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Homer

Iliad

Alexander Pope

 

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Iliad, trans. Hammond

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Iliad, trans. Lattimore

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Iliad, trans. Fitzgerald

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Iliad, trans. Fagles

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Translations of the Iliad

Over 200 translations of the Iliad have been published at one time or another. I count six major new ones in the past decade.

You can find at least three older translations into English for free downloading on the Internet. The oldest (1598-1611) is by George Chapman, a poet and playwright who is known today mainly for his translations of Homer. His Iliad has been called the masterpiece of his age for its poetic majesty. Keats was inspired by it to write "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer", a poem better known now than the translation. Today Chapman's work is still admired but considered somewhat lacking in scholarly accuracy.
 

Examples
First lines of the Iliad by five translators
 

Pope:
The Wrath of Peleus' Son, the direful Spring
Of all the Grecian Woes, O Goddess, sing!
That Wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy
     Reign
The Souls of mighty Chiefs untimely slain;
Whose Limbs unbury'd on the naked Shore
Devouring Dogs and hungry Vultures tore.
Since Great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the Sov'reign Doom, and such the 
      Will of Jove.
 

Butler:
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled....
 

Hammond:
Sing, goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus, the accursed anger that brought uncounted anguish on the Achaians and hurled down to Hades many mighty souls of heroes, making their bodies the prey to dogs and the birds' feasting, and this was the working of Zeus' will.
 

Lattimore:
Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son 
     Achilles
and its devastation, which put pains
     thousand-fold upon the Achaians,    
hurled in their multitudes to the house of
     Hades strong souls 
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the
     delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was
     accomplished....
 

Fagles:
Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' 
     son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans
     countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many
     sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies
     carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its
     end....
 

After that, the best-known of the older translations in the public domain (that is, free to copy) is the 1715 work by the poet Alexander Pope. Beautiful to read for the snappy rhyming couplets that Pope excels in. But, as Richard Bentley is quoted as saying in Johnson's Life of Pope, "It is a very pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." Nonetheless, it's the version that schoolchildren were fed for a couple of centuries.

You can find a very readable translation of the Iliad into prose by novelist Samuel Butler (1898) on numerous Internet sites, as well as in newly published books.

For a more modern prose translation, which you won't get free online but which you may find is smoother reading, you have a choice of two popular translations, both available from Penguin Classics. One is Emil V. Rieu's version of 1950, about which I know very little, except it is said to have set the standard for modern translations and is easy to read. The more recent is by Martin Hammond (1987). If I couldn't stand to read another line of poetry but wanted to refresh my memory of the story, Hammond's version would be my choice.

Richmond Lattimore's acclaimed translation in 1965-7 tries to keep the long lines of the original Greek poetry. Homer used dactyllic hexameter, which is a dum-da-da rhythm with six dums to the line, and Lattimore struggles to at least fit the six stresses into each line. He also tries to stick closely to the Greek text. The result is something that sounds more like what Homer's listeners heard but makes for slower reading.

Robert Fitzgerald's 1974 well-known translation for World's Classics uses shorter lines and a more fluid phrasing. It's generally a faster, easier read. However his use of the correct Greek form of characters' name (like Akhilleus for Achilles) is off-putting. 

Stanley Lombardo produced a very lively and colloquial version in 1990, using short lines that would be easier for a modern reader to perform aloud, just as ancient Greeks performed their longer-lined versions.

And then there's Robert Fagles' blank verse translation (1990) which many critics consider the best of the recent lot and which is very popular, judging by the number of copies I see around. It may not be the most literally accurate translation but its intensity and power may make reading it closer to the emotional experience of those who first heard it chanted a few thousand years ago.

— Eric

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