Reading "The Iliad" Books 1 and 2
With a group of colleagues, I am reading The Iliad , translated by Richmond Lattimore. Not having made any close comparisons, I think the Fagles translation is more direct and muscular, whereas the Lattimore is more fluid. Lattimore also uses a longer verse line than Fagles does. Lattimore opens with these lines: Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold 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 since that time when first there stood in division of conflict Atreus' son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus. "Hurled" in line three is a main verb, but I read it first as a participle modifying Achaians; that confusion does not seem productive, and I wonder if the ambiguity is in Homer. Lines 4 and 5 do not reproduce Homer's chiasmic "spoils for ...