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Description
“they set forth bowls brimful of wine, and poured libations to the immortal gods that are forever, and chiefest of all to the flashing-eyed daughter of Zeus.”
- The Odyssey, song 2, translated by A. T. Murray.
“then they set up mixing bowls, filling them brimful with wine, and poured to the gods immortal and everlasting but beyond all other gods they poured to Zeus' gray-eyed daughter.”
- The Odyssey, song 2, translated by Richmond Lattimore.

Let me ask you a question…
How does Athena’s eyes look?
What colour are they?

In one translation of the Odyssey, one will hear them described as “flashing” 48 times, and grey once. In another the script will be flipped, and she is now the “gray-eyed goddes” 57 times, with no mention of flashing. In a third translation, her eyes are grey and gleaming 3 times, and one finds oneself wondering what happened to the 57 times.

And the thing is… all these translations are correct.
It all comes down to the epithet “Glaukopis”.
Which in and of it self is a bit of a rabbit hole.

Some will say it comes from the word “glaux” meaning owl, and “ṓps” meaning eyes.
Which would suggest the meaning to be “Athena of the owl eyes”.

Others point to the word “glaukós”- they will say this means gleaming or greyish.
Herein the conflicting translations.

But the thing is, looking closer into the meaning of glaukós one will find that it, in addition to gleaming and bright, can mean “blue-green” or “blue-grey”, of eye colours it will generally mean light blue or grey.
I here ask where the blue and green went.

The closest one will find to the epithet in modern language is the medical term, “glaucoma”, which for the record, is in Norwegian called “grønn (green) stær”, because of the slight greenish tint found in the eyes of advanced cases.

There are in fact papers written by doctors about this. Mentioning the greenish tint, but pointing further to the Ancient Greek tendency to name diseases after animals, in the hope that the animal would either magically fight the disease, or the disease would somehow be transferred to the animal. In other words pointing back to the “glaux” meaning.

The thing is, I haven’t seen her described as owl eyed in any translations either.
Only grey, or flashing.

At some point this must have been a creative choice taken by someone.
I wonder why.

——————————————
*epithet - an extra “surname” given to a deity, in order to describe one of their strengths or properties.

Description
“they set forth bowls brimful of wine, and poured libations to the immortal gods that are forever, and chiefest of all to the flashing-eyed daughter of Zeus.”
- The Odyssey, song 2, translated by A. T. Murray.
“then they set up mixing bowls, filling them brimful with wine, and poured to the gods immortal and everlasting but beyond all other gods they poured to Zeus' gray-eyed daughter.”
- The Odyssey, song 2, translated by Richmond Lattimore.

Let me ask you a question…
How does Athena’s eyes look?
What colour are they?

In one translation of the Odyssey, one will hear them described as “flashing” 48 times, and grey once. In another the script will be flipped, and she is now the “gray-eyed goddes” 57 times, with no mention of flashing. In a third translation, her eyes are grey and gleaming 3 times, and one finds oneself wondering what happened to the 57 times.

And the thing is… all these translations are correct.
It all comes down to the epithet “Glaukopis”.
Which in and of it self is a bit of a rabbit hole.

Some will say it comes from the word “glaux” meaning owl, and “ṓps” meaning eyes.
Which would suggest the meaning to be “Athena of the owl eyes”.

Others point to the word “glaukós”- they will say this means gleaming or greyish.
Herein the conflicting translations.

But the thing is, looking closer into the meaning of glaukós one will find that it, in addition to gleaming and bright, can mean “blue-green” or “blue-grey”, of eye colours it will generally mean light blue or grey.
I here ask where the blue and green went.

The closest one will find to the epithet in modern language is the medical term, “glaucoma”, which for the record, is in Norwegian called “grønn (green) stær”, because of the slight greenish tint found in the eyes of advanced cases.

There are in fact papers written by doctors about this. Mentioning the greenish tint, but pointing further to the Ancient Greek tendency to name diseases after animals, in the hope that the animal would either magically fight the disease, or the disease would somehow be transferred to the animal. In other words pointing back to the “glaux” meaning.

The thing is, I haven’t seen her described as owl eyed in any translations either.
Only grey, or flashing.

At some point this must have been a creative choice taken by someone.
I wonder why.

——————————————
*epithet - an extra “surname” given to a deity, in order to describe one of their strengths or properties.