The Odysseys of Homer
by Homer
Translated according to the Greek by George Chapman
London: Published by
George Newnes Limited
Southhampton Street Strand W.C.
New York: Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons
Contents
CHAPMAN’S INTRODUCTION. CERTAIN ANCIENT GREEK EPIGRAMS TRANSLATED. THE FIRST BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE SECOND BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE THIRD BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE FOURTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE FIFTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE SIXTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE SEVENTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE EIGHTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE NINTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE TENTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE ELEVENTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE TWELFTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE THIRTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE FOURTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE FIFTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE SIXTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE SEVENTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE EIGHTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE NINETEENTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE TWENTIETH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE TWENTY-FIRST BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE TWENTY-SECOND BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE TWENTY-THIRD BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE TWENTY-FOURTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS THE BATRACHOMYOMACHIA HYMNS A Hymn to Apollo A Hymn to Hermes A Hymn to Venus (First Hymn) A Hymn to Venus (Second Hymn) A Hymn to Bacchus, or the Pirates A Hymn to Mars A Hymn to Diana A Hymn to Venus (Third Hymn) A Hymn to Pallas A Hymn to Juno A Hymn to Ceres A Hymn to the Mother of the Gods A Hymn to Lion-Hearted Hercules A Hymn to Æsculapius A Hymn to Castor and Pollux A Hymn to Mercury A Hymn to Pan A Hymn to Vulcan A Hymn to Phœbus A Hymn to Neptune A Hymn to Jove A Hymn to Vesta A Hymn to the Muses and Apollo A Hymn to Bacchus A Hymn to Diana A Hymn to Pallas A Hymn to Vesta and Mercury A Hymn to Earth, the Mother of All A Hymn to the Sun A Hymn to the Moon A Hymn to Castor and Pollux A Hymn to Men of Hospitality EPIGRAMS AND OTHER POEMS To Cuma In his Return to Cuma Upon the Sepulchre of Midus Cuma, refusing to eternize their State, etc. An Essay of his begun Iliads To Thestor’s Son inquisitive about the Causes of Things To Neptune To the City of Erythræa To Mariners The Pine To Glaucus Against the Samian Ministress or Nun Written on the Council Chamber The Furnace called in to sing by Potters Eiresione, or the Olive Branch To certain Fisher-Boys pleasing him with Riddles The Translator’s Epilogue
CHAPMAN’S INTRODUCTION.
TO THE MOST WORTHILY HONOURED, MY SINGULAR GOOD LORD, ROBERT, EARL OF SOMERSET, LORD CHAMBERLAIN, ETC.
I have adventured, right noble Earl, out of my utmost and ever-vowed service to your virtues, to entitle their merits to the patronage of Homer’s English life, whose wished natural life the great Macedon would have protected as the spirit of his empire,
That he to his unmeasur’d mighty acts Might add a fame as vast; and their extracts, In fires as bright and endless as the stars, His breast might breathe and thunder out his wars. But that great monarch’s love of fame and praise Receives an envious cloud in our foul days; For since our great ones ceased themselves to do, Deeds worth their praise, they hold it folly too To feed their praise in others. But what can, Of all the gifts that are, be giv’n to man More precious than Eternity and Glory, Singing their praises in unsilenc’d story? Which no black day, no nation, nor no age, No change of time or fortune, force nor rage, Shall ever rase? All which the monarch knew, Where Homer liv’d entitled, would ensue: _Cuius de gurgite vivo Combibit arcanos vatum omnis turba furores, etc._ From whose deep fount of life the thirsty rout Of Thespian prophets have lien sucking out Their sacred rages. And as th’ influent stone Of Father Jove’s great and laborious son Lifts high the heavy iron, and far implies The wide orbs that the needle rectifies, In virtuous guide of ev’ry sea-driv’n course, To all aspiring his one boundless force; So from one Homer all the holy fire That ever did the hidden heat inspire In each true Muse came clearly sparkling down, And must for him compose one flaming crown. He, at Jove’s table set, fills out to us Cups that repair age sad and ruinous, And gives it built of an eternal stand With his all-sinewy Odyssæan hand, Shifts time and fate, puts death in life’s free state, And life doth into ages propagate. He doth in men the Gods’ affects inflame, His fuel Virtue blown by Praise and Fame; And, with the high soul’s first impression driv’n, Breaks through rude chaos, earth, the seas, and heav’n. The nerves of all things hid in nature lie Naked before him; all their harmony Tun’d to his accents, that in beasts breathe minds. What fowls, what floods, what earth, what air, what winds, What fires ethereal, what the Gods conclude In all their counsels, his Muse makes indued With varied voices that ev’n rocks have mov’d. And yet for all this, naked Virtue lov’d, Honours without her he as abject prizes, And foolish Fame, deriv’d from thence, despises. When from the vulgar taking glorious bound Up to the mountain where the Muse is crown’d, He sits and laughs to see the jaded rabble Toil to his hard heights, t’ all access unable, etc.
And that your Lordship may in his face take view of his mind, the first words of his Iliads is μη̑νιν, wrath; the first word of his Odysseys, ἄνδρα man: contracting in either word his each work’s proposition. In one predominant perturbation; in the other over-ruling wisdom. In one the body’s fervour and fashion of outward fortitude to all possible height of heroical action; in the other the mind’s inward, constant, and unconquered empire, unbroken, unaltered, with any most insolent, and tyrannous infliction. To many most sovereign praises is this poem entitled; but to that grace, in chief, which sets on the crown both of poets and orators; τὸ τὰ μικρὰ μεγάλως, καὶ τὰ κοινὰ καιίνως: that is, Parva magnè dicere; pervulgata novè; jejuna plenè.—To speak things little greatly; things common rarely; things barren and empty fruitfully and fully. The return of a man into his country is his whole scope and object; which in itself, your Lordship may well say, is jejune and fruitless enough, affording nothing feastful, nothing magnificent. And yet even this doth the divine inspiration render vast, illustrious, and of miraculous composure. And for this, my Lord, is this poem preferred to his lliads; for therein much magnificence, both of person and action, gives great aid to his industry; but in this are these helps exceeding sparing, or nothing; and yet is the structure so elaborate and pompous that the poor plain ground-work, considered together, may seem the naturally rich womb to it, and produce it needfully. Much wondered at, therefore, is the censure of Dionysius Longinus, (a man otherwise affirmed grave and of elegant judgment,) comparing Homer in his Iliads to the Sun rising, in his Odysseys to his descent or setting, or to the ocean robbed of his æsture, many tributary floods and rivers of excellent ornament withheld from their observance. When this his work so far exceeds the ocean, with all his court and concourse, that all his sea is only a serviceable stream to it. Nor can it be compared to any one power to be named in nature, being an entirely well-sorted and digested confluence of all; where the most solid and grave is made as nimble and fluent as the most airy and fiery, the nimble and fluent as firm and well-bounded as the most grave and solid. And, taking all together, of so tender impression, and of such command to the voice of the Muse, that they knock heaven with her breath, and discover their foundations as low as hell. Nor is this all-comprising Poesy fantastic or mere fictive; but the most material and doctrinal illations of truth, both for all manly information of manners in the young, all prescription of justice, and even Christian piety, in the most grave and high governed. To illustrate both which, in both kinds, with all heightof expression, the Poet creates both a body and a soul in them. Wherein, if the body (being the letter or history) seems fictive, and beyond possibility to bring into act, the sense then and allegory, which is the soul, is to be sought, which intends a more eminent expressure of Virtue for her loveliness, and of Vice for her ugliness, in their several effects; going beyond the life than any art within life can possibly delineate. Why then is fiction to this end so hateful to our true ignorants? Or why should a poor chronicler of a Lord Mayor’s naked truth (that peradventure will last his year) include more worth with our modern wizards than Homer for his naked Ulysses clad in eternal fiction? But this proser Dionysius, and the rest of these grave and reputatively learned—that dare undertake for their gravities the headstrong censure of all things, and challenge the understanding of these toys in their childhoods; when even these childish vanities retain deep and most necessary learning enough in them to make them children in their ages, and teach them while they live—are not in these absolute divine infusions allowed either voice or relish: for, Qui Poeticas ad fores accedit, etc. (says the divine philosopher) he that knocks at the gates of the Muses, sine Musarum furore, is neither to be admitted entry, nor a touch at their thresholds; his opinion of entry ridiculous, and his presumption impious. Nor must Poets themselves (might I a little insist on these contempts, not tempting too far your Lordship’s Ulyssean patience) presume to these doors without the truly genuine and peculiar induction. There being in Poesy a twofold rapture,—or alienation of soul, as the abovesaid teacher terms it,—one insania, a disease of the mind, and a mere madness, by which the infected is thrust beneath all the degrees of humanity: et ex homine, brutum quodammodò redditur:—(for which poor Poesy, in this diseased and impostorous age, is so barbarously vilified;)—the other is, divinus furor, by which the sound and divinely healthful suprà hominis naturam erigitur, et in Deum transit. One a perfection directly infused from God; the other an infection obliquely and degenerately proceeding from man. Of the divine fury, my Lord, your Homer hath ever been both first and last instance; being pronounced absolutely, τὸν σοφώτατον, καὶ τὸν θειότατον ποιητήν, “the most wise and most divine poet.” Against whom whosoever shall open his profane mouth may worthily receive answer with this of his divine defender—Empedocles, Heraclitus, Protagoras, Epicharmus, etc., being of Homer’s part—τίς οο͒ν, etc.; who against such an army, and the general Homer, dares attempt the assault, but he must be reputed ridiculous? And yet against this host, and this invincible commander, shall we have every besogne and fool a leader. The common herd, I assure myself, ready to receive it on their horns. Their infected leaders,