# Odyssey

- id: odyssey
- original title: Ὀδύσσεια / Odysseia
- author: Homer
- language: Greek
- composed: c. 725 BCE
- field: poetry

The homecoming epic, carried west in the same Florentine project that moved the Iliad, and re-voiced in English in every century since.

## The chain

- **c. 1360–1362** Greek -> Latin, translation [attested]
  Leontius Pilatus (translator), Giovanni Boccaccio (patron), Florence
  The companion crossing to the Latin Iliad, from the same household project.
  Evidence: N. G. Wilson 1992
- **1614–1615** Greek -> English, translation [attested]
  George Chapman (translator), London
  Twelve books in 1614, the complete Odyssey in 1615; The Whole Works of Homer of 1616 collected the pair into the first complete English Homer.
  Evidence: George Chapman 1616
- **1725–1726** Greek -> English, translation [attested]
  Alexander Pope (translator), London
  Half the books were quietly drafted by William Broome and Elijah Fenton under Pope's name and polish; the subscription model did not advertise the workshop.
  Evidence: Alexander Pope 1725
- **1900** Greek -> English, translation [attested]
  Samuel Butler (translator), London
  Butler's prose Odyssey, written by a man convinced the original was a young woman's book. The text carried in this library is the Perseus revision by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy.
  Evidence: Samuel Butler 1900; Thothica 2026

## Worth knowing

Pilatus turned it into Latin alongside the Iliad for Boccaccio's circle. Chapman completed the pair in 1616; Pope followed with collaborators he did not loudly advertise; Butler, who suspected a woman wrote it, gave it the prose this library reads.

## Sources

- N. G. Wilson (1992). From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance. Duckworth.

Confidence grades: attested (named in the medieval record or settled in scholarship), probable (standard view with real uncertainty), disputed (scholars disagree).