Homer's Odyssey is a founding tale of Western civil-ization: an epic story of one man's struggle to return home from the Trojan war. It became the first Penguin Classic when E. V. Rieu's translation was published in 1946. In this extract, Odysseus describes some of the horrors and wonders of his journey, including imprisonment by the fearsome Cyclops and his travels to the land of the dead.
"My friends," I said, "we are men who have met trouble before. And this trouble is no worse than when the Cyclops used his brutal strength to imprison us in his cave. Yet my courage, strategy and intelligence found a way out for us even from there; and I am sure that this too will be a memory for us one day. So now let us all agree to do exactly as I say. Oarsmen, stay at your oars, striking hard with your blades through the deep swell, in the hope that Zeus allows us to escape disaster and come out of this alive. Helmsman, your orders are these. Fix them in your mind, for the good ship's steering-oar is in your control. Give a wide berth to the foaming surf, and hug these cliffs, or before you can stop her the ship may take us over there and we'll be wrecked."
'The crew obeyed me immediately. I did not mention the inescapable horror of Scylla, fearing that in their panic my men might stop rowing and huddle below the decks. But now I allowed myself to forget Circe's irksome instruction not to arm myself in any way. I put my famous armour on, seized a couple of long spears, and took my stand on the forecastle deck, hoping from there to get the first view of Scylla, the monster of the rocks, who was preparing disaster for my crew. But I could not catch a glimpse of her anywhere, though I searched the sombre face in every part till my eyes were tired.
'Thus we sailed up the straits, wailing in terror, for on the one side we had Scylla, and on the other the awesome Charybdis sucked down the salt water in her dreadful way. When she vomited it up, she was stirred to her depths and seethed over like a cauldron on a blazing fire; and the spray she flung up rained down on the tops of the crags at either side. But when she swallowed the salt water down, the whole interior of her vortex was exposed, the rocks re-echoed to her fearful roar, and the dark blue sands of the sea-bed were exposed.
'My men turned pale with terror; and now, while all eyes were on Charybdis as the quarter from which we looked for disaster, Scylla snatched out of my ship the six strongest and ablest men. Glancing towards my ship, looking for my comrades, I saw their arms and legs dangling high in the air above my head. "Odysseus!" they called out to me in their anguish. But it was the last time they used my name. For like an angler on a jutting point, who casts his bait to lure the little fishes below dangles his long rod with its line protected by an ox-horn pipe, gets a bite and whips his struggling catch to land, Scylla had whisked my comrades, struggling, up to the rocks. There she devoured them at her own door, shrieking and stretching out their hands to me in their last desperate throes. In all I have gone through as I explored the pathways of the seas, I have never had to witness a more pitiable sight than that.
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