114: Odyssey Book 3 and 4 – The Odysseiana Series

Read Books 3 and 4 in the Mendelsohn translation of the poem. As you read, mark passages you would like to discuss in class. Practise reading selected sections aloud so you are ready to contribute and can help one another appreciate the poem more fully during discussion.

Book 3 – Nestor of Pylos
Telemachus arrives at sandy Pylos during a great sacrifice to Poseidon. Shy and uncertain, he is prompted by Athena to speak with Nestor, the wise old counselor of the Greeks. Nestor warmly welcomes them, recounting the chaotic returns from Troy and the murder of Agamemnon by Aegisthus, a dark parallel to the suitors’ plot in Ithaca. He has no direct news of Odysseus, but praises his cunning. Athena reveals herself by flying off as a bird. Nestor sends his son Pisistratus with Telemachus to Sparta, providing a chariot, hospitality, and further paternal support on the journey.

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Book 4 – Menelaus and Helen
In Sparta, Menelaus and Helen are celebrating their children’s marriages when Telemachus and Pisistratus arrive. Recognizing a resemblance to Odysseus, they recall stories of his cunning at Troy, including the Wooden Horse. Menelaus tells how he was stranded in Egypt and wrestled the shape-shifting sea-god Proteus to learn of the Greeks’ fates: Agamemnon’s murder, Ajax’s doom, and Odysseus detained by a nymph on a remote island. Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, the suitors learn of Telemachus’ journey and plot to ambush his ship. Penelope, informed in a dream-like vision, is plunged into fear and anxious longing.
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For this series on Homer's Odyssey we will be using the new translation by Daniel Mendelsohn: Homer: The Odyssey. Translated, with Introduction and Notes. University of Chicago Press, April 9th, 2025.

Sessions devoted to Daniel Mendelsohn’s translation will alternate with meetings focused on a broader range of “Odysseiana,” materials that illuminate the transmission, reception, and interpretation of Homer’s poem across time. These companion materials will include ancient textual witnesses, archaeological and visual evidence, and modern thematic and analytical work that together situate the Odyssey within its cultural, historical, and performative contexts.

Textual materials
• Early manuscripts on papyrus and parchment from as early as the third century BCE, along with later medieval codices, show how the text of the Odyssey was copied, stabilized, and annotated over many centuries.
• A clay tablet from Roman-era Olympia, inscribed with verses from Book 14, offers one of the earliest substantial epigraphic attestations of the poem and illustrates its circulation in public and sacred spaces.
• Later printed editions, informed by Alexandrian scholarship and modern textual criticism, will serve as points of comparison for issues of wording, lineation, and commentary.

Archaeological and visual materials
• Vase paintings and other images from Greek pottery that depict scenes associated with the Odyssey—such as shipwrecks, supplication, or women at the loom—will be used to explore how ancient artists visualized narrative moments and social practices found in the poem.
• Museum collections, such as those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, provide objects like armor, textiles, and domestic furnishings that help reconstruct the material world of Odysseus and his contemporaries.
• These artifacts will help connect specific passages in Mendelsohn’s translation to ancient views of the gods, warfare, hospitality, and poetic performance.

Thematic and analytical materials
• Scholarly discussions of themes such as cunning and intelligence, homecoming and estrangement, and the tension between order and disorder will frame close readings of selected episodes.
• Attention to the Odyssey’s origins in oral performance, including formulaic language, meter, and narrative framing, will complement Mendelsohn’s effort to reproduce the poem’s formal features in English.
• Companion texts from later epic and narrative traditions will be brought in to show how Homeric patterns are adapted, challenged, or echoed in subsequent literature.

Mendelsohn’s translation is also available on Kindle and as an Audible audio book. About Daniel Mendelsohn read here.