The Best Translation of The Odyssey
The Odyssey was written in Ancient Greek. 3 recommended editions, ranked — with Gröblé’s verdict on which to read first.
Robert Fagles
Penguin Classics · 1996 · 541 pages
Fagles again, and the voice carries from his Iliad. Muscular lines, fast scenes, Calypso and the Cyclops and the bow all play. Easiest first Odyssey in English, and pairs cleanly if you read his Iliad too.
Every recommended edition, compared
Fitzgerald was a poet first, and the 1961 Odyssey reads like English poetry that happens to be Homer. Less literal than Lattimore, more lyrical than Fagles, and the lines stay in your head.
Wilson strips out two centuries of translator habit and gives Odysseus back his complications. Iambic pentameter, line-for-line with the Greek, and an opening ("tell me about a complicated man") that resets the whole reading.
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Reading The Odyssey in translation
The Odyssey was written in Ancient Greek, so unless you read Ancient Greek, the translator decides the book you actually experience — its register, its pace, how it sounds read aloud. Two editions of the same work can feel like different books.
The ranking above is Gröblé’s: one reader’s verdict on which English gets you closest, not a publisher’s blurb. Start with the top pick; reach for the others when you want a different angle on the original.