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Tell of the storm-tossed man, O Muse, who wandered long after he sacked the sacred citadel of Troy.1 Many the men whose towns he saw, whose ways he proved; and many a pang he bore in his own breast at sea, while struggling for his life and his men’s safe return. Yet even so, despite his zeal, he did not save his men; for through their own perversity they perished, having recklessly devoured the cattle of the exalted Sun, who therefore took away the day of their return. Of this, O goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak as thou wilt to us.

Now all the others who were saved from utter ruin were at home, safe both from war and sea. Him only, longing for his home and wife, the potent nymph Calypso, a heavenly goddess, held in her hollow grotto, desiring him to be her husband. Yet, when the time had come in the revolving years at which the gods ordained his going home to Ithaca, even then, among his kin, he was not freed from trouble. Yet the gods felt compassion, all save Poseidon, who steadily strove with godlike Odysseus till he reached his land.

But Poseidon now was with the far-off Ethiopians, remotest of mankind, who form two tribes, one at the setting of the Exalted one, one at his rising; awaiting there a sacrifice of bulls and rams. So sitting at the feast he took his pleasure. The other gods, meanwhile, were gathered in the halls of Zeus upon Olympus when thus began the father of men and gods; for in his mind he mused of gallant Aegisthus, whom Agamemnon’s far-famed son, Orestes, slew. Mindful of him, he thus addressed the immortals: