THE ODYSSEY

BOOK 1

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways original: "polytropon." This famous epithet describes Odysseus as a man of many turns—both in his wide travels and his clever, shifting mind., who was driven far and wide
after he sacked the sacred citadel of Troy.
Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose minds 1 he learned,
and many were the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea,
seeking to save his own life and the homecoming of his comrades. 5

Yet even so he did not save his comrades, though he desired it;
for through their own blind folly they perished—
fools, who ate the cattle of Hyperion the Sun-god;
and he took from them the day of their returning.
Of these things, Goddess, daughter of Zeus, beginning at what point you will, tell us also. 10

Now all the rest, as many as had escaped sheer destruction,
were at home, having escaped the war and the sea;
but him alone, longing for his nostos nostos: the Greek word for a hero's "homecoming," a central theme of the poem. and his wife,
did the queenly nymph Calypso, the bright goddess, keep back
in her hollow caves, desiring him to be her husband. 15

But when, as the years rolled round, the year came
in which the gods had destined him to return home
to Ithaca, not even then was he free of trials,
even among his own people. And all the gods pitied him

1 mind : "customs" or "laws" according to Zenodotus. Zenodotus of Ephesus was a legendary scholar and the first librarian of Alexandria. He often suggested alternative readings for Homeric words based on his research into early manuscripts.