'The Odyssey'
The *Odyssey* takes place after the end of the Trojan War, whose events are recounted in the *Iliad*. Ten years have passed since the fall of Troy, yet Odysseus has still not returned to his kingdom of Ithaca. Having incurred the wrath of the sea god Poseidon, he is forced to wander across the Mediterranean, facing countless dangers and adventures. The poem begins when the goddess Athena, his divine protector, appeals to Zeus to allow Odysseus at last to return home, setting in motion one of the greatest journeys in world literature.


TRANSLATED BY A. T. MURRAY
BOOK 1
(The first verses)
Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices,
who wandered full many ways
after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy.
Many were the men whose cities he saw
and whose mind he learned, aye,
and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea,
seeking to win his own life and the return of his comrades.
Yet even so he saved not his comrades,
though he desired it sore, for through their own
blind folly they perished—fools, who devoured
the kine of Helios Hyperion;
but he took from them the day of their returning.
Of these things, goddess, daughter of Zeus,
beginning where thou wilt, tell thou even unto us.
Now all the rest, as many as had escaped
sheer destruction, were at home,
safe from both war and sea, but Odysseus alone,
filled with longing for his return and for his wife,
did the queenly nymph Calypso, that bright goddess,
keep back in her hollow caves,
yearning that he should be her husband.
But when, as the seasons revolved,
the year came in which the gods had ordained that
he should return home to Ithaca,
not even there was he free from toils,
even among his own folk.
And all the gods pitied him save Poseidon;
but he continued to rage unceasingly
against godlike Odysseus until at length
he reached his own land.
Howbeit Poseidon had gone
among the far-off Ethiopians
the Ethiopians who dwell sundered in twain,
the farthermost of men, some where Hyperion
sets and some where he rises,
there to receive a hecatomb of bulls and rams,
and there he was taking his joy, sitting at the feast;
but the other gods were gathered together
in the halls of Olympian Zeus.
Among them the father of gods and men was first to speak,
for in his heart he thought of noble Aegisthus,
whom far-famed Orestes, Agamemnon's son, had slain.
Thinking on him he spoke among the immortals,
and said: “Look you now, how ready mortals are
to blame the gods.
It is from us, they say, that evils come,
but they even of themselves,
through their own blind folly,
have sorrows beyond that which is ordained.
Even as now Aegisthus,
beyond that which was ordained,
took to himself the wedded wife of the son of Atreus,
and slew him on his return,
though well he knew of sheer destruction,
seeing that we spake to him before,
sending Hermes, the keen-sighted Argeiphontes,
that he should neither slay the man nor woo his wife;
for from Orestes shall come vengeance
for the son of Atreus when once
he has come to manhood
and longs for his own land.
So Hermes spoke, but for all his good intent
he prevailed not upon the heart of Aegisthus;
and now he has paid the full price of all.”
Then the goddess,
flashing-eyed Athena, answered him:
“Father of us all, thou son of Cronos,
high above all lords, aye,
verily that man lies low
in a destruction that is his due;
so, too, may any other also be destroyed
who does such deeds.
But my heart is torn for wise Odysseus,
hapless man, who far from his friends
has long been suffering woes in a sea-girt isle,
where is the navel of the sea.
'Tis a wooded isle, and therein dwells a goddess,
daughter of Atlas of baneful mind,
who knows the depths of every sea,
and himself holds the tall pillars
which keep earth and heaven apart.
His daughter it is that keeps back
that wretched, sorrowing man;
and ever with soft and wheedling words
she beguiles him that he may forget Ithaca.
But Odysseus, in his longing to see
were it but the smoke leaping up from his own land,
yearns to die.
Yet thy heart doth not regard it, Olympian.
Did not Odysseus beside the ships of the Argives
offer thee sacrifice without stint
in the broad land of Troy?
Wherefore then didst thou conceive
such wrath against him, O Zeus?”