Available From UC Press

The Odyssey

A New Translation by Peter Green
Homer

"The best line-for-line translation."—London Review of Books
 
“Comparisons to [Emily] Wilson's recent translation are inevitable. . . . Both Wilson and Green capture the spirit of The Odyssey, but word-for-word, Green also captures a feel for the Homeric language, an experience closer to the original."—Library Journal
 
The Odyssey is vividly captured and beautifully paced in this swift and lucid new translation by leading scholar of the ancient world Peter Green. Accompanied by an illuminating introduction, maps, chapter summaries, a glossary, and explanatory notes, this is the ideal translation for both general readers and students to experience The Odyssey in all its glory. Green’s version, with its lyrical mastery and superb command of Greek, offers readers the opportunity to enjoy Homer’s epic tale of survival, temptation, betrayal, and vengeance with all of the verve and pathos of the original oral tradition.
 

Peter Green is Dougherty Centennial Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. One of the most prolific scholars of the ancient world, he is the author of both historical studies and translations of poetry, including The Poems of Catullus, Apollonios's The Argonautika, and Homer's The Iliad, all by UC Press.
 
“This is a triumph, a worthy successor to Peter Green’s outstanding translation of The Iliad. The style is flexible, sometimes colloquial, and often touching the heights, while being always immensely accessible to a modern reader. No version known to me is better at conveying the feeling as well as the sense of the original, and it takes a poet as well as a scholar to do it so well.”—Christopher Pelling, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University
 
“Clear, concise, and poetic. Literally an epic achievement. Peter Green has done it again.”—Eric H. Cline, Professor of Classics and Anthropology and the Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at George Washington University
 
Praise for Peter Green’s translation of The Iliad:
 
“Taken as a whole, this is the best line-for-line translation of the poem I know.”—London Review of Books
 
“Peter Green’s particular merit lies in achieving a clarity and fluidity that carries the reader forward. A notable achievement.”—Times Literary Supplement 
 
“[Green] gets the interpretation right without interrupting the forward motion that is always Homer’s aim—and this is one of the great virtues of Green’s translation as a whole: its limber fluency.”—New York Review of Books
536 pp.6 x 9
9780520303362$16.95|£14.99Paper
Apr 2019