Odysseus was purpose driven, we’d say nowadays. He went to war less for his own concerns than for the honor of his people—not that he didn’t have a taste for violence. According to the latest translator of his biography-in-verse, University of Pennsylvania classics professor Emily Wilson, the long-suffering Odysseus, one of literature’s first great protagonists, probably suffered from PTSD. He is withdrawn, subject to fits of aggression, and like the veterans of America’s recent wars, his homeward journey is emotionally harrowing. The temptation of deadening his pain with drugs presents itself on the island of the Lotus Eaters.
Wilson’s introduction is worth reading in its own right for her explication of a set of classic myths that seem strange yet somehow familiar in our era of superheroes, monstrous villains and endless wars. Wilson’s translation is faithful, the verses ring true to the age in which they were composed while clear for contemporary readers.
