Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction

The Spelling and Pronunciation of Homeric Names

MAPS 1. Homeric Geography: Mainland Greece
2. Homeric Geography: The Peloponnese
3. Homeric Geography: The Aegean and Asia Minor
Inset: Troy and Vicinity

HOMER: The Odyssey
Book 1: Athena Inspires the Prince
Book 2: Telemachus Sets Sail
Book 3: King Nestor Remembers
Book 4: The King and Queen of Sparta
Book 5: Odysseus-Nymph and Shipwreck
Book 6: The Princess and the Stranger
Book 7: Phaecia's Halls and Gardens
Book 8: A Day for Songs and Contests
Book 9: In the One-Eyed Giant's Cave
Book 10: The Bewitching Queen of Aeaea
Book 11: The Kingdom of the Dead
Book 12: The Castle of the Sun
Book 13: Ithaca at Last
Book 14: The Loyal Swineherd
Book 15: The Prince Sets Sail for Home
Book 16: Father and Son
Book 17: Stranger at the Gates
Book 18: The Beggar-King of Ithaca
Book 19: Penelope and Her Guest
Book 20: Portents Gather
Book 21: Odysseus Strings His Bow
Book 22: Slaughter in the Hall
Book 23: The Great Rooted Bed
Book 24: Peace

NOTES

Translator's Postscript

Genealogies

Textual Variants from the Oxford Classical Text

Notes on the Translation

Suggestions for Further Reading

Pronouncing Glossary

''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" So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey, which Jasper Griffin in The New York Review of Books hails as ''a distinguished achievement.'' If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey through life. Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces, during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, is at once the timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance. In the myths and legends that are retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.
Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb Introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles' translation. This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the public at large, and to captivate a new generation of Hormer's students.'' (Book Jacket)