The Odyssey: The Fitzgerald Translation

by Homer;Robert Fitzgerald

How did you find your way down to the dark

  where these dimwitted dead are camped forever,

  the after images of used-up men?’

  I answered:

  ‘Akhilleus, Peleus’ son, strongest of all

  among the Akhaians, I had need of foresight

  such as Teirêsias alone could give

  to help me, homeward bound for the crags of Ithaka.

  I have not yet coasted Akhaia, not yet

  touched my land; my life is all adversity.

  But was there ever a man more blest by fortune

  than you, Akhilleus? Can there ever be?

  We ranked you with immortals in your lifetime,

  we Argives did, and here your power is royal

  among the dead men’s shades. Think, then, Akhilleus:

  you need not be so pained by death.’

  To this

  he answered swiftly:

  ‘Let me hear no smooth talk

  of death from you, Odysseus, light of councils.

  Better, I say, to break sod as a farm hand

  for some poor country man, on iron rations,

  than lord it over all the exhausted dead.

  Tell me, what news of the prince my son: did he

  come after me to make a name in battle

  or could it be he did not? Do you know

  if rank and honor still belong to Peleus

  in the towns of the Myrmidons? Or now, may be,

  Hellas and Phthia spurn him, seeing old age

  fetters him, hand and foot. I cannot help him

  under the sun’s rays, cannot be that man

  I was on Troy’s wide seaboard, in those days

  when I made bastion for the Argives

  and put an army’s best men in the dust.

  Were I but whole again, could I go now

  to my father’s house, one hour would do to make

  my passion and my hands no man could hold

  hateful to any who shoulder him aside.’

  Now when he paused I answered:

  ‘Of all that—

  of Peleus’ life, that is—I know nothing;

  but happily I can tell you the whole story

  of Neoptólemos, as you require.

  In my own ship I brought him out from Skyros

  to join the Akhaians under arms.

  And I can tell you,

  in every council before Troy thereafter

  your son spoke first and always to the point;

  no one but Nestor and I could out-debate him.

  And when we formed against the Trojan line

  he never hung back in the mass, but ranged

  far forward of his troops—no man could touch him

  for gallantry. Aye, scores went down before him

  in hard fights man to man. I shall not tell

  all about each, or name them all—the long

  roster of enemies he put out of action,

  taking the shock of charges on the Argives.

  But what a champion his lance ran through

  in Eurypulos the son of Télephos! Keteians

  in throngs around that captain also died—

  all because Priam’s gifts had won his mother

  to send the lad to battle; and I thought

  Memnon alone in splendor ever outshone him.

  But one fact more: while our picked Argive crew

  still rode that hollow horse Epeios built,

  and when the whole thing lay with me, to open

  the trapdoor of the ambuscade or not,

  at that point our Danaan lords and soldiers

  wiped their eyes, and their knees began to quake,

  all but Neoptólemos. I never saw

  his tanned cheek change color or his hand

  brush one tear away. Rather he prayed me,

  hand on hilt, to sortie, and he gripped

  his tough spear, bent on havoc for the Trojans.

  And when we had pierced and sacked Priam’s tall city

  he loaded his choice plunder and embarked

  with no scar on him; not a spear had grazed him

  nor the sword’s edge in close work—common wounds

  one gets in war. Ares in his mad fits

  knows no favorites.’

  But I said no more,

  for he had gone off striding the field of asphodel,

  the ghost of our great runner, Akhilleus Aiakides,

  glorying in what I told him of his son.

  Now other souls of mournful dead stood by,

  each with his troubled questioning, but one

  remained alone, apart: the son of Telamon,

  Aias, it was—the great shade burning still

  because I had won favor on the beachhead

  in rivalry over Akhilleus’ arms.

  The Lady Thetis, mother of Akhilleus,

  laid out for us the dead man’s battle gear,

  and Trojan children, with Athena,

  named the Danaan fittest to own them. Would

  god I had not borne the palm that day!

  For earth took Aias then to hold forever,

  the handsomest and, in all feats of war,

  noblest of the Danaans after Akhilleus.

  Gently therefore I called across to him:

  ‘Aîas, dear son of royal Télamon,

  you would not then forget, even in death,

  your fury with me over those accurst

  calamitous arms?—and so they were, a bane

  sent by the gods upon the Argive host.

  For when you died by your own hand we lost

  a tower, formidable in war. All we Akhaians

  mourn you forever, as we do Akhilleus;

  and no one bears the blame but Zeus.

  He fixed that doom for you because he frowned

  on the whole expedition of our spearmen.

  My lord, come nearer, listen to our story!

  Conquer your indignation and your pride.’

  But he gave no reply, and turned away,

  following other ghosts toward Erebos.

  Who knows if in that darkness he might still

  have spoken, and I answered?

  But my heart

  longed, after this, to see the dead elsewhere.

  And now there came before my eyes Minos,

  the son of Zeus, enthroned, holding a golden staff,

  dealing out justice among ghostly pleaders

  arrayed about the broad doorways of Death.

  And then I glimpsed Orion, the huge hunter,

  gripping his club, studded with bronze, unbreakable,

  with wild beasts he had overpowered in life

  on lonely mountainsides, now brought to bay

  on fields of asphodel.

  And I saw Tityos,

  the son of Gaia, lying

  abandoned over nine square rods of plain.

  Vultures, hunched above him, left and right,

  rifling his belly, stabbed into the liver,

  and he could never push them off.

  This hulk

  had once committed rape of Zeus’s mistress,

  Lêto, in her glory, when she crossed

  the open grass of Panopeus toward Pytho.

  Then I saw Tántalos put to the torture:

  in a cool pond he stood, lapped round by water

  clear to the chin, and being athirst he burned

  to slake his dry weasand with drink, though drink

  he would not ever again. For when the old man

  put his lips down to the sheet of water

  it vanished round his feet, gulped underground,

  and black mud baked there in a wind from hell.

  Boughs, too, drooped low above him, big with fruit,

  pear trees, pomegranates, brilliant apples,

  luscious figs, and olives ripe and dark;

  but if he stretched his hand for one, the wind

  under the dark sky tossed the bough beyond him.


  Then Sisyphos in torment I beheld

  being roustabout to a tremendous boulder.

  Leaning with both arms braced and legs driving,

  he heaved it toward a height, and almost over,

  but then a Power spun him round and sent

  the cruel boulder bounding again to the plain.

  Whereon the man bent down again to toil,

  dripping sweat, and the dust rose overhead.

  Next I saw manifest the power of Heraklês—

  a phantom, this, for he himself has gone

  feasting amid the gods, reclining soft

  with Hebe of the ravishing pale ankles,

  daughter of Zeus and Hera, shod in gold.

  But, in my vision, all the dead around him

  cried like affrighted birds; like Night itself

  he loomed with naked bow and nocked arrow

  and glances terrible as continual archery.

  My hackles rose at the gold swordbelt he wore

  sweeping across him: gorgeous intaglio

  of savage bears, boars, lions with wildfire eyes,

  swordfights, battle, slaughter, and sudden death—

  the smith who had that belt in him, I hope

  he never made, and never will make, another.

  The eyes of the vast figure rested on me,

  and of a sudden he said in kindly tones:

  ‘Son of Laërtês and the gods of old,

  Odysseus, master mariner and soldier,

  under a cloud, you too? Destined to grinding

  labors like my own in the sunny world?

  Son of Kronion Zeus or not, how many

  days I sweated out, being bound in servitude

  to a man far worse than I, a rough master!

  He made me hunt this place one time

  to get the watchdog of the dead: no more

  perilous task, he thought, could be; but I

  brought back that beast, up from the underworld;

  Hermes and grey-eyed Athena showed the way.’

  And Heraklês, down the vistas of the dead,

  faded from sight; but I stood fast, awaiting

  other great souls who perished in times past.

  I should have met, then, god-begotten Theseus

  and Peirithoös, whom both I longed to see,

  but first came shades in thousands, rustling

  in a pandemonium of whispers, blown together,

  and the horror took me that Perséphonê

  had brought from darker hell some saurian death’s head.

  I whirled then, made for the ship, shouted to crewmen

  to get aboard and cast off the stern hawsers,

  an order soon obeyed. They took their thwarts,

  and the ship went leaping toward the stream of Ocean

  first under oars, then with a following wind.

  BOOK XII

  SEA PERILS AND DEFEAT

  The ship sailed on, out of the Ocean Stream,

  riding a long swell on the open sea

  for the Island of Aiaia.

  Summering Dawn

  has dancing grounds there, and the Sun his rising;

  but still by night we beached on a sand shelf

  and waded in beyond the line of breakers

  to fall asleep, awaiting the Day Star.

  When the young Dawn with finger tips of rose

  made heaven bright, I sent shipmates to bring

  Elpênor’s body from the house of Kirke.

  We others cut down timber on the foreland,

  on a high point, and built his pyre of logs,

  then stood by weeping while the flame burnt through

  corse and equipment.

  Then we heaped his barrow,

  lifting a gravestone on the mound, and fixed

  his light but unwarped oar against the sky.

  These were our rites in memory of him. Soon, then,

  knowing us back from the Dark Land, Kirkê came

  freshly adorned for us, with handmaids bearing

  loaves, roast meats, and ruby-colored wine.

  She stood among us in immortal beauty

  jesting:

  ‘Hearts of oak, did you go down

  alive into the homes of Death? One visit

  finishes all men but yourselves, twice mortal!

  Come, here is meat and wine, enjoy your feasting

  for one whole day; and in the dawn tomorrow

  you shall put out to sea. Sailing directions,

  landmarks, perils, I shall sketch for you, to keep you

  from being caught by land or water

  in some black sack of trouble.’

  In high humor

  and ready for carousal, we agreed;

  so all that day until the sun went down

  we feasted on roast meat and good red wine,

  till after sunset, at the fall of night,

  the men dropped off to sleep by the stern hawsers.

  She took my hand then, silent in that hush,

  drew me apart, made me sit down, and lay

  beside me, softly questioning, as I told

  all I had seen, from first to last.

  Then said the Lady Kirkê:

  ‘So: all those trials are over.

  Listen with care

  to this, now, and a god will arm your mind.

  Square in your ship’s path are Seirenes, crying

  beauty to bewitch men coasting by;

  woe to the innocent who hears that sound!

  He will not see his lady nor his children

  in joy, crowding about him, home from sea;

  the Seirenes will sing his mind away

  on their sweet meadow lolling. There are bones

  of dead men rotting in a pile beside them

  and flayed skins shrivel around the spot.

  Steer wide;

  keep well to seaward; plug your oarsmen’s ears

  with beeswax kneaded soft; none of the rest

  should hear that song.

  But if you wish to listen,

  let the men tie you in the lugger, hand

  and foot, back to the mast, lashed to the mast,

  so you may hear those harpies’ thrilling voices;

  shout as you will, begging to be untied,

  your crew must only twist more line around you

  and keep their stroke up, till the singers fade.

  What then? One of two courses you may take,

  and you yourself must weigh them. I shall not

  plan the whole action for you now, but only

  tell you of both.

  Ahead are beetling rocks

  and dark blue glancing Amphitrite, surging,

  roars around them. Prowling Rocks, or Drifters,

  the gods in bliss have named them—named them well.

  Not even birds can pass them by, not even

  the timorous doves that bear ambrosia

  to Father Zeus; caught by downdrafts, they die

  on rockwall smooth as ice.

  Each time, the Father

  wafts a new courier to make up his crew.

  Still less can ships get searoom of these Drifters,

  whose boiling surf, under high fiery winds,

  carries tossing wreckage of ships and men.

  Only one ocean-going craft, the far-famed

  Argo, made it, sailing from Aieta;

  but she, too, would have crashed on the big rocks

  if Hera had not pulled her through, for love

  of Iêson, her captain.

  A second course

  lies between headlands. One is a sharp mountain

  piercing the sky, with stormcloud round the peak

  dissolving never, not in the brightest summer,

  to show heaven’s azure there, nor in the fall.

  No mortal man could scale it, nor so much

  as land there, not with twenty hands and feet,

  so sheer the cliffs are—as of polished stone.


  Midway that height, a cavern full of mist

  opens toward Erebos and evening. Skirting

  this in the lugger, great Odysseus,

  your master bowman, shooting from the deck,

  would come short of the cavemouth with his shaft;

  but that is the den of Skylla, where she yaps

  abominably, a newborn whelp’s cry,

  though she is huge and monstrous. God or man,

  no one could look on her in joy. Her legs—

  and there are twelve—are like great tentacles,

  unjointed, and upon her serpent necks

  are borne six heads like nightmares of ferocity,

  with triple serried rows of fangs and deep

  gullets of black death. Half her length, she sways

  her heads in air, outside her horrid cleft,

  hunting the sea around that promontory

  for dolphins, dogfish, or what bigger game

  thundering Amphitrite feeds in thousands.

  And no ship’s company can claim

  to have passed her without loss and grief; she takes,

  from every ship, one man for every gullet.

  The opposite point seems more a tongue of land

  you’d touch with a good bowshot, at the narrows.

  A great wild fig, a shaggy mass of leaves,

  grows on it, and Kharybdis lurks below

  to swallow down the dark sea tide. Three times

  from dawn to dusk she spews it up

  and sucks it down again three times, a whirling

  maelstrom; if you come upon her then

  the god who makes earth tremble could not save you.

  No, hug the cliff of Skylla, take your ship

  through on a racing stroke. Better to mourn

  six men than lose them all, and the ship, too.’