# I listened to The Odyssey, the Wilson translation **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 6, 2026, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176 "2026-08-06T01:24:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/1 "2026-08-06T01:24:08Z")
Odysseus finally reaches home, only to be confronted by the suitors. After a grand battle in his palace, in which over one hundred suitors are slain, he has twelve slave girls who were colluders with the suitors remove the bodies and clean up the mess. Then he tells Telemachus to take them out and sword them to death. Telemachus makes an executive decision to just hang them instead. I don’t suppose that scene was in the movie? After everything is tidy, Odysseus tells one of his men to make some music, so neighbors, or passers-by, would think they were having a party. The neighbors didn’t wonder about the noise of the full fledged battle just waged, or the cries of the slave girls? But the biggest question is, who has a palace with neighbors so close they can hear unamplified music? I get the sense in the last chapter that, after he got the hero home and reestablished in his rightful place, that Homer didn’t really know how to wrap it up satisfactorily. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/2 "2026-08-06T01:33:58Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > But the biggest question is, who has a palace with neighbors so close they can hear unamplified music? There’s a final verse, _There once was a snoop from Ithaca, Whose spying grew quite enigmatica. She’d peer through the screen At the neighborhood scene, With habits both strange and dramatica._ ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/3 "2026-08-06T07:37:19Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > I get the sense in the last chapter that, after he got the hero home and reestablished in his rightful place, that Homer didn’t really know how to wrap it up satisfactorily. I would assume that he was hoping that the IP would attract bidding for a sequel and wanted to leave some room for that. ---
**Author:** ![Stanislaus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stanislaus/32/3391_2.png) [@Stanislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stanislaus)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/4 "2026-08-06T08:33:00Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > The neighbors didn’t wonder about the noise of the full fledged battle just waged, or the cries of the slave girls? But the biggest question is, who has a palace with neighbors so close they can hear unamplified music? How noisy would the battle be? It’s arrows and edged weapons and clubs vs flesh, not the clang of armour. All the noises -the battle, the screams, the music - would be in pretty much the same decibel range I would guess. No reason that drum and pipe music wouldn’t carry as far as any other noise that evening. As to how close or far the neighbours are, there is of course poetic licence but this is bronze age civilisation - the ambient noise level would be very low, and it’s not like homes have double glazing. Sound can carry a long way on a still evening. And it’s because the neighbours might be wondering about the faint noises they heard that Odysseus orders the music played - so if anyone wanders over, they’ll hear the music and assume that was what caught their ear from down the valley. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/5 "2026-08-06T11:13:40Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > But the biggest question is, who has a palace with neighbors so close they can hear unamplified music? Palaces are places of business with people coming and going to meet the sovereign, not just cozy country retreats. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/6 "2026-08-06T11:38:28Z")
I’m reading the Wilson version right now, although I have an audiobook edition of the Fagles translation (read by Ian McKellan!) that I just finished reading. My comments: 1.) Wilson does seem to put Athena more front-and-center than other teanslations 2.) Her eforts to say something other than “rosy-fingered Dawn” are notable, but distracting. 3.) She occasionally slips in a oddly modern translation, as when she has the suitors playing “checkers” in Book 1 (I’m pretty sure other translations I’ve read have them playing dice). or in book 6 where King Alcinous prepares to send Nausicaa (who gratingly calls the King “Daddy”) and her maids off to do the laundry he says “The slaves can fit the wagon with its cargo rack.”, which sounds more like he’s letting her borrow the Royal Pickup Truck. 4.) An interesting choice is in Book 7, where Odysseus tells Alcinous not to blame his daughter for not offering him (Odysseus) a lift to town in the pickup by saying that she was being proper and cautious, not coming into town directly with a strange man and he this came in alone. She translates his rationale with the gender-neutral “We humans on this earth are apt to be suspicious.”. Every other translation I know of has this as some variation on “We men are likely to be suspicious”, which emphasizes how a father would be protective of his daughter and would want to avoid even the hint of hanky panky. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/7 "2026-08-06T11:42:14Z")
That last bit sounds like she thinks that this interpretation is incorrect. There’s a lot of talk of how being a woman translator meant she avoided a lot of male biases from previous translations. She must genuinely think that idea is not what the Greek means. I also remember that her word choices are restricted by meter. Though I also know that proto-checkers grid and token games have existed for a long time. Edit: are these the only modernisms? Or does it read mostly ancient with some modernisms that stick out like these? Some stuff I’m reading suggests that using modern language for the stuffy old epic is a characteristic of the translation. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/8 "2026-08-06T12:34:58Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Edit: are these the only modernisms? Or does it read mostly ancient with some modernisms that stick out like these? Some stuff I’m reading suggests that using modern language for the stuffy old epic is a characteristic of the translation. It’s mostly “ancient”, in a translation that 90% resembles others I’m faniliar with, so these items stick out. I know that grid-board games go way back, but she could have used the name for one of those – if she wanted to not say “playing with dice” – instead of the jarringly modern “checkers”. As I remarked in the other thread, he might have been looking for some familiar and homely game to cite, but the appearance of that one here affected me the same way that Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee novel (set in T’ang dynasty China) when he referred to Dee playing “chess”, when the good magistrate was really playing “go”. It’s an unwarranted modernism out of cultural context that instantly yanks you out of the milieu. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/9 "2026-08-06T12:54:48Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > She translates his rationale with the gender-neutral “We humans on this earth are apt to be suspicious.”. Every other translation I know of has this as some variation on “We men are likely to be suspicious”, which emphasizes how a father would be protective of his daughter > [@BigT](#): > > That last bit sounds like she thinks that this interpretation is incorrect. There’s a lot of talk of how being a woman translator meant she avoided a lot of male biases from previous translations. She must genuinely think that idea is not what the Greek means. She’s correct, if you’re talking about the difference between Greek “ander”, “male human, man” and “anthropos”, “human, person”. Odysseus’s words in Book 7 are “epi chthoni phyl’ anthropon”, “the tribes/clans of **people** on the earth”. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/10 "2026-08-06T13:47:35Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I know that grid-board games go way back, but she could have used the name for one of those – if she wanted to not say “playing with dice” – instead of the jarringly modern “checkers”. While I’ve got the Loeb edition open, the Greek phrase here (book 1, line 107) is “_pessoisi… eterpon_”, “amusing themselves (by playing) with _pessoi_”, game-pieces. Older translations seem to call this “playing draughts”, which makes “checkers” not so much of a stretch, anachronism-wise. Of course, that raises the question of how accurate it is to call this ancient game “draughts”, either. [Everything you always wanted to know about ancient Greek _petteia/polis_/game(s) played with _pessoi_.](https://pessoi.com/reconstruction) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/11 "2026-08-06T14:09:18Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Of course, that raises the question of how accurate it is to call this ancient game “draughts”, either. [Everything you always wanted to know about ancient Greek _petteia/polis_/game(s) played with _pessoi_.](https://pessoi.com/reconstruction) It’s a tricky question about translation, I agree. I wouldn’t use “checkers” or “draughts” because the implication is that of a modern game. Incised game boards I’ve seen at Roman sites (at least) look much more like “Morris” games than anything like a checker board. (And I assumed they were used as such in my YA novel _The Traveler_) [https://ancientgames.org/rota/](https://ancientgames.org/rota/) I don’t know what the Greek game might be, or what the board looked like. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/12 "2026-08-07T11:54:33Z")
Checkers is the closest modern game to what they were likely playing (or maybe the backgammon-esque 5 lines). I looked into this, like @Kimstu did: Homer uses _πέσσοι_ (_pessoi_), meaning playing pieces/counters, where Wilson has _checkers_. But the normal Greek word for dice is _κύβοι_ (_kyboi_). > [@CalMeacham](#): > > I know that grid-board games go way back, but she could have used the name for one of those Which grid-based game should she have used? That would be intuitive to a modern audience and convey the right mental image? She more closely preserves the sense of what they were doing than the other tranlators’ dice version. I mean, it was probably meant to be this kind of thing, and I don’t see any dice there: [![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Exekias%2C_anfora_con_achille_e_aiace_che_giocano_a_dai%2C_castore_e_polluce%2C_da_vulci%2C_540-30_ac_ca._03.JPG) ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Exekias%2C_anfora_con_achille_e_aiace_che_giocano_a_dai%2C_castore_e_polluce%2C_da_vulci%2C_540-30_ac_ca._03.JPG) > [@CalMeacham](#): > > It’s an unwarranted modernism out of cultural context that instantly yanks you out of the milieu. I think that’s a you thing, I don’t think of checkers as modern at all. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/13 "2026-08-07T11:56:26Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I think that’s a you thing, I don’t think of checkers as modern at all. The first use of “checkers”, referring to the game, comes from 1712. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/14 "2026-08-07T11:57:05Z")
Your sense of “modern” and mine are very different. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/15 "2026-08-07T11:57:38Z")
Indeed ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/16 "2026-08-07T12:30:33Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > Then he tells Telemachus to take them out and sword them to death. Oh, much worse than that, he killed the slave girls by slow hanging. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/17 "2026-08-07T12:42:21Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#): > > > [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > > > I get the sense in the last chapter that, after he got the hero home and reestablished in his rightful place, that Homer didn’t really know how to wrap it up satisfactorily. > > I would assume that he was hoping that the IP would attract bidding for a sequel and wanted to leave some room for that. _The Aeneid_? Or Dante’s _Inferno_? ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/18 "2026-08-07T12:48:31Z")
The _Aeneid_ isn’t a sequel - it’s a fanfic. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/19 "2026-08-07T15:46:09Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > Oh, much worse than that, he killed the slave girls by slow hanging. There was a recent article in the Atlantic about a guy reading the Odyssey to his three year old son. I was thinking my 6yo son might like it, but it seems pretty gnarly based on the descriptions. The guy said he skipped over the racy stuff, but does that mean he included hanging slave girls? I almost started a thread about this because I wondered if it would be bonkers to read this to a kid, or actually pretty cool. I haven’t read it, though I’m familiar with the famous bits. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/20 "2026-08-07T17:18:38Z")
Reading a bit further in Wilson’s translation, I just finished chapter 11 – The _Nekuia_, where Odysseus visits the Land of the Dead. I was again struck by a significant difference between Wilson’s translation and all the others I’d read. It’s around line 490, where Odysseus meets the spirit of the dead Achilles. I remember this line because it seems like the polar opposite of what Satan says in Milton’s _Paradise Lost_: > Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n. Instead, in Wilson’s translation of the _Odyssey_ Achilles asserts: > …I would prefer to be a workman, > hired by a poor man on a peasant farm, > than to rule as king of all the dead. From my recollections, she’s missing an adjective there. Fitzgerald’s translation reads “…than rule over all the _exhausted_ Dead.” Fagels, if I recall correctly, has “..than rule over all the _Breathless_ Dead.” Other internet translations give something similar “…over all the Dead _who have perished_.” I could see the similarity between “exhausted” and “breathless” easily enough, and could even stretch it to “who have perished.” but Wilson has no adjective at all in there. I don’t have the Loeb edition, or anything similar, so I don’t know what’ in the Greek original. Maybe she thought it didn’t scan well. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176.md?page=2)