there on the headland, sitting, still, / weeping, his eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away / with the tears he wept for his foiled journey home, / since the nymph no longer pleased (5.164-70)

Even as he spoke / the sun set and the darkness swept the earth. / And now, withdrawing into the cavern’s deep recesses , / long in each other’s arms they lost themselves in love (5.249-51)

Sunny Ithaca is my home. Atop her stands our seamark, / Mount Neriton’s leafy ridges shimmering in the wind. / Around her a ring of islands circle side-by-side, / Dulichion, Same, wooded Zacynthus too, but mine / lies low and away, the farthest out to sea, / rearing into the western dusk / while the other face the east and breaking day. / Mine is a rugged land but good for raising sons – / and I myself, I know no sweeter sight on earth / than a man’s own native country….

True, but time and again Odysseus turned his face / toward the radiant sun, anxious for it to set, / yearning now to be gone and home once more… / As a man aches for his evening meal when all day long / his brace of wine-dark oxen have dragged the bolted plowshare / down a fallow field – how welcome the setting sun to him, / the going home to supper, yes, though his knees buckle, / struggling home at last. So welcome now to Odysseus / the setting light of day, and he lost no time / as he pressed Phaeacia’s men who love their oars, / addressing his host, Alcinous, first and foremost (9.23-32 and 13.31-44)

Living proof – / Penelope felt her knees go slack, her heart surrender, / recognizing the strong clear signs Odysseus offered. / She dissolved in tears, rushed to Odysseus, flung her arms / around his neck and kissed hi head and cried out, / “Odysseus – don’t flare up at me now, now you, / always the most understanding man alive! / The gods, it was the gods who sent us sorrow – / they grudged us both a life in each other’s arms / from the heady zest of youth to the stoop of old age….

The more she spoke, the more a deep desire for tears / welled up inside his breast – / he wept as he held the wife / he loved, the soul of loyalty, in his arms at last. / Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel / when they catch sight of land – Poseidon has struck / their well-rigged ship on the open sea with gale winds / and crushing walls of waves, and only a few escape, swimming, / struggling out of the frothing surf to reach the shore, their bodies crusted with salt but buoyed up with joy as they plant their feet on solid ground again, / spared a deadly fate. So joyous now to her the sight of her husband, vivid in her gaze, / that her white arms, embracing his neck would never for a moment let him go… (23.230-9, 259-272)

One moment he seemed…Odysseus, to the life – / the next, no, he was not the man she knew, / a huddled mass of rags was all she saw. (23.108-10)

The Odyssey written by Homer is about Greek gods and humans about their afterlive of the battle of Troy. The main character Odysseus is now trying to battle his way back home, to regain his normal life. As he tries to do so he encouters many difficulties. Odysseus left behind him before the battle of Troy a loving wife and son . As the two back home don't know when and if their father and husband is coming back ; a bunch of young men want to marry Odyssesus wife. Will Odysseus find his way back

The Odyssey written by Homer is about Greek gods and humans about their afterlive of the battle of Troy. The main character Odysseus is now trying to battle his way back home, to regain his normal life. As he tries to do so he encouters many difficulties. Odysseus left behind him before the battle of Troy a loving wife and son . As the two back home don't know when and if their father and husband is coming back ; a bunch of young men want to marry Odyssesus wife. Will Odysseus find his way back home with the help of some gods and goddesses or will his life end without him looking at this wife ever again? Read to find out.

In this book i would be friends with Athena because she helped Odysseus.