119: Odyssey Book 9 and 10 – The Hero as Bard

We are now entering the four books with the apologoi (Greek for "stories" or "tales"). These are Books 9–12, where Odysseus narrates his adventures directly to the Phaeacians. This "story within a story" covers his journey from Troy to Calypso’s island, including the Cyclops, Circe, and the Underworld, acting as a centerpiece for his character as a clever, often manipulative, storyteller.

Read Books 9 and 10 in the Mendelsohn translation of the poem. If you can find a quiet space read it outloud, imagine yourself to be a bard.

As you read, mark passages you would like to discuss together. Practise reading selected sections aloud so you are ready to contribute and can help one another appreciate the poem more fully during discussion. Prepare interpretive questions for the group.

Book 9 – The Cyclops Polyphêmos
Odysseus names himself and begins his tale. After Troy, his men sack the city of the Kíkones but are driven off with losses. A brief stop among the Lotos-Eaters – Lotophaguses – almost robs his crew of desire to return. They then reach the land of the Cyclopes, lawless shepherds without assemblies or agriculture. In the cave of the Cyclops Polyphêmos, Odysseus’ curiosity leads to disaster: the giant eats several companions. Odysseus plies him with wine, blinds him as he sleeps, and escapes clinging beneath the rams. Boastfully revealing his true name as they sail away, he provokes Polyphêmos’ curse and Poseidon’s lasting hostility.

Book 10 – Aíolos, Laestrygonians, and Circe
On Aíolos’ floating island Aiolía, Odysseus receives a bag containing all adverse winds, with only the homeward breeze left free. Near Ithaka, his curious crew opens it, blowing them back. Aeolus refuses further help. Next, in Laistrygónian land, giant cannibals destroy eleven ships in a sudden ambush; only Odysseus’ vessel escapes – he had his boat beached outside the harbor. Reaching Aiaíê, they encounter the goddess sorceress Circe, who turns some of the men into pigs. With Hermes’ herb moly, Odysseus resists her magic, wins his comrades’ restoration, becomes her lover, and has, according to legend, sons by her. They linger a year before Circe instructs him to consult the dead in the Underworld.
****
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.