The Odyssey: Translated into English Blank Verse by William Cullen Bryant, with Book-by-Book Commentary and Explanatory Notes

Original commentary opening each of the twenty-four books

140 original footnotes, at the foot of the page □ not the back

An original glossary of names, written for this edition

An original table of Greek and Latin name equivalents

EVERYONE KNOWS THE STORY. FAR FEWER HAVE FINISHED THE POEM.

Ten years after Troy, one man is still trying to get home ▸ and most readers who set out with him never arrive either. The reasons are small and cumulative. A hundred names you cannot place. Gods who turn up in disguise with no warning. Customs that make a whole scene hang on something you did not catch. Nobody g

This edition was built for exactly that problem. It is the poem itself, complete and unabridged, with everything you need to follow it kept on the same page as the verse.

A TRANSLATION THAT MOVES

William Cullen Bryant's Homer is one of the most direct in English. He wrote in unrhymed ampic pentameter, the meter of Paradise Lost, so no rhyme scheme bends the sense out of shape and none of the archaic fog of the later Victorians slows you down. He was seventy-seven when he finished it, after a life

NOTES THAT STAY OUT OF THE WAY

A short commentary opens each of the twenty-four books: what happens, what to watch for, and one idea worth carrying forward. Footnotes glasses the names, the customs, and the Greek that English cannot carry. Why the first word Homer gives his hero means both resourceful and devious.

Bryant also keeps the Latin names English poetry used for centuries ♫Ulysses, Jove, Minerva, Neptune. A table in the front matter matches every one to its Greek original, so you are never left wondering which god you are reading about.

None of it assumes you know Greek, and none of it is required. Bryant's Homer stands perfectly well on its own.

WHO THEIS EDITION IS FOR

Anyone who met the story on screen and wants the poem it came from

Readers assigned the Odyssey who want to genuinely follow it

Anyone who has meant to read it for years and never got past Book I

Anyone returning to it long after school, wanting more than the plot

Book clubs, and readers of Greek myth who want the source

Read what Homer actually wrote.

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