Butler is the practical free choice, but he is not a neutral choice. His complete prose Odyssey is in the public domain and easy to find through Project Gutenberg. It works well when we need to search the text, check a quotation, or read the story without buying an edition. In the opening, he calls Odysseus an “ingenious hero.” We are immediately in the language of an older English adventure book.
That makes Butler useful in a fairly specific way. We can use him to get our bearings, find an episode, or compare how a prose sentence handles material that another translator has shaped into verse. We should not use that convenience as evidence that the translation gets out of the way. Its prose has a style, and the period announces itself almost immediately.
Prose makes the action easy to follow, but it also changes what the language can do. The Cyclops trick uses “Noman” clearly enough. The reunion reads as an emotional collapse rather than as a recurring verse formula. Without a poetic line to hear and compare, repetitions and choices about pace can disappear into the flow of the sentences.
Butler’s language also belongs unmistakably to its period. A free digital file may be more convenient than a modern paperback, but that does not make its English contemporary. A budget reprint may not name the translator clearly, either. Use a source that names Butler and identifies its text. Read this version when cost, completeness, and searchability matter most. Choose a modern verse translation when rhythm, performance, or current scholarship is part of why you are reading Homer.
Read it if you need a free, complete, searchable translation and can tolerate dated diction.
Skip it if you want to experience the poem's verse form or prefer contemporary language and scholarship.
Three passage previews
We took each excerpt from the cited source edition and tell you where to find it in the book.
Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, oh daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.Project Gutenberg ebook no. 1727 · Book 1, opening invocation
‘Cyclops, you ask my name and I will tell it you; give me, therefore, the present you promised me; my name is Noman; this is what my father and mother and my friends have always called me.’ But the cruel wretch said, ‘Then I will eat all Noman’s comrades before Noman himself, and will keep Noman for the last. This is the present that I will make him.’ As he spoke he reeled, and fell sprawling face upwards on the ground. His great neck hung heavily backwards and a deep sleep took hold upon him. Presently he turned sick, and threw up both wine and the gobbets of human flesh on which he had been gorging, for he was very drunk.Project Gutenberg ebook no. 1727 · Book 9, false-name exchange and aftermath
When she heard the sure proofs Ulysses now gave her, she fairly broke down. She flew weeping to his side, flung her arms about his neck, and kissed him. “Do not be angry with me Ulysses,” she cried, “you, who are the wisest of mankind. We have suffered, both of us. Heaven has denied us the happiness of spending our youth, and of growing old, together; …Project Gutenberg ebook no. 1727 · Book 23, recognition and reunion after the bed test
