Review Comment

Rieu’s translation is a personal favourite of mine. In its day it was extremely popular, and it is still top of the list for the reader who is looking for a prose translation of Homer’s Odyssey. The edition has recently been revised by Peter Jones and D. C. H. Rieu. There’s an interesting and brief intoduction explaining some of the revisions they have made. The translation is accurate, idiomatic, and dramatic, far superior to Martin Hammond’s prose version.

Rieu does have his critics (of course), some of whom object that he tones down the poem to something less majestic than it should be (“[Rieu] converts Homer into treacle” is the way John Crossett puts it) or that he turns the poem into a Victorian novel (as Adam Parry observed “Rieu had discovered that Homer was really Trollope”). But if this is treacle, there’s nothing about it which slows the reader down or gives him an overdose of saccharine sweetness.

The reader who would like a preview of the revised Rieu translation should use the following link:Rieu Odyssey.

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