



Produced by Jim Tinsley









THE ODYSSEY


  rendered into English
  prose for the use of
  those who cannot
  read the original


By Samuel Butler




PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

This translation is intended to supplement a work entitled "The
Authoress of the Odyssey", which I published in 1897. I could not give
the whole "Odyssey" in that book without making it unwieldy, I therefore
epitomised my translation, which was already completed and which I now
publish in full.

I shall not here argue the two main points dealt with in the work just
mentioned; I have nothing either to add to, or to withdraw from, what I
have there written. The points in question are:

(1) that the "Odyssey" was written entirely at, and drawn entirely
from, the place now called Trapani on the West Coast of Sicily, alike
as regards the Phaeacian and the Ithaca scenes; while the voyages of
Ulysses, when once he is within easy reach of Sicily, solve themselves
into a periplus of the island, practically from 