ABSTRACT
Summary – This chapter presents the problems of the dichotomy between sovereign and subjects, and of the genesis of political power in Hobbes’s political theory as main criteria leading his translation work. They emerge as the cornerstones of those Hobbesian translation choices that are due to political intents and not imposed by metric or stylistic needs. Furthermore, the chapter analyses Homeric kingship and divine lexicons in order to show similarities and differences between the original Greek terms and their English replacements. It also contains a section devoted to the pivotal encyclopaedic value of the original Homeric poems in the Greek Dark Age, and takes into account the educative purposes of their translations in Hobbes’s intention. The comparison reveals the deep differences in ethical and political views between the original Iliad and Odyssey and their English version by Hobbes.
