Homer’s Odyssey Rewritten

Emily Wilson: The First Woman to Translate Homer in English

• For four centuries, English readers believed they were reading Homer. But they were really reading the expectations of centuries of male translators.
• In 2017, Emily Wilson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, changed that. She published the first English translation of The Odyssey by a woman. From the first word, the difference was clear. Odysseus became “complicated”-smart, cunning, capable of loyalty and cruelty alike. Penelope was no passive figure; she was intelligent, strategic, and aware of the power dynamics around her. Enslaved women were called slaves, not “maids” or “servants.” Violence was shown as it happened, not softened.
• Wilson’s version feels sharper, less comforting, morally unsettled. It doesn’t tell readers so much how to judge, but lets the Greek speak. Her use of iambic pentameter gives the epic a rhythm that is both ancient and direct, bringing Homer to life without centuries of interpretation.
• For modern readers, Wilson revealed a truth long hidden: The Odyssey was never simple. It was never neat. And thanks to her, we can finally see it clearly.

Now here’s more of the story’s story that was rewritten.
It’s why I love a retelling of what history falsely told.
Women’s voices are always needed for truth telling reflections.
This is a story for our times.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Circe lives alone on an island. She is skilled, intelligent, self-sufficient. Men arrive at her door expecting hospitality and dominance. Instead, she gives them wine laced with magic and turns them into pigs.

For centuries, that transformation has been read as punishment. The dangerous woman. The emasculator. The seductress who strips men of power.

But look closer.

Circe does not hunt men. They come to her. They enter her space, consume what she offers, assume control. And suddenly they are revealed as what they already are—greedy, impulsive, ruled by appetite. The spell doesn’t create the pig. It exposes it.

What terrifies patriarchal storytelling is not that Circe is evil. It’s that she is autonomous. She lives without a husband. She commands knowledge traditionally coded as forbidden—herbalism, potions, transformation. She controls who stays human and who does not. She negotiates with Odysseus as an equal once he proves he cannot be easily subdued.

For women, Circe becomes a mirror.

She represents the fear society projects onto women who refuse submission. A woman with boundaries is called cold. A woman with power is called dangerous. A woman who refuses to soothe male ego is branded monstrous. “She turned him into a pig” becomes shorthand for “She took away his dominance.”

But there is another reading.

Circe is not destroying men. She is demanding accountability. She is the embodiment of consequence. Enter her world carelessly, and you will be transformed by it.

Saved from Women In World History’s post