Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story? – Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ Part 1

“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
Illustration of Homer from the NY Times. Click on image for link to an essay on how our stories, like The Odyssey, tell us who we are.

My favorite line from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical Hamilton: An American Musical comes near the end of the show when George Washington asks the question: “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” That inquiry can be applied to so much of our art and literature – especially with all the various adaptations of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey.

This summer’s biggest non-kids movie will undoubtedly be Christopher Nolan’s epic production of  The Odyssey, which also promises lots of criticism from people who have yet to see it; though given The Odyssey’s history, that can hardly come as a surprise. People have been getting bent out of shape about a recent translation of the classic by Dr. Emily Wilson; been entertained by British comedian and actor Stephen Fry retelling of a range of Greek myths, combined with current commentary and a queer perspective; and been upset about Black actress Lupita Nyong’o playing Helen of Troy along with trans actor Elliot Page reportedly playing the Greek trickster Sinon (who is portrayed in Virgil’s Aeneid as allowing himself to be captured by the Trojans to convince them that the Greeks have all departed from Troy and left the Trojan Horse behind as a gift).

So instead of wallowing in internet twaddle surrounding all this, let’s find out a bit more about how who re-tells this classic story of Western culture affects how we perceive it.

Perhaps the hardest thing here is knowing where to start. So let’s start with Homer himself.

Click to purchase Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey.

You’ve likely been taught somewhere along the way that Homer was a blind, illiterate poet who composed The Illiad, about the decade of fighting over the city of Troy; and The Odyssey, concerning primarily the hero/king/warrior Odysseus’s attempts to get home after the sacking of Troy. Wilson, with her translation published in 2017, starts off with an extended introductory essay explaining what we know of the origins of these two epics:

“This takes us to what is known as the Homeric Question, which is really a whole cluster of questions about the composition of The Iliad and The Odyssey. The Question is given a capital Q, because scholars still disagree on some crucial issues even after a couple of centuries of discussion. How exactly did the Homeric poems as we have them emerge from the oral tradition that preceded them? Who was Homer? Was there a single author of The Odyssey, or several? Did the same person produce The Iliad and The Odyssey? When exactly did the poems get written down, and how? Can we trace earlier and later parts of the poems, or tie particular passages to different geographical locations? And to what extent do the poems reflect real historical events, cultures, and peoples—a real Trojan War, or the real Mycenean civilization of late Bronze Age Greece (which existed from the sixteenth to the twelfth centuries BCE)? Most generally, how exactly did multiple people over hundreds of years across the Greek-speaking world work together to create this magnificent, challenging, and coherent work of poetic storytelling? Design “by committee” has a very bad name, and yet The Odyssey seems like an unexpected success. How was it done?”

Wilson doesn’t supply us with easy answers to these questions, but does note that our modern understanding of these epics is drawn from medieval manuscripts. Before that, where did these stories originate? It’s too complex to go into in depth here, but Wilson says there is a strong consensus that The Odyssey is a “written text based on an oral tradition.” Perhaps an oral poet worked with a literate scribe to compose the work.  Wilson thinks it is most likely that the Illiad and Odyssey were written by multiple people over an extended period of time. As to when The Odyssey was written down is just as problematic, with the best estimate being something between the eighth and seventh century BC (or BCE – Before Common Era as scholars would typically put it).

In an essay for The New Yorker published in 2017, Wilson writes that people expected her to portray Odysseus’ wife Penelope in a more heroic light, as “an empowered woman.” But instead she instead portrays female characters in what she describes as a more realistic light, dealing with the limited choices women of the era had. While Odysseus had many affairs and fathered multiple children while he spent 10 years trying to get home, and he expected no criticism for his behavior; the ever-constant Penelope had only the options of either staying true to her missing husband or marrying one of her suitors. She did not have the agency to make any other decisions.

Wilson gives as an extend example how the slave women in Odysseus’ household are portrayed. A number of these “house maids,” as they are often called in previous translations, are presented as disloyal “sluts” or “whores” for having sex with some of the suitors of Penelope. Previous translations show them as being “disloyal servants” to their master. Wilson, portrays them as slaves who have little control over their lives and who are victimized a second time when they are all hanged for the crime of being raped.

Wilson has also been criticized for having the characters in her translation speak in modern English rather than some 18th or 19th century version of the language. Wilson points out that English didn’t even exist as a language when The Odyssey was being composed, so a modern translation is no less authentic of a presentation. While the original Greek text was written in  dactylic hexameter, as was expected for poetry of the time, Wilson’s translation is written in iambic pentameter, the meter that Shakespeare and much of English poetry is composed in. So while she has changed the meter from the original, she has created a translation that feels like poetry to English readers.

For myself, I’m a little over halfway through Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, and I find it eminently readable and enjoyable. And the more modern take on the language and meter makes it easier to read and allows it to maintain the spirit of the Ancient Greek original.

You can read more about what Wilson has to say about her translation in the following articles.

• The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ Into English – Wyatt Mason, NY Times, Nov. 2, 2017
• A Translator’s Reckoning with the Women of the Odyssey – Emily Wilson, The New Yorker, Dec. 8, 2017
• No One Has Dealt With More Angry ‘Odyssey’ Bros Than Emily Wilson – Jason P. Frank, Vulture, June 23, 2026

Emily Wilson on why she has done new translations of Homer

Emily Wilson reads from her new translation of The Odyssey, in Greek and English:

Which translation of Homer’s The Odyssey have you read? Tell us about it in the comments.