Homer: The Odyssey: Books 1-12 [2 ed.] 0674995619, 9780674995611

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gM BOOK IS PRESENT IN OUR LIBRARY THROUGH THE GENEROUS

THIS

CONTRIBUTIONS OF ST. MICHAEL'S ALUMNI TO THE VARSITY

FUND

HOMEJR. BUST

IN

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES

HOMER THE ODYSSEY WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BV A. T.

MURRAY

PRorsssoR or qrbek, Stanford onivkrsitv, CALiroRMiA

IN

TWO VOLUMES 1

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD MCMXLV

First printed 1919 Reprinted 1924, 1927, 1930, 1938, 1945

AUG 2 4 1945

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

CONTENTS PAOB

INTRODUCTION

vii

BIBLIOGKAPUY

xiii

BOOK

I

BOOK

II

BOOK

III

68

BOOK IV

106

1

36

BOOK V

170

BOOK

VI

206

BOOK

VII

BOOK

VIII

232 ,

258

BOOK IX

302

BOOK X

344

BOOK XI

BOOK

XII

386

o

,

432

INTRODUCTION The name "Hoiner"

brings before the

definite picture of the blind minstrel, city to city

mind a

roaming from

and singing or chanting portions of the

great poems that are traditionally ascribed to him.

Such a type

Homer

splendidly represented by the bust of

is

in the

Naples Museum, and almost

all

tradition tells of the poet, save in so far as

made up

of statements regarding his date

in turn rest

is

— which

upon combinations often demonstrably

false— groups is

that it

itself

about such a typical

figure,

and

plainly without historic worth.

The ancient " lives " of Homer which have come down to us are all later than the beginning of the Christian era, and from them we can gather little that

has any claim

statements that

Smyrna being the birthplace

clan

The in

;

cities

and that

of Homcridae first

to

attention

Homer was an

except the two

Ionian

in Chios there

—that

is,

and

as his

was a guild or

"sons of

Homer."

mention of the Chian Homeridae occurs

the geographer Strabo (about 18

A 2

—Chios

most uniformly given

a.d.).

Pindar

^»

;

INTRODUCTION uses

devoted

those

of

apparently

term

the

to

Homeric poetry without any reference to the Chian clan,

and the word

As

the

for

is

name

similarly used

"Homer"

by

Plato.

itself

it

most

is

naturally taken as that of a feal individual— a poet to

whom

by the middle of the sixth century

b.c.

the great mass of epic poetry which survived from the early age of

buted;

Greece had come to be

although as time went on

the Iliad and Odyssey were antiquity there were those

The

separate authors.

Homer

all

and

rejected,

who

earliest

attri-

poems save

referred

in

later

these to

author to mention

and

Callinus of Ephesus (about 660 b.c.)

is

the earliest quotation from the Homeric poems

is

found in Simonides of Amorgos, of the same date, unless

it

is

possibly to be attributed to the later

Modern scholars made many attempts all uncon-

Simonides of Ceos (about 480 b.c). have, however,

vincing

— to

—

word " Homer

interpret the

name

as the

word

itself

means "hostage."

that

the

Homeridae

—not

trusted

It

has been thought

may have been "sons to

fight

but

allowed

serve as custodians of traditional poetry

"

Homer "

is

merely

their

others, seeking a different viii

The

of an actual person.

ways than

hostages"

" in other

imaginary

etymology

— and

of to

that

ancestor

for the

word,

I

INTRODUCTION have held that

tional

denotes merely the legendary

it

or harmonizer

fitter-together

material.

poetical

+

(ofirj

ap) of tradi-

means

the word

That

" blind " was assumed in antiquity, but

is

believed

by no one. If the personality of the poet,

down

the Odyssey has come

shadowy

and

—even

the

to us,

most

being drawn perhaps from his

Demodocus

blind bard,

many

to

—so

The the

is

thus vague

familiar

own

elements

portrayal of the

too there has seemed

scholars to be a like obscurity regarding

the early history of the this the

under whose name

evidence

is

poem

Regarding

itself.

as follows:

oldest manuscripts of the Odyssey date from

tenth and

eleventh

centuries a.d.

Papyrus

fragments whose dates range from the third century

B.C.

ledge

to the fourth century a.d. carry our

still

know-

further back, and the evidence afforded

by our acquaintance with the work of the Alexandrian

grammarians

is

invaluable

history of the text; while, finally,

tracing

in

we have

the

quota-

tions from Homer in classical authors, and somewhat vague and not wholly convincing evidence of

the constitution of an authoritative text at Athens in the sixth century B.C.

prominently.

First,

Certain facts stand out

our modern text

is

remarkably iy

— INTRODUCTION well established

—

text seems to have

for

is,

Secondly, this

example, the text of Shakespeare.

been fixed as the result of a

We

purging or pruning process. that the critical

than

far better established

know,

for

example,

work of the Alexandrians was con-

cerned largely with the rejection of lines held on

one ground or another to be spurious, that the text of the papyri differs widely from our vulgate text,

and that the quotations

in

ancient authors show

many lines not found in our Homer. From this evidence the conclusion has been drawn that in antiquity " Homer " meant the whole mass of epic poetry

and that our

—

for this there is definite

Iliad

and Odyssey, both

and content, were in a more or

evidence

as regards text

less fluid state until

they gradually crystallized into the forms familiar to us.

On

poet,

Homer,

It

this

view

it is

impossible to speak of a

as the author either of Iliad or Odyssey.

should be stated, however, that while

modern Homeric

criticism

much

of

has been analytic and

many important

destructive,

in

studies have

shown that both the methods and the

respects

recent

results of destructive criticism are misleading,

and

have given stronger and more convincing grounds for

a belief in the essential integrity of both poems,

each as the work of one supreme

artist.

INTRODUCTION The most notable Homeric

critics

of antiquity

were Zenodotus of Ephesus, librarian of the great library at Alexandria

under Ptolemy Philadelphus

(who reigned 285-247

b.c),

Aristophanes of By-

zantium, a pupil of Zenodotus, and like him, librarian at Alexandria (about 200 b.c),

and Aristarchus of

Samothrace, pupil of Aristophanes and his successor (about 160

as librarian in

the

critical

e.g.).

Other scholars cited

notes are Rhianus (about 225 b c.)

the poet, Onomacritus (about 550 b.c), and Callistratus, a follower of Aristophanes.

The aim faithful

of the

been to give

translator has

rendering of the Odyssey that preserves

a in

so far as possible certain traits of the style of the

Such a rendering should be smooth and be given in elevated but not

original.

flowing and should in

In particular the

recurrent

and phrases which are so noticeable

original in

language.

stilted

lines

should be preserved.

a given

formula.

necessitated

bound

renderings,

given in a footnote.

to use the

This has in some instances

the use of a more or

phrase, adapted to various contexts.

doubtful

the

context a varying phrase would seem

preferable, the translator has felt traditional

in

Hence even when

alternatives

less

colourless

In the case of are

sometimes

INTRODUCTION The Greek the give

modem

text of this edition

occasionally

whose reading

is

xH

off

in all essentials

adopted and note the lines

jected by the Alexandrians.

marked

is

The notes under the text name of- the ancient critic the

vulgate.

by colons.

Variants,

if cited,

re-

are

—

;

BIBLIOGRAPHY The manuscripts of the Odyssey have been most carefully studied and classified by Mr. T. W. Allen, the results of whose studies are given in the Papers of the British School at Rome, vol. v., pp. 1-85, and briefly in his Oxford text of the Odyssey. Chief among the manuscripts are :

Laur. 32, 24 and Laur. 52, both of the tenth century, in the Laurentian Library at Florence. Harl. 6674, of the thirteenth century, in the British Museum. B. 99 sup., of the thirteenth century, in the Ambrosian Library at Milan.

Marc. 613, of the thirteenth century, in the Library of St. Mark's in Venice. Pal. 45, written in 1201, in the Palatine Library at Heidelberg.

Printkd Editions Editio Princepa, by Demetrius Chalcondyles, Florence, 1488 ; Aldine, 1504 and 1507 ; Juntine, 1519 Bekker, Bonn, 1856; KirchhoflF, Berlin, 1859 and 1879 ; La Roche, Leipzig, 1867-8 ; Fick, Gottingen, 1883 ; Ameis-Hentze, Leipzig (in many editions since 1856) ; Hayman, London, 1866-82 Merry and Riddell, Books I.-XIL, Oxford, second edition, 1886 ; Ludwich, Leipzig, 1889-91 ; van Leeuwen and da Costa, Leyden, 1890; Monro, Books XIII. -XXIV., Oxford, 1901 ; Hennings, a critical commentary without text, Berlin, ;

1903.

The most convenient text editions are those in the Oxford and the Teubner series; that by Monro {Homeri Opera et Reliquiae), Oxford ; that by Cauer, Leipzig ; and that by Piatt, Cambridge. There are editions of the Greek Scholia by Buttmann, Berlin, 1821, and by Dindorf, Oxford, 1855, and of Eustathius'

Commentary,

Berlin, 1825-6. xiii

—

;

BIBLIOGRAPHY English Translations Besides the older versions of Chapman, Pope, and Cowper, there may be cited the verse translations by P. S. Worsley,

Edinburgh and London, Wm. Blackwood and Sons William Morris, London, Reeves and Turner J. W. Mackail, LonA. S. Way, London, Macmillan and don, John Murray H. B. Cotterill (in hexameters), Boston, Dana, Estes and Co. There are prose versions by Butcher and Lang, London, Macmillan G. H. Palmer, Boston, Houghton, Mi HI in and Co. ; and Samuel Butler, London, Longmans, Green and Co. ;

;

;

;

;

Books about Homkr of the multitude of books about Homer the following be cited as of high interest to the student of the

Out

may

Odyssey

:

Jebb, Homer ; Lang, Homer and the Epic, Homer and his Age, The World of Homer; Leaf, Homer and History; Arnold, On Translating Homer; Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, second edition Cauer, Orundfragen der Homerkritik; Wilamowitz-MollendorflF, Homerische Untersuchungen Seeck, Die Quellen der Odyssee ; B6rard, Les Phinidens et rOdyssie ; Kothe, Die Odyssee als Dichtung, ;

Works of a purely linguistic or grammatical character are omitted in the above list. Mention may, however, be made of the Homeric Lexicon of Ebeling (3 vols., Leipzig, 1885) ; Monro's Grammar of the Homeric Dialect (Oxford, second edition, 1891) ; and van Leeu wen's Enchiridium Dictionis Epicae (I^yden, 1894).

xiv

HOMER'S ODYSSEY

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