Odysseus or Ulysses - what’s in a name?

Recent talk of Odysseus and Ralph Fiennes’ The Return brought to mind a book that I purchased as a schoolboy in 1974 from the Scholastic Corporation Book Club.

It was The Adventures of Ulysses, by the American author Bernard Evslin (who evidently adapted quite a few ancient myths for children), and — fifty years on — it still sits on my bookshelf.

Although Homer begins the Odyssey “in medias res” (“in the midst of things”) and incorporates a flashback in which Odysseus narrates the earlier part of the tale, Evslin had decided to tell the story in its correct chronological order.

In this, Evslin was simply following the simplifying technique pioneered by Charles Lamb in his own Adventures of Ulysses in 1808. But Evslin managed to make his version more exciting for Generation X readers.

A new retelling

At the start, where Lamb, following Homer, relates how the Lotus-eaters benignly drugged Odysseus’ men, so that, in order to escape, “Ulysses caused them to be bound hand and foot, and cast under the hatches, and set sail with all possible speed from that baneful coast”, Evslin devises an entire storyline of his own.

Under the influence of the lotus drug, Morpheus, god of dreams, interprets the terrible nightmares of the survivors of the Trojan War, and describes Ulysses’ own prophetic visions: “Look at that giant with the single eye in the middle of his forehead, and that terrible spider-woman with all those legs. Ah, the things he dreams, this angry sleeper. What bloody mouths, what masts falling, sails ripping, what rocks and reefs, what shipwrecks ... how many deaths?”

Beautiful illustrations

Part of the charm of Evslin’s book came from the illustrations, attributed to a certain William Hunter. (I would love to think that this was the Glaswegian artist William Hunter, but he would have been aged 79 when Evslin’s book was first published.) Each chapter has its own Aubrey Beardsleyesque pen-and-ink drawing, all of them utterly beguiling, and the book begins with a beautifully decorated map (see above).

But it would be wrong to ignore Evslin’s own genius for storytelling. Take the episode of the giant Laestrygonians, to which Homer devotes some 20-odd lines. Lamb, in a single page, relates how these giants “issued out at the gates and, making for the harbour, tore up huge pieces of rocks and flung them at the ships which lay there, all which they utterly overwhelmed and sank, and the unfortunate bodies of men which the sea did not devour these cannibals bore off to their dire feast”. Ulysses alone escaped to his own ship. But Evslin has a whole chapter entitled “Cannibal Beach” — a delight for a twelve-year-old reader.

Who is the hero?

It never occurred to me to ask why the Odysseus of my Penguin Classics Odyssey was here named “Ulysses”. And, down through the years — fifty years! — I have simply accepted that Ulysses was “the Latin form of Odysseus’ name”. So Agamemnon is Agamemnon, Menelaus is Menelaus, Achilles is Achilles, ... but Odysseus is Ulysses? Why?

The true explanation is complicated. It seems that, in the earliest form of his name, the D (Δ in Greek) alternates with L (Λ in Greek), so that the familiar Greek Ὀδυσσεύς (Odysseus) could appear as Ὀλυσευς (Olyseus) — as in this Greek “Skyphos” vase from the Oxford Beazley collection, showing Olyseus running before the North wind Borias. From Olyseus, it is a short step to Ulyseus or Ulysses.

In fact, the Romans more usually called him Ulixes! Strange but true. Meanwhile, Ajax remained Ajax, Diomedes Diomedes, and Nestor Nestor. But Odysseus became Ulysses.

Returning to Ithaca

I am very much looking forward to seeing Uberto Pasolini’s The Return, a movie based on the last 10 chapters of Homer’s Odyssey, despite the verdict of Deborah Ross (in The Spectator) that “the narrative is so parched and meditative it’s ultimately enervating and seems as depressed as the hero himself”.

According to an interview for The Guardian, Fiennes (who plays the part of Odysseus) remembers his mother reading the adventure story to him when he was a child, but he singled out Emily Wilson’s 2018 translation as having inspired him.

Pasolini, on the other hand, has credited an original screenplay written in the 1990s by the late Edward Bond and subsequently adapted by John Collee (known for, among other movies, Master and Commander and, more recently, Lee).

Homer in translation

I found myself wondering which Odyssey Bond and Collee (and Fiennes, for that matter) had grown up with.

As a schoolboy, my Odyssey was the 1946 Penguin Classics version by classicist (and founder of the Penguin Classics series) E.V. Rieu, which was continuously reprinted throughout the 1960s. His opening stanza — “The hero of the tale which I beg the Muse to help me tell is that resourceful man who roamed the wide world after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy” — is, as Rieu promised, a faithful but easy-to-read prose translation, for Rieu was no poet.

I also owned a childhood copy of Richmond Lattimore’s translation of 1965, which seemed at once more epic and more poetic than Rieu’s. Here is his opening stanza — “Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven | far journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel” — in which he unobtrusively gave each line six down-beats, to approximate Homer’s dactylic hexameter (itself impossible to reproduce in English).

Sadly, Lattimore’s translation was savagely disparaged by critics who preferred Robert Fitzgerald’s 1961 version. The essayist and translator Donald Carne-Ross was particularly waspish in his championing of Fitzgerald over Lattimore: Fitzgerald’s was poetry, while all that Lattimore could aspire to was mere verse.

Here is Fitzgerald’s opening stanza: “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story | of that man skilled in all ways of contending, | the wanderer, harried for years on end, | after he plundered the stronghold | on the proud height of Troy”.

It’s poetry, but is it Homer? At university in the 1980s, I finally encountered the 1919 Loeb edition by Professor A.T. Murray. Like Rieu, Murray had attempted a prose version that stuck faithfully to the Greek. (What Carne-Ross would probably have called a “student crib”.)

Here is his opening stanza: “Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy”. Better than Rieu, but I still preferred Lattimore.

Throughout the twentieth century, translations came and went. (I wasn’t even aware of the version by Oliver Taplin, whose Greek Fire I reviewed for The Sunday Times thirty-odd years ago.) I have only recently discovered the version produced in 1932 by T.E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”) and was dismayed to see his cavalier treatment of the text. (He omits the opening stanza entirely.)

The zenith seemed to have been reached in 1996 with the poetic translation of Robert Fagles. Here is his first stanza:

“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns | driven time and again off course, once he had plundered | the hallowed heights of Troy”. This was surely an Odyssey to end all Odysseys. Surely?

But publishers have their profits to make and new generations to seduce, and new incentives to exploit, too. Which brings us around to Ralph Fiennes and his innocent plug for the latest Odyssey, the version of Emily Wilson published in 2018, “the first translation”, so Norton and Co. inform us, “of the Homeric Greek by a woman into English verse”. Astonishing. “A cultural landmark”, we are informed, “that exposes centuries of masculinist readings of the poem”. So, is it any good?

Here is her first stanza: “Tell me about a complicated man. | Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost | when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy ...”. Wilson actually runs onto the second stanza, which the manuscripts separate with a semi-colon. But, hey-ho. It’s poetry.

Incidentally, the epithet πολύτροπος (polytropos) which Homer uses to identify his protagonist, indeed to introduce him, perhaps to define him — “man of many devices”, “resourceful man”, “the man of many ways” — is probably meant to sum up Odysseus’ cunning. I’m not sure that Fitzgerald’s “man skilled in all ways of contending” quite hits the mark. Or, indeed, Wilson’s “complicated man”. No, that just won’t do.

But I’m still looking forward to The Return, for, as Fagles observed in his book, the Odyssey stops but never really ends.

The other Melsonby hoard

The Melsonby Hoard has hit the news.

The find was unveiled this week, having undergone years of cleaning, conservation, and analysis following its excavation in 2022.

It apparently comprises Iron Age feasting equipment (a large decorated cauldron is mentioned) and copious quantities of harness fittings and vehicle parts, which the archaeologists have attributed to four-wheeled wagons, rather than the expected two-wheeled chariots.

We are informed that the material “could rewrite Iron Age Britain”. Sensational stuff! A statement from Historic England explains that the find “alters our understanding of life in Britain 2,000 years ago.” And one science journal claims that it “challenges centuries-old ideas about wealth, power, and identity in ancient northern Britain”. Quite significant, then.

Oddly, the BBC relegated the story to its Newsround web site for children, but other news outlets seem to have taken the discovery more seriously, even if equally melodramatically, with liberal use of superlatives.

Surprising?

The find is undoubtedly exciting, and some of the metalwork seems awe-inspiring. But is it about to “rewrite Iron Age Britain”?

Forty-odd years ago, I was fortunate to be in on the ground floor, when the real rewriting began. As an archaeology undergraduate at Glasgow University searching for a suitable subject for a dissertation (and keen to avoid Agricolan Scotland, which was flavour of the day in the 1980s), I selected the pre-Agricolan period, when the emperor Vespasian’s governors were coming to grips with northern England, the rich lands of the Brigantes, in the early to mid AD 70s.

Royal capital of a wealthy nation

We have always known something of the Roman interactions with the Brigantes during the AD 70s. The historian Tacitus chronicled the internecine squabbling that necessitated Roman intervention on behalf of the beleaguered Queen Cartimandua. Archaeologists and historians had sought Cartimandua’s capital around York (site of the future Roman fortress) or further south on a low hilltop at Barwick-in-Elmet. (See map, above, from my 1983 dissertation.)

As I embarked on my undergraduate research, the sprawling archaeological site of Stanwick immediately caught my attention — a massive earthwork complex extending across 350ha, which had been selectively excavated in the 1950s by Sir Mortimer Wheeler (amongst whose assistants was a certain Leslie Alcock, who became Professor of Archaeology at Glasgow University in 1973).

Here is the plan I drew for my dissertation (with Barwick inset at top-left for comparison). Incidentally, Melsonby lies barely 1km beyond the bottom righthand corner of the earthworks.

Stanwick was then generally accepted as the headquarters of Cartimandua’s rebel consort Venutius, who (so the story went) fled north to avoid the Romans. Amongst the rich material already found there was a hoard, mainly of harness fittings but including a sword and scabbard, the so-called “Stanwick Hoard”, uncovered in 1843 at — did you guess where? — Melsonby. But it seemed to me, particularly after discussions with the Durham archaeologist Perce Turnbull (now deceased), that the enormous, apparently wealthy site (around which Perce generously drove me at sometimes alarming speed, with the gearbox of his Morris Minor grinding and screaming atrociously) was not Venutius’ base, but could only be the royal capital of Queen Cartimandua herself.

Quite apart from the contents of the original Melsonby hoard (the “Stanwick Hoard”), the imported Roman material discovered on the site by Turnbull in 1981 surely hinted at this conclusion. (I well remember that my one and only conversation with Professor Leslie Alcock, during the five or six years I spent in his Department of Archaeology — the only time I ever entered his spacious office — concerned his disagreement with my reinterpretation of the site, which he took to be disrespectful to the work of Wheeler.)

It amuses me to reflect that, in my unpublished 1983 dissertation, I was probably the first to identify Stanwick as Queen Cartimandua’s capital. It is true that Turnbull, in 1982, had described Stanwick as “a major social and economic centre, which probably owed its success, if not its very existence, to the enormously increased opportunities for external trade which must have been afforded by the proximity of an expanding Roman world”. But it took several years before archaeologist Colin Haselgrove (if memory serves me correctly) started to talk in terms of Cartimandua’s royal seat. Even in his 2016 book, The late Iron Age royal site at Stanwick, North Yorkshire, he still defended Wheeler’s interpretation — Wheeler had “valid enough geographical reasons for placing Venutius at Stanwick” — while acknowledging that “there is no site in northern England more obviously qualified than Stanwick to be the seat of a ruler who had a treaty with Rome”. (I still wonder why he balks at naming Cartimandua.)

The new Melsonby hoard is a wonderful find, without question, but hardly unexpected, hardly surprising, and it won’t lead to a “rewrite” of Iron Age Britain. It is frankly baffling that, in this day and age, archaeologists should talk in terms of “challenging the idea that ancient northern Britain was a backwater”. That idea died forty years ago.

Gallienus and his battle cavalry

The emperor Gallienus ruled the Roman empire for fifteen years, from AD 253 until his murder in AD 268, and yet he is hardly known outside academic circles. To put his achievement into context, both Claudius and Nero each ruled for thirteen-and-a-half years, Commodus only twelve.

Admittedly, Septimius Severus reigned for eighteen years, Trajan managed eighteen-and-a-half, Hadrian almost twenty-one, and Antoninus Pius nearly twenty-three.

But the emperors of the third century were generally more ephemeral. Elagabalus reigned for four years; Gordian III, five-and-a-half; Philip the Arab, four-and-a-half; Decius, barely two. In this company, fifteen years is an impressive tally. And yet, for a long time, Gallienus was belittled by scholars.

A good or a bad emperor?

From Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall (1776) until Theodor Mommsen’s Die Provinzen von Caesar bis Diocletian (1885), Gallienus was berated as “chaotic and dissolute”. But then, quite abruptly at the outset of the twentieth century, he was suddenly hailed as a brilliant military reformer who had created a rapid action unit of “battle cavalry” to defend the hard-pressed frontiers. So, was this new characterization of Gallienus justified?

Careful sifting of the ancient Greek sources by Léon Homo in a 1913 essay had certainly rehabilitated the emperor’s besmirched reputation to a large degree, but for Alfred von Domaszewski, author of the influential Rangordnung der römischen Heeres in 1908, Gallienus became “that most wondrous of emperors”.

From that time onwards, scholars were convinced that Gallienus was a military genius who had overhauled the Roman army system. This was the gist of the 1976 dissertation by Lukas de Blois, which remained for a long time everyone’s go-to book about Gallienus. Even into the new millennium, we still read about Gallienus’ sweeping military reforms. One writer has been so bold as to subtitle his book “the apogee of Roman cavalry” in a reference to the emperor’s newly created “battle cavalry”.

How had this happened? And — more importantly — was it true? These are the questions that I address in my forthcoming book Phantom Horsemen.

More Roman military diplomas

I have just received my copy of Roman Military Diplomas VI, hot off the University of London press, in which another 179 diplomas are catalogued (nos. 477–655), continuing the series begun in 1978 by the late Margaret Roxan (Roman Military Diplomas 1954–1977, nos. 1–78). (In a break from tradition, the pagination has not been continued from previous volumes, and begins at p. 1.)

Margaret passed the baton to Paul Holder in 2002, owing to her failing health, when Roman Military Diplomas IV was imminent. It is hard to believe that the previous volume of the series, Roman Military Diplomas V (nos. 323–476), appeared as long ago as 2006, but I understand that there were difficulties in arranging publication of the new volume.

Besides a description and transcription of each individual diploma, the usual additional material has been included.

First, a table of “Diplomas in RMD VI”, in which the diplomas are arranged in date order and run from 7 March AD 70 (no. 477, a complete sealed example of a Legio II Adiutrix diploma, pictured below but currently lost) to 7 January AD 252/253 (no. 655, a corner fragment of tabella I of a Praetorian diploma).

Next, the “Revised chronology of the diplomas published up to RMD VI”, integrating nos. 477–655 in their proper places. (Holder says there are 840 listed; I haven’t counted them.) As before, RMD numbers are prefixed with a † symbol, to differentiate from the original CIL XVI diplomas.

There are 14 pages of “Further Notes on the Chronology”, highlighting any issues raised in the interim regarding previously published diplomas. In particular, Holder notes that there is a new “last positive date” for an auxiliary diploma; namely, AD 206, from AE 2012, 1960 (not included in this volume, which catalogues only those diplomas reported up to 2007).

The end matter includes the usual indices, and a complete concordance with AE (and with the diplomas of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, already published by Barbara Pferdehirt in 2004) has been added. Unfortunately, only four diplomas are illustrated, one of which also appears as the cover image (no. 639, damaged witness list on tabella II).

I very much look forward to perusing this volume at my leisure, and sincerely hope that a suitable publisher can be found for Roman Military Diplomas VII.

Caledonia, land of cold and rain (deuxième partie)

The scene shifts from the little Roman fort to the home of the Caledonians, a dark broch (precursor of the tower house) standing proud on its own rocky peninsula. Despujol’s graphics are fabulous (p. 16).

The young Caledonian champions, Cirig and Fel, argue over the correct course of action (p. 17). “My daughter will be yours Cirig, if you bring her back to her people”, says Galam, the chieftain.

“Leta is able to escape on her own”, counters Fel. “I’m sure she would consider our help insulting. In any case”, he continues, “she has only herself to blame”.

But Galam knows that there are other allies he can call upon — allies to be cultivated by the crone, Isla. “My stones will determine the next sacrifice”, she says ominously (p. 18).

Conversing with the enemy

Back in the little fort, although the sentries are on high alert, they report that “All is quiet”. Meanwhile, despite losing 4 pints of blood, Leta has made a miraculous recovery, thanks to a poultice of Cretan dittany; but the medic is keeping her bound and gagged, “because she has formidable claws and fangs and threatens to rip my throat every time I approach her!” (p. 19)

Against his advice, Lucius the centurion unties her, whereupon she wrestles him to the ground and would surely have strangled him, if the medic hadn’t intervened (pp. 20–21). It transpires that, conveniently, Leta is fluent in the language of the Romans, which she learned during two years of captivity. “You’re not getting away from here”, promises Lucius, for the girl is now tied to the fence outside (p. 22). “We shall see”, she replies. Lucius explains that it is the Roman mission to halt tribal warfare and pacify Caledonia, but Leta is defiant: “Whatever our tribes do is none of your business!”

Days pass (p. 23), and Lucius comes to realize that, even if you capture a wild animal, it’s impossible to tame it. Over a meal, he tries to convince her that Roman peace benefits everyone (p. 24). Again Corbeyran’s prose soars like the seagulls that flit across Despujol’s drawings. (Je suis née sur cette terre. Elle m’a donné la force de la tempête et la douceur de la brise. Elle m’a façonnée. Les miens m’ont appris tout ce que je devais savoir pour vivre en harmonie avec mes semblables, les collines, la mer et les dieux. Et toi, tu juges notre façon de vivre sans rien connaître. Pourquoi devrais-je t’écouter?) Leta remains unconvinced. “If you’re treating me to a meal in order to convince me of the benefits of Roman civilisation, so that I will persuade my father, let’s get it over with”, she laughs. “You may as well lock me up in a cage!” As night falls, Lucius duly complies (p. 25).

At this point, Corbeyran’s story-telling starts to step up a gear. So far, Caledonia could be an untold episode from Tacitus’ Agricola. But gradually, misbegotten creatures of the night creep into the narrative. A single arrow announces the arrival of a group of Caledonians, but they stand off as if waiting (pp. 26–27). Just then, two giant lizards cross the rampart, snatching soldiers left and right in their wicked jaws. Lucius calls for Leta to be released and seizes her as a human shield, yelling “Tell them to stop or I slice your throat!” (pp. 28–29)

Leta cries out in Gaelic: caomhain mi, caomhain iad “Hell dogs! Spare me, spare them!” The creatures depart, but Lucius has questions for Leta: “From what hell did they emerge and who commands them?” Calling for a map, she explains that the answers lie on the “Island of Death” offshore from the Caledonians’ broch.

To be continued ...

Caledonia, land of cold and rain (première partie)

I have begun reading Caledonia. Book One: The Ninth Legion, a new bande dessinée by Corbeyran (scénario) and Emmanuel Despujol (dessin). (Thank you, Santa!) Naturally, Corbeyran’s text is in French, so I present the following précis in order to make it more accessible to Anglophone readers.

It opens by night (p. 3), with a woad-striped crone chanting Gaelic on a bonfire-lit beach (thighearna nam marbh “Lord of Death, receive our gifts, so that our alliance may last forever!”). She despatches five young Caledonians into the large scaly hand of a mysterious forest dweller (p. 4). (Hold that thought for fifty pages).

Grey daylight, and a Roman column is marching through a defile in the Scottish mountains (p. 5). These are men of the third cohort of the Ninth Legion. Riding at their head, the newly-arrived centurion grumbles, “We’re making an infernal noise!” The hard-bitten, bearded optio, Cattos, shrugs: “Believe me, we’ve already been spotted by everything that has a sense of smell, two ears, and two eyes, from leagues around”.

The optio has seen the world and battled on various frontiers, but he has never met more ferocious adversaries than the Caledonians. The centurion is unconvinced: “I hear that blood flows in their veins, and I conclude that they are only men. If they are human, they will die”. (“We will die, too”, mutters the optio. “Just a matter of time”.) And sure enough, at that precise moment, a rocky avalanche heralds a flank attack by the savage Caledonians, gloriously depicted (pp. 8–9) by artist Emmanuel Despujol (and beautifully coloured by his daughter Juliette). After a hard-won victory, the Romans trudge off through the icy February rain.

The little fort

It is March and the unnamed centurion rests, binds his wounds, and writes up his report (p. 11). Men move about the tented enclosure (p. 12). Corbeyran’s graceful prose (Les dieux qui habitent ces contrées et ont façonné ces paysages ont été bien inspirés. Ils sont à la fois d’une grande beauté et offrent de multiples possibilités de cachettes à nos adversaires. Les Caledonii savent utiliser le relief du terrain à leur avantage. Chaque creux, bosse, faille, fossé, chaque arbre, chaque fourré constitue un allié solide sur lequel ils peuvent compter) cries out for a lavish landscape view. But the plot forges ahead.

A young woman — Leta, daughter of the chieftain Galam — has been captured but remains badly wounded (p. 13). The men are exhausted, fifteen were killed in the latest skirmish and five wounded. The disgruntled medic sees them as his priority, “but”, says the centurion, “the prisoner must not die”. The two men bicker (pp. 13–14). “I can put her out of her misery” growls the medic. “Her life is worth more than yours”, spits the centurion. “With such a bargaining chip, we can get Galam to lay down his arms!” “You are not only a bad commander, but also a dreamer, and I don’t know which is worse”, mutters the medic, at which the centurion lashes out with the back of his hand, warning him that next time he will use his blade.

Leaving the infirmary tent, the centurion runs into the optio, who reveals to us the centurion’s name (p. 15): it is none other than Lucius Aemilius Karus! Against the optio’s advice, he has ordered the men to their action stations. “They need rest” objects the optio. “If they are killed, they will have eternal rest,” replies Karus. “But if they defeat the Caledonians, they will live and be able to sleep victorious!” However, I have an uneasy feeling that his final words — “sacrifices are sometimes necessary” — might prove to be true ... literally.

To be continued ...