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The Odyssey
by Homer
Translated by Alexander Pope

Contents


 INTRODUCTION.


 THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER


 BOOK I.


 BOOK II.


 BOOK III.


 BOOK IV.


 BOOK V.


 BOOK VI.


 BOOK VII.


 BOOK VIII.


 BOOK IX.


 BOOK X.


 BOOK XI.


 BOOK XII.


 BOOK XIII.


 BOOK XIV.


 BOOK XV.


 BOOK XVI.


 BOOK XVII.


 BOOK XVIII.


 BOOK XIX.


 BOOK XX.


 BOOK XXI.


 BOOK XXII.


 BOOK XXIII.


 BOOK XXIV.


INTRODUCTION.


Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism.

To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most part, to shut our

ears against conviction; since, from the very gradual character of our

education, we must continually forget, and emancipate ourselves from, knowledge

previously acquired; we must set aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and,

as we learn, we must be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no

small labour and anxiety to acquire.


And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which progress

has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which persons and things

are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu of their conventional value.

The same principles which have swept away traditional abuses, and which are

making rapid havoc among the revenues of sinecurists, and stripping the thin,

tawdry veil from attractive superstitions, are working as actively in

literature as in society. The credulity of one writer, or the partiality of

another, finds as powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the

healthy scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams of

conservatism, or the impostures of pluralist sinecures in the Church. History

and tradition, whether of ancient or comparatively recent times, are subjected

to very different handling from that which the indulgence or credulity of