Friday, October 03, 2025
Bright-Eyed Athena
W. Beck, in Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos, Bd. 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982),
cols. 161-162, gave the probable meaning of γλαυκῶπις as "having bright or gleaming eyes."
As an epithet of Athena, γλαυκῶπις occurs 57 times in Homer's Odyssey.
In his translation of the Odyssey, Richmond Lattimore invariably rendered the formula as "gray-eyed Athene." Emily Wilson in her translation opted not for uniformity, but for variety. In the first book, the epithet occurs 8 times. Wilson translated these 8 occurrences as follows: 44 ("Athena looked at him steadily"), 80 ("Athena's eyes lit up"), 156 (epithet omitted), 178 ("Athena's clear bright eyes met his"), 221 ("Athena looked at him with sparkling eyes"), 314 ("Athena met his gaze"), 319 ("the owl-eyed goddess"), 364 (epithet omitted).
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In his translation of the Odyssey, Richmond Lattimore invariably rendered the formula as "gray-eyed Athene." Emily Wilson in her translation opted not for uniformity, but for variety. In the first book, the epithet occurs 8 times. Wilson translated these 8 occurrences as follows: 44 ("Athena looked at him steadily"), 80 ("Athena's eyes lit up"), 156 (epithet omitted), 178 ("Athena's clear bright eyes met his"), 221 ("Athena looked at him with sparkling eyes"), 314 ("Athena met his gaze"), 319 ("the owl-eyed goddess"), 364 (epithet omitted).
