A voyage around the Odyssey

As we wait, breathless, for “Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey” to be released next month, thoughts turn once again to Homer’s original 24-book epic.

When I last wrote about The Odyssey over a year ago (here), I lamented the fact that Emily Wilson’s 2018 version had taken over as the translation of choice for the modern generation.

I much preferred Lattimore’s 1965 treatment, with its richly poetic vocabulary, though Fagles’ 1996 translation (in my opinion) gave it some stiff competition.

The Odyssey is above all a seafaring epic, and we get our first taste in Book Two, as Telemachos sets sail from Ithaca, searching for news of his lost father. These 400-odd lines of Greek are a microcosm of Homer’s storytelling language.

Homeric language

One of Homer’s best known epithets is surely “rosy-fingered Dawn” (ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς, rhododaktylos Eôs). Lattimore, true to form, gives us “Dawn with her rosy fingers”. Similarly, Fagles gives us “dawn with her rose-red fingers”. But Wilson merely tells us that “her fingers bloomed”. Ingenious, perhaps. But not what Homer wrote. So we miss one of his famous trademark phrases.

Then there is Odysseus’ guardian deity, the goddess Athena, who is always “grey-eyed” (γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη, glaukôpis Athênê), from glaûkos, meaning “bluish-grey” (though many scholars prefer glaukòs, which means “bright, shining”). Lattimore, again true to form, has “grey-eyed”. Fagles, though, describes the goddess “with flashing sea-gray eyes”, thus having his cake while eating it. But for Wilson, she is always “bright-eyed Athena”. (That’s too Watership Down for my liking.)

Telemachos winds up at Sparta, home of “golden-haired Menelaus” (ξανθὸς Μενέλαος, xanthos Menelaos), husband of the infamous Helen of Troy. Fagles prefers to translate the epithet as “the red-haired king Menelaus”, though the adjective elsewhere suggests a lighter colour, like a chestnut horse or a tawny lion. Curiously, Wilson again breaks ranks with “ruddy Menelaus”, which she alternates with “flushed” or “high-coloured Menelaus”. This simply won’t do.

Another classic is the “wine-dark sea” (οἶνοψ πόντος, oinops pontos), which Fagles duly gives us. Wilson, too. Amazingly. (Lattimore preferred “the wine-blue water”.) Diggle, in the excellent Cambridge Greek Lexicon (2021), glosses the term as “having the appearance of wine”. If there’s one word in Homer that cries out for explanation, it must be this one. Of course, the language is meant to resonate. But it is also meant to evoke a mental picture, like the rosy fingers of dawn across an early morning sky. It’s notable that Telemachos is setting sail at dusk, precisely when the sea will appear purplish and dark. Only a few lines later, Homer tells us that the “purple wave” (πορφύρεον, porphyreon) sang along the prow of the ship, ingeniously using a word that encapsulates both the colour of porphyry and the action of surging or heaving. So the “wine-dark sea” is specifically an evening phenomenon.

Finally, I couldn’t leave the subject without mentioning Homer’s epithet for Helen of Troy, which is always “white-armed” (λευκώλενος, leukôlenos). If the rumour of Nolan’s audacious casting choice for Helen turns out to be true, perhaps his Athena will have rosy red eyes and his Menelaus will be bald.