“In this Odyssey Professor Lattimore has achieved his chef-d’oeuvre as a translator. Studied in retrospect, much of his previous work takes on the appearance, technically speaking, of prolegomena to this dazzling and well-nigh flawless performance…
“In the Odyssey he has found the ideal poem both for himself and for his audience; and he has come to it at the very height of his powers…. Here is a master in perfect control of his medium. The apparent ease with which he surmounts every problem, the perfect balance struck and maintained between vivid, fast-moving narrative and epic formality, the rhythmic subtleties, the freshness and vigour of language displayed from first page to last—all these make his Odyssey a landmark in the history of modern translation….
“He has, in fact, come about as near as any man could to conveying, in English, the utterly alien movement and structure of Homer’s poetry….
“It would be a crime to underestimate the miraculous and self-effacing artistry with which Professor Lattimore has reanimated Homer for this generation, and perhaps for other generations to come.”
—The Times [London] Literary Supplement
“The many admirers of Richmond Lattimore’s Iliad will not be disappointed in his Odyssey. His complete Homer is indeed a splendid achievement, and I shall be very far from being alone in regarding it as much the best translation there is of a great, perhaps the greatest, poem.”
—Rex Warner, New York Times Book Review
“Richmond Lattimore’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey is the most eloquent, persuasive and imaginative I have seen. It reads as if the poem had originally been written in English.”
—Paul Engle
“Richmond Lattimore’s…Odyssey is his masterpiece. It has the accuracy that too many translators take to be beneath themselves; the images are Homer’s own; and Lattimore does not permit himself flights of his own fancy.”
—Walter Kaufman