The Odyssey

rendered into English prose
for the use of those who
cannot read the original

By Samuel Butler




Preface to First Edition

This translation is intended to supplement a work entitled "The
Authoress of the Odyssey", which I published in 1897. I could
not give the whole "Odyssey" in that book without making it
unwieldy, I therefore epitomised my translation, which was
already completed and which I now publish in full.

I shall not here argue the two main points dealt with in the work
just mentioned; I have nothing either to add to, or to withdraw from,
what I have there written. The points in question are:

(1) that the "Odyssey" was written entirely at, and drawn
entirely from, the place now called Trapani on the West Coast of
Sicily, alike as regards the Phaeacian and the Ithaca scenes;
while the voyages of Ulysses, when once he is within easy reach
of Sicily, solve themselves into a periplus of the island,
practically from Trapani back to Trapani, via the Lipari islands,
the Straits of Messina, and the island of Pantellaria;