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ON TRANSLATING THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH

by

Robert Lawrence Scott

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1994

ABSTRACT
ON TRANSLATING THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH
by

Robert Lawrence Scott

A wide range of English versions of the Iliad are examined
in order to a) distinguish good translations from bad, b)
identify what qualities various forms have to offer,

c) bring before the public eye some praiseworthy but nearly-
forgotten translations, and d) provide a basis for
recommendations regarding future translations of the Iliad.
The Appendix provides an annotated list of English Iliads.
Every common form of verse and prose has yielded good
translations. In rhymed verse versions, mostly early, the
tendency is away from the letter of the original, toward
spirit, invention, and entertainment. The best example is
Denham's 1668 "Sarpedon's Speech to Glaucus in the 12th of
Homer." Blank verse versions follow in time, for the most
part, rhymed versions, and show a tendency back toward the
letter of the original, although the best are also
interesting rhythmically and poetically. The best example
is an anonymous "Shield of Achilles" (1875). Prose versions
are the logical conclusion of a movement away from metrical
and other constraints, with tendencies toward the letter of
the original and toward naturalness of diction and syntax.
The best is Martin Hammond’s 1987 complete Iliad, having

those qualities plus the best portion of Homer’s spirit.

The English hexameter is an attempt to imitate the line of
Homer, whether by accent or quantity. The best are William
Cranston Lawton’s excerpts (1893) in accentuals, and Robert
Bridges’ "Priam and Achilles" (1916) in quantitatives. In
recent works of various non-prose types, the movement is
toward looser rhythms and looser adherence to the letter of
the original--in the latter respect coming full circle again
to the ways of Chapman and Pope. The best versions of the
Iliad in the near future are likely to be short, loose, and
free. They will also be noble, vigorous, clear, and
emotional. The best recent example in these respects is the

work of Christopher Logue (1959 through 1991).

for Tina

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the members of my committee for their
help, but especially Prof. M. Teresa Tavormina for guiding
me through the early stages of the doctoral program, and
Prof. William Whallon for guiding me through this last
stage. I would also like to thank the staff of the Inter—
Library Loan department at the library of Michigan State
University for service beyond reasonable expectations. I
would especially like to thank my parents for the use of
their fire-proof box and for other support less tangible but
no less sturdy. Most of all I would like to thank my wife
for her aid in ways too many and too valuable to be

expressed fully here.

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter One
Part One: On Translating Literature . . . . . . . . 6

Part Two: On Translating Homer . . . . . . . . . . 21

Part Three: Criteria for Judging
Translations of the Iliad . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Chapter TWo: Heroic Couplets, Ballad-Measures,

and Other Rhyming Translations . . . . . . . . 40
Chapter Three: Blank Verse Translations

(pre—Twentieth Century) . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Chapter Four: Prose Translations . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Chapter Five: Hexameter Translations . . . . . . . . . 139

Chapter Six: Almost Prose and Mostly Prose:

Translations in the Late Twentieth Century . 208
Chapter Seven: Repetition of Parts of
Iliad 5.720-67 at 8.381-96 . . . . . . . . . 258
Chapter Eight
Part One: Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Part Two: Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Appendix: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
List of References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Bibliography of Bibliographies . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

vi

 

 

On Translating the Iliad

*Introduction*

The Iliad's premier place in Western literature can
hardly be denied, and the esteem in which it is held is
confirmed by the staggering number of Iliad translations.
In English alone, there are at least 60 complete versions,
and partial versions bring the number up past 200.

The first translation of the Iliad in English was
published in 1581; from 1660 on there has been one or more
in almost every decade; and by the 1800’s there were several
in each decade. The twentieth century has seen its share as
well, the last two published in 1990. We have seen heroic
couplets, blank verse, ballad-measure, hexameters (both
accentual and quantitative), and prose, with variations on
each form. We have seen free translations and literal, and
diction that is by turns formal and colloquial, archaic and
modern. Do we need any more translations? Yes, absolutely;
our mostly Greekless and ever-changing society will benefit
from continually renewed efforts to keep Homer alive for us.
What sort of translation, then, will be most useful, and
most appreciated?

This dissertation examines a wide range of English
Iliads, especially those not thoroughly discussed elsewhere,
in order to a) distinguish good translations from bad, b)
identify what qualities various forms of verse and prose

have to offer, c) reintroduce some praiseworthy but nearly-

1

 

2
forgotten translations, and d) provide a basis for
recommendations regarding future translations of the Iliad.
In addition, the Appendix provides an annotated list of
English translations of the Iliad, one more exhaustive than

any to date, as an aid to further work in this area.

The first chapter of this dissertation has three parts.
Part One reviews ideas on translating literature,
concentrating on ideas that will prove useful in evaluating
translations. Part Two is a brief survey of ideas on
translating Homer, including discussions of how to handle
repetitions, what verse form to use, and so forth, with
special attention paid to the words and ideas of Matthew
Arnold, as well as to subsequent reactions to them. The
third part describes the criteria for judgment--based in
large part on the previous discussions--to be used in
subsequent chapters.

The second chapter examines rhyming translations, which
constitute the great majority of early Iliads in English.
Many of those examined here are rather obscure, many of them
partial. I have declined to discuss the translations of
Chapman, Pope, and some others, as they have been covered
sufficiently elsewhere (see Appendix).

The third chapter examines blank verse translations,
which constitute the second great wave of English Iliads.

Chapter Four covers the third great wave, translations in

prose.

3

Chapter Five is on the English hexameter; before
examining several Iliads, it surveys the history of the
English hexameter in theory and practice.

The sixth chapter covers various verse translations (and
one amalgam of prose and verse) from the second half of the
twentieth century--some obscure and some not. These
versions reflect the leaning of much twentieth-century
poetry: away from rigid meters, toward looser rhythms that
are not quite prose.

Chapter Seven examines the ways that various translations
handle a particular sixteen-line repetition.

The eighth chapter suggests, based on where English
translations of the Iliad have been, where English
translations of the Iliad should go in the near future.
This is followed by my own translation of a portion of the
Iliad.

The Appendix is an annotated list of Iliad translations

in English of more than a few lines.

My research has been aided greatly at several points by
the work of those who have gone before me. Two
dissertations have been helpful: Evelyn Steel Little's 1936
dissertation led me to many translations and some secondary
sources; John M. Crossett's 1958 dissertation also led me to
several secondary sources, but was especially useful in
sparing me the work of covering six important translations--

those of Chapman, Pope, Cowper, Lang-Leaf-Myers, Butler,

4

and Lattimore, so that I might concentrate on other works,
often less well-known. Several bibliographies of Homer
translations have been helpful, including all those listed
in the bibliography of bibliographies at the end of this
dissertation, but especially those by Foster and Bush. In
gathering reviews of the various translations, the Book
W. W. and BMW
Egziggig31_L1§§1§§gze were helpful for twentieth-century
works. For nineteenth-century reviews, Poole’s Index to
£gzig§19al_Litgratgrg was immensely helpful, and also led me

to some obscure partial translations. For eighteenth-

century reviews, Forster's Index to Book Reviews in England
1252-1775 (Southern Illinois U P, 1990) was most helpful.

LLAnn§§_pnilglggigg§ also provided several review citations

from classical journals. As for the history of ideas of
translation, T. R. Steiner's English Translation Theory
1659-1800 helped get me started, and provided several useful
primary texts. 0n Translation, edited by Reuben Brower,
contains a very helpful bibliography of historical works on
translation.

In each area though--primary works, reviews, and theory--
a few of the best works I simply stumbled across; by
searching in the electronic catalogues of the libraries of
Michigan State University and the University of Michigan,
and the Library of (the State of) Michigan, as well as the
On-Line Library Catalog (OCLC); and also by continually

picking up and leafing through the volumes around me, in

5
likely places in library stacks. I know I have missed some

good material, simply because I found so much by accident.

I could not hope to examine here each translation in its
entirety. Therefore I have chosen several passages on which
to concentrate, from books 1, 6, 16, and 24 of the Iliad. I
have tried to provide a variety of types of passages, to
test the ability of the various translators to handle
different modes. There are, to be sure, countless other
choices that could have been made. Many of those that I
chose are especially interesting for their emotion or other
strong aspect, but some are rather ordinary, because these,
too, must be translated effectively.

I have not tried to examine all of the passages with
every translation discussed; instead I have picked and
chosen as seemed most interesting and enlightening at the
moment. The "Comparison" sections (except in one case)
concentrate on the end of book 16--The Death of Patroclus--
as it provides several different modes within the space of
50 lines, and because I have chosen that passage for my own
translation at the end of Chapter Eight.

When discussing partial versions, I have often had to
work with passages outside of books 1, 6, 16, and 24, simply

because the partial versions do not extend to those books.

*Chapter One*

Part One: On Translating Literature

1. A translation must give the words of the original.

2. A translation must give the ideas of the original.

3. A translation should read like an original work.

4. A translation should read like a translation.

5. A translation should reflect the style of the original.

6. A translation should possess the style of the translator.

7. A translation should read as a contemporary of the
original.

8. A translation should read as a contemporary of the
translator.

9. A translation may add to or omit from the original.

10. A translation may never add to or omit from the
original.
11. A translation of verse should be in prose.
12. A translation of verse should be in verse.
Theodore Savory, The Art of Translation

The work of translation is indeed a tricky business. No
one--and everyone--knows how to do it best. Everyone agrees
that every translation will be imperfect, yet critics (often
translators themselves) do not hesitate to call this
translation or that one more imperfect, as it were, than it
ought to be.

No single translation--if it receives critical notice at
all--is free from negative criticism, but most also manage
to reap at least some praise. Granted, the field of
literary criticism has always had difficulties with
agreement, concerned as it is with value judgments rather
than empirical facts. But criticism of translations seems
especially prone to disagreement, with an inordinate
Percentage of the 180 degree variety--the sort of thing that

encourages undergraduates and others not confirmed in the

7
faith to scratch their heads and say of such judgments,
"Well, after all, they are only opinions. One must be as
good as another."

Translation has at times been disparaged as a "necessary
evil" (e.g., Wellard 128), at best a sort of craftwork as
opposed to high art, yet it is also acknowledged to be
tremendously difficult. One might say translation is as
difficult as the craft of a juggler who, in an attempt to
please the crowd, his peers, and himself, hurls aloft
articles of various and unusual sizes and shapes--here a
small round ball, an indian club, and a hoop, there a
flaming baton, a meat cleaver, and a vacuum cleaner--doomed
to abject failure at the task of keeping his objects aloft
simultaneously; risking humiliation, derision, and even
physical harm, he is certain to drop at least one, or even
to find them all crashing to the ground unless he will leave
on the ground several of the objects while keeping the
others aloft--thereby drawing criticism anyway, though
perhaps less severe. In the same way the translator (of
poetry especially) faces the impossible task of handling at
one time various conflicting aspects of two different
languages: rhythm and meter, literal meaning, deeper
meaning, idiom, and so forth. If indeed he tries to handle
them all, he is certain to please no one, yet if he chooses
to lay aside certain aspects, sacrificing them for the good

of the whole work, he must face the wrath and invective of

8
every advocate of those aspects he laid aside. And every

aspect has its advocates.

The ways of translating are many, but we can start to
examine them by identifying polar opposites and assuming a
myriad of hybrid possibilities between them. The two poles
are commonly called "free" translation on the one side, and
"literal" on the other. The former is sometimes called
"liberal" translation, the latter "word for word" or "close"
(one might say "conservative," although I have not seen it).
Higham & Bowra refer to "Modernists" and "Hellenizers"
(lxv),‘<corresponding roughly to the previous categories,
and pointing toward the categories of J. P. Postgate,
"prospective" and "retrospective." According to Postgate,
in a prospective work "care is for the copy rather than the
original," whereas the purpose of a retrospective
translation is "to impart a knowledge of an original to
those to whom it would otherwise be unknown" (22). The two
poles can in this way be seen to have entirely different
reasons for existence, and different methods--with the
implication that each has its place. In contrast, when we
go back to the terms "free" and "literal," the implication
is that only one way is right.

Divide them how we may, the translators from each camp

are certainly trying to produce the best possible

lRegarding, of course, translators of classical Greek.

 

9
translations. They differ mainly on the surest path to the
goal, just as political liberals and conservatives are
working toward the same goal (the best possible America)

while they differ widely on the preferred means to that end.

The liberal way of translation has roots that are ancient
and illustrious.2 Cicero and Horace both made statements,
in the course of longer dissertations on oratory and poetry,
that were taken up by later writers as proof of their
advocacy of free translation. Cicero, in his "De Optimo
Genere Oratorum," said:

nec converti ut interpres, sed ut orator, sententiis
isdem et earum formis tamquam figuris, verbis ad
nostram consuetudinem aptis. In quibus non verbum pro
verbo necesse habui reddere, sed genus omne verborum
vimque servavi.

(I did not translate [two Greek orators] as an
interpreter, but as an orator, keeping the same ideas
and the forms, or as one might say, the "figures" of
thought, but in language which conforms to our usage.
And in so doing, I did not hold it necessary to render

 

2The brief survey in Part One is intended to highlight
certain points of argument, not to provide a comprehensive
survey of the history of ideas on translation. The body of
literature on translation is large and growing. An exhaustive
survey is neither necessary nor desirable. For readers who
wish to fill in some gaps, though, I suggest the following:

For Chaucerian and other medieval translation theory, see
Machan, and Ellis (1989 & 1991).

For eighteenth-century translation theory, see T.
Steiner.

For German translation theory, see Lefevere.

For a wider-ranging anthology on translation, see Schulte
& Biguenet.

For a survey of more recent theory, see G. Steiner.

For an anthology of other work on translation, see
Arrowsmith & Shattuck.

 

 

10

word for word, but I preserved the general style and
force of the language. [365])3

Horace, in "Ars Poetica," said:

Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus
Interpres.

("Nor will you as faithful translator render word for
word." [B.Q. Morgan, in Brower 274])

One early important English voice to come down on the
side of free translation is George Chapman’s. Citing Horace
as an authority, Chapman argues in the preface to the 1611
edition of his Iliad that word-for-word translation is
”pedanticall and absurd" (17). The translator should
concentrate on "the materiall things themselves"--that is,
the ideas behind the words.

Chapman is especially concerned that the translator
preserve the spirit of the original. He says a good
translation cannot rely on a mechanical craft, or "Art" (in
the older sense of the term, as a process of the intellect
rather than the spirit). His idea of a good translation is
closer to art in the more modern sense of the word, having
to do with the creation or expression of beauty, and relying

to some degree on inspiration. A successful translator, he

 

3I am not unaware of the irony involved in using a
translation to talk about translation. Reasonably competent
renderings of Cicero and Horace will serve the purpose here,
though. Even if I am still begging the question of what is a
”reasonably'competent.rendering," it is clear that translating
and reading for utilitarian purposes is less complicated and
less risky than translating and reading a work of literature
as art.

 

 

11
says, will "search [the original author’s] deepe and
treasurous hart" (10).
The first book-length treatise in English on the subject
of translation was Alexander Fraser Tytler's Essay on the

EIinginlg§_gfi_ngn§13§19n (1797). He sets down three rules:
1. That the translation should give a complete

transcript of the ideas of the original work.

2. That the style and manner of writing should be of
the same character with that of the original.

3. That the translation should have all the ease of
original composition. (15)

In working toward this "complete transcript of ideas,"
Tytler advocates something other than an always-literal
translation. One may improve, add to, or subtract from the
original as necessary, because "to imitate the obscurity or
ambiguity of the original, is a fault" (31). One may add to
the original to strengthen the idea, or subtract from it to
avoid redundancy. One may do these things, says Tytler, but
only with caution.' Any addition should have a direct
connection, and any subtraction should be of accessory
matter, not principal. The essential meaning of the
original, in other words, should always be maintained.

On rule #2, regarding the imitation of style and manner,
Tytler imposes limitations. "This imitation (of style and
manner) must always be regulated by the nature or genius of
the languages of the original and of the translation" (168-
69). Latin and Greek allow for "inversions" of syntax, for

example, allowing freer play for the needs of sound and

rhythm; yet in English such inversions are often impossible,

 

 

12

or at best awkward. Tytler's general approach to rule #2
echoes an idea sounded by Dryden and others: "a translator
ought always to figure to himself, in what manner the
original author would have expressed himself, if he had
written in the language of the translation" (189).

Regarding the third rule (the translation should have the
"ease of original composition"), Tytler says this is the
hardest of all to achieve, especially regarding the
translation of idiom. The best method is to find a
corresponding idiom in the new language. If no
corresponding idiom is available, the translator should not

fall to the temptation to translate the idiom literally, but

 

should merely express the sense of the idiom plainly.
Tytler admits that sometimes one of the three rules must
be sacrificed (i.e., no translation will be perfect), but
admonishes the translator always to consider the order of
importance: sense first, manner next, and ease last.
Combining the ideas of Chapman and Tytler, we get a
hierarchy where the spirit and sense of the original are at
the top, other aspects are below them, and the literal word
is somewhere far down the list. A succinct expression of
this position is provided by Edward Fitzgerald (1859):
"Better a live sparrow than a stuffed eagle" (qtd. in Brower

276) .‘

‘Also: "The live Dog better than the dead Lion" (qtd. in
Brower 277).

13
On the side of literal translation, Robert Browning sets

the limit at the far right. In the preface to his Agamemngn

he argues for a truly literal translation, even at the

expense of other aspects:

If, because of the immense fame of the following
Tragedy, I wished to acquaint myself with it, and could
only do so by the help of a translator, I should
require him to be literal at every cost save that of
absolute violence to our language. The use of certain
allowable constructions which, happening to be out of
daily favor, are all the more appropriate to archaic
workmanship, is no violence: but I would be tolerant
. . . of even a clumsy attempt to furnish me with the
very turn of each phrase in as Greek a fashion as
English will bear. . . . (830)

Browning's theory is reiterated in the diary of John
Addington Symonds:
[A translation] ought to be absolutely literal, with
exact rendering of words, and words placed in the order
of the original. Only a rendering of this sort gives

any real insight into the original. (qtd. in Selver
26)

Such a severe position is unusual; most arguments on the
literal side are actually fairly moderate.

Even so, to read Alexander Pope’s 1715 preface to his
version of the Iliad, one would hardly know it was the same
author as he who wrote the brilliant yet famously unhomeric
translation:

It is the first grand duty of an interpreter to give
his author entire and gnmaimed: and for the rest, the

diction and W are his proper province.
since these must be his own, but the others he is to
take as he finds them. (42)

Pope claims that one should neither be too literal nor fall

into "rash paraphrase." Yet his ideas continually fall on

14
the conservative side of translation:5 "If there be
sometimes a darkness, there is often a light in antiquity,
which nothing better preserves than a version almost
literal" (42). Take no more "liberties" than are necessary,
he advises. Follow the original in tone--go high where it
is high, low where low. Pope does, however, sound at one
point more like Pope-the-actual-translator-of—the-Iliad,
asserting that "the fire of the poem" should be the
translator’s first priority-—especially because that fire is
the easiest component to "extinguish" inadvertently.
It is with Pope's translation in view that William Cowper
argues for a closer translation: "The matter found in me
. . . is found in Homer, and . . . the matter not found in
me . . . is found only in Mr. Pope. I have omitted nothing;
I have invented nothing" (viii). "Fidelity is indeed of the
very essence of translation," continues Cowper. If the
translator loses the sense of the original, his work is an
”imitation" or a "paraphrase" but not a genuine translation.
Cowper actually argues for a moderate position:

The free and the close translation have, each, their

advocates. But inconveniences belong to both. The

former can hardly be true to the original author's

style and manner, and the latter is apt to be servile.

The one loses his peculiarities, and the other his

spirit. Were it possible, therefore, to find an exact

medium, a manner so close that it should let slip

nothing of the text, nor mingle any thing extraneous

with it, and at the same time so free as to have an air

of originality, this seems precisely the mode in which
an author might be best rendered. (viii)

i ’While his translation continually falls on the free
8 de.

15
As difficult as it may seem, says Cowper, this is the goal
we must strive for.

The middle way is also argued by John Dryden in the
preface to his translation of Ovid's EpistTes (1680). For
Dryden the ”three heads" of translation are metaphrase,
paraphrase, and imitation. Metaphrase is simply word-for—
word translation. Clearly, says Dryden, the "verbal copier"
will get tangled in too many difficulties to produce good
literature: "Tis much like dancing on ropes with fettered
legs" (qtd. in T. Steiner 69). One might be cautious enough
in such a situation to manage not to fall, but the act will
be without grace. And therefore: "Tis but a foolish task;
for no sober man would put himself into a danger for the
applause of escaping without breaking his neck."

The opposite way, imitation, goes beyond both words and
sense of the original, as the translator is "taking only
some general hints from the original, to run division on the
groundwork, as he pleases" (68). This, says Dryden, might
gain some renown for the imitator, but is not likely to do
much for "the memory and reputation of the dead."

Imitators, he says, base their position on an argument
against literal translation. But who, asks Dryden, defends
literal translation?6

Instead, Dryden argues for a middle way, which he labels

paraphrase (using the term somewhat differently from the way

6Browning, of course, but much later.

16
others have, where it most often refers to very free
versions). At the boundary on the conservative side of
paraphrase, the translator lets go of the words of the
original, but follows closely the sense. The liberal
boundary of paraphrase is where the sense is "amplified but
not altered" (68). At no point should a paraphrase abandon
the sense of the original. One should preserve an
interesting turn of expression if the new language will bear
it gracefully, but if not, "vary but the dress, not to alter
or destroy the substance." In other words, where possible
follow the original closely; where not, stay within clear
sight of it. "The sense of an author . . . is to be sacred

and inviolable."

Recent decades have brought many studies of translation
in many directions. The question of free vs. literal
translation still looms, as always, and occasionally the
voices are extreme.

C. Day-Lewis (1970), for example, argues for free
translation on the basis that only then can the translator
truly control the material. One of the paradoxes of
translating poetry, he says, is that it cannot be "faithful
translation unless it is in some sense an original poem"
(4). The translator must interpret the original in his own
language--the medium in which he or she works best. "He has

to melt down, and then refashion" (19).

17
A more moderate position is shown by Robert Fagles,
author of the most recent translation of the ITiad (1990):

Obviously at a far remove from Homer, in this
translation I have tried to find a middle ground (and
not a no man's land, if I can help it) between the
features of his performance and the expectations of a
contemporary reader. Not a line-for-line translation,
my version of the TTTQQ is, I hope, neither so literal
in rendering Homer's language as to cramp and distort
my own-~though I want to convey as much of what he says
as possible--nor so literary as to brake his energy,
his forward drive--though I want my work to be
literate, with any luck. For the more literal approach
would seem to be too little English, and the more
literary seems too little Greek. I have tried to find
a cross between the two, a modern English Homer. (x)

As in politics, so in translation: the middle way is likely
to please the greatest numbers, though it be but a
compromise.

Many studies in the last few decades have side-stepped
the issue of free vs. literal, and have instead examined the
very process of translation. For example, linguist Werner
Winter (1961) outlines a schema to help demystify the
translation process and order priorities. "There is no
completely exact translation," he says, and therefore we
must make difficult but logical choices:

In order to achieve maximum equivalence, we should
match the following properties of the original in the

order indicated by the arrows:

I. Semantic: (a) direct; a (b) associative.
l

II. Formal: (1) overt; (2) distributional;
i (a) metre; i (a) peak position;
(b) rhyme; (b) position in specific
lines, etc.
(c) sound. (c) arrangement in

specific order.

18
If a sacrifice has to be made, maintain (a) over (b),
(b) over (c), etc. Usually, in an arrangement of rigid
form, lower ranking positions will have to be
neglected. (76-77)

Another way to analyze translation is to break down the
process itself, as in poet Robert Bly’s booklet The 8 Stages
g£_T;gn§ngign (1983). Bly starts with a word-for-word
translation, but only as a first step. The next step is to
pull back and ask "What does the poem mean?" and then adjust
the translation accordingly. Step three is a return to the
literal version: Where did it lose the meanings (those that
were found in step 2)? Get these places into real English,
says Bly. Step four is to shape the words into American
language--spoken language. Step five: catch the tone, and
the mood, with the ear. Step six: pay attention to sound.
Step seven: let someone else read the translated poem--that
is, someone born into the original language.7 Step eight:
final adjustments.

Each of these recent approaches tries, in its own way, to
handle the various aspects of the original argued for
previously by Tytler, Browning, Pope, Cowper, and Dryden--
with the notable exception of Chapman's "spirit." Both
approaches risk the appearance of oversimplification, as
though cookbook methods could produce quality translation.

They overemphasize the craft-like nature of translation, and

neglect the creative aspect. Of course the translation of

7This of course would be a problem in translating Homer.

19
literature is not this simple, as no single recipe can
guarantee a perfect result.

A more fruitful analytic direction is the categorizing
and defining of types, with the implication that each type
has its own requirements and possibilities. Dryden (above)
identified three types of translation, but refused to grant
legitimacy to more than one. Postgate (above) identified
two types, each legitimate, each with its own relation to
the original. Burton Raffel, in The Art of Translating
2933;! (1988), works a twist on the previous categories of
Dryden and Postgate by defining translations in terms of
their intended audience. He comes up with four categories:

1. {expel translation, aimed primarily at scholars and
those taught by scholars, largely for scholarly rather

than literary purposes;

2. ingerpretive translation, aimed primarily at a
general audience which reads for literary reasons;

3. egpegeiye (or "free") translation, aimed not simply
at those who read for literary reasons, but at those
who usually prefer to read something, anything, new
rather than anything old;

4. 1mi§ative translation, which in plain truth I think
just barely translation at all; it is aimed at an
audience which wants the work of the particular
translator rather than the work of the original poet;
Robert Lowell's accurately titled volume Imieetions is
the model of this type of translation in our time.
(110-11)

Each of the four categories has a different purpose along
with its special audience; each has different criteria for
success. Here the argument of free vs. literal is rendered

moot; the translator's choices in this and other matters

20
depend in large part on his intended audience and his
reasons for translating.

If translating literature is indeed a juggling act, then
the performer must decide which ball to pick up first
(Browning's literal word? Chapman's spirit? Dryden's sense?
Tytler’s style and manner?), which to pick up next, and
which to leave on the ground. Raffel’s categories
acknowledge that every ball will be used at some point
during the circus, by one performer or another; different

acts for different crowds.

Part Two: On Translating Homer
With reference to this business of rendering Homer in
another tongue, I have involuntarily conceived of the poem
as a fortress high-walled and impregnable, and of the open
space around as covered with the dead bodies of his
translators, who have perished in their gallant but
unsuccessful efforts to scale the walls.

William E. Gladstone, qtd.
on o uarte eview

The long succession of names of those who have tried and
at least partly failed at translating Homer reminds one of
the sort of fairy tale where a fair maiden’s hand can be won
only by the accomplishment of some nearly impossible task
(though the task may appear tantalizingly easy to would-be
champions), such as chopping down an enchanted tree that
grows with each hack of the blade. The penalty for failure
is death, of course, at the hands of the royal executioner,
but the prize is so beautiful (and the potential for fame
and glory so great) that all the best from the surrounding
countryside try their hands--and fail. Inevitably, when the
job appears hopeless, some unlikely fellow strides into town
and--through unconventional rather than conventional means--
that is, through ingenuity rather than brute force--manages
to fell the tree. He gets the girl, the glory, and the
admiration of the king.

We are still waiting. Those who have tested themselves
against the Iliad are legion in number and often impressive
in stature, and each has been cut down--to confuse the

metaphor--sooner or later, by peers or by critics or by an

21

22
indifferent public. Who will stride in unexpectedly and
pass the test of Homer, satisfying not just the king, but

all his court, and the commonfolk too?

The test has not been passed, but not for lack of advice.
In previous centuries, when the discussion turned from
translation in general to translating Homer specifically,
the problem as many saw it was what to do with the epithets
and other repetitions. The epithets, in addition to being
repetitious, often appeared ill-suited to the situation at
hand. And the longer repetitions were, well, repetitious,
and therefore not very interesting. No man of letters cared
to say outright that these things were actually BAD. One
simply did not (and does not) call Homer BAD. But what
should be done with these troublesome curiosities?

In the days of Chapman, Pope, et al. oral-formulaic
theory was unknown, and it is easy to chuckle or sneer at
the attempts of these early critics and poets to come to
grips with what could only appear to be wrinkles in the
fabric of the greatest of all literary works. We must
remember, though, that we see these phenomena differently
only by standing on the shoulders of such giants as Parry
and Lord. And even from this lofty vantage-point we still
disagree on how best to handle them.

Pope wrestles at length with the related problems of
translating the Homeric epithets and dealing with the

repetitions. Some of the epithets, says Pope, sound fine in

23
English; some are familiar to us already, while others can
be translated with a single word. As for the remainder, the
translator should avoid awkwardness by the use of
circumlocution in place of the epithet. For example
eivoaiovkkoc yields "leaf-shaking" (mountain) which Pope
considers ridiculous in English. Instead he suggests "the
lofty mountain shakes his waving wood" (44). In another
example, regarding the epithet éxnfiékoc ("far—shooting") for
Apollo, Pope says:
[It] is capable of two explications; one literal, in
respect of the darts and bow, the ensign of that god;
the other allegorical, with regard to the rays of the
sun; therefore, in such places where Apollo is
represented as a god in person, I would use the former
interpretation; and where the effects of the sun are
described, I would make choice of the latter. (44)
This is, then, one way that the original should be improved:
"Upon the whole, it will be necessary to avoid that
perpetual repetition of the same epithets which we find in
Homer" (44).

As for other repetitions, Pope says they should be
maintained wherever a change might inadvertently suggest
insolence, such as where a messenger repeats the words of
his lord. As for the rest, "one may vary the expression"
(44) wherever the repetitions are not separated by a
sufficiently large amount of text.

Cowper addresses similar problems of translating Homer,
choosing at each step to remain reasonably close to the

original. All epithets found in Homer are used in his

translation, he says in his preface, either as epithets or

 

 

24
”melted into the context" (xi) (much as Pope did, as a
matter of fact). Each is used at least once, but not
repeated as often as in Homer. He usually follows the
Homeric name-with-patronymic, which Cowper calls "a
ceremonial," so as to follow Homer's "manner" as closely as
possible. In the same way he follows Homer by always using
a full line to introduce a speaker, no matter how short the
speech.

Tytler also discusses Homer's epithets, which he says
"are often nothing more than mere expletives" (56). They
are true to character, he says, but often appear to have
been tossed in inappropriately to the situation. And so a
good translation will leave out the epithets except where

appropriate.

In 1831 John Wilson wrote a series of essays for
‘w ' a 'ne.8 Entitled "Homer and His

Translators," the essays do not put forth a series of
principles for translating Homer; instead Wilson looks at
several translations, examining each closely and comparing
them at key passages. The first five of the seven essays
deal with the Iliad, the last two with the Odyssey.

Wilson values accuracy and poetic value above all other

considerations. Absolute word-for-word correlation is not

 

‘Ostensibly reviewing Sotheby's Iliad, the essays also
examine the well-known Iliads in English up to that time,
those of Chapman, Dryden, Pope, and Cowper, as well as some
others to a lesser extent.

25

necessary, of course, but the translation should convey the
same idea, the same meaning, portray the same action or
picture, as Homer's original. Where Homer says of Apollo:
b 6' ii: vvxfi éocxéc'
Wilson asks the reader "What effect does it produce on your
imagination?" (11). He expects a translation to produce the
same. Chapman gets it right; he says:

Like the night he ranged the host.

Pope, on the other hand, misses completely:

Breathing revenge, a sudden night he spread,
And loomy darkness roll'd around his head.

Tickel misses "idiotically":

In clouds he flew, conceal'd from mortal sight.
while Cowper, in this case, is "best of all":

Like night he came;
and Sotheby is "not as good as Cowper, only because not
literally Homer":

As the God descended, dark as night.

In another passage, where an angry Achilles debates
whether to kill Agamemnon or to check his rage, Wilson shows
that fidelity to the literal word is not his only criterion
of judgment; the translation must also be itself good
poetry.9 Dryden's version, at this point, says Wilson, is

"vigorous" (17). Pope's version is "very fine. It flows

 

9It is not my intention here to enter the fray over the
question of what is or is not good poetry, but only to
demonstrate that Wilson looked for it in any translation of
Homer.

26
freely, and has few faults, except that it is somewhat too
figurative" (18). Sotheby's translation at this point
Wilson calls "admirable," except for the last line of the
passage: "‘As from her eyes the living lightning flew,’ is
a sorry substitute in its meretricious glitter, for 6ecvm 6%
oi boos odavflev" (18).

Wilson thought that a good translation should follow
Homer in every possible way, not just in literal meaning.
Here Dryden "wilfully violates throughout both the style and
the spirit of Homer," there Sotheby "loses little either of
the style or sense of Homer." It seems that Wilson is
asking the impossible; in fact he admits, readily, that no
translation of Homer will match the original. Each of the
translators succeeds for a line here or a few lines there,
but no one holds up to Wilson's stiff criteria at all

points.

Matthew Arnold's series of lectures "On Translating
Homer" (published 1861) are probably the most famous and
most influential words spoken or written on the subject.

The most important of these words describe four qualities
that Arnold said are eTways found in Homer, and which,
therefore, a translator of Homer must follow to be
successful:

1) ”he is eminently rapid";

27
2) "he is eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution
of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in
his syntax and in his words";
3) ”he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his
thought, that is, in his matter and ideas";
4) "he is eminently noble." (102)

Much of the rest of the lectures is taken up with
expanding and explaining these ideas at the expense of
previous translators. He dismisses the blank verse of
Cowper for not being rapid enough. He dismisses Pope's
version for lack of plainness and directness in style. He
dismisses Chapman’s for being fanciful rather than plain and
direct in ideas. And he dismisses F. W. Newman's ballad-
measure version at length for its lack of "nobleness."

Arnold closes out the series of lectures with a few
"practical suggestions" to help the potential translator
comply with his "four grand requirements." Regarding
possible meters for translating Homer, for "the grand style"
that Homer requires, Arnold immediately discards the ballad
meter, leaving only three possibilities: the ten-syllable
couplet, heroic blank verse, and one other not yet
disclosed.

The couplet he dismisses for two reasons regarding the
nature of rhyme: rhyming creates a difficulty in finding
the right words; but more importantly, rhyming tends to link
lines that should not be linked in a translation of Homer.

In the original Homer finishes a line, forgets it (so to

28

speak), and rushes away with another. The couplet,
according to Arnold, all too often keeps the reader looking
back to the previous line, when he should be hurrying forth.
The next possibility, blank verse, is too slow for
translating Homer, says Arnold. It works fine for Milton,
but Milton's great epic poem was all condensation, fullness,
self-constraint, "a laborious and condensed fullness" (145).
Homer, on the other hand, always works with a "flowing and
abounding ease" that cannot show through in a ponderous
blank verse. Better, says Arnold, is a third choice, the
English hexameter, the closest thing we have to Homer’s own
meter.lo

Arnold's next "practical suggestion" is the use of "a
loose and idiomatic grammar" (153). This style, he says,
"assures plainness and naturalness." This is what Homer
did, and so this is what the translator should do.
Regarding diction, the translator should use idiomatic
expressions to remain "perfectly simple and free from
artificiality" (155), just as Homer's own diction is.

Regarding his dictum of plainness and directness in
thought, Arnold thought it better to sacrifice "verbal
fidelity to [the] original" than to risk "an odd and
unnatural effect" (157-58) from trying to translate too

literally. The double-epithet, for example, should never be

 

10For more on Arnold’s views regarding the hexameter, see
Chapter Five.

29
rendered so awkwardly as to draw the reader's attention to
the words themselves, away from the sense of the epithet.
As for his dictum of nobleness, Arnold states that no
rules can be given. He professes his confidence, however,
that if his first three precepts are followed--rapidity,
plainness and directness of style, plainness and directness

in idea--then surely the fourth, nobleness, will follow.

The thunder of Arnold's cannon-volleys spread wide; their
echoes, mixing with the thunder of return volleys, are heard
still. Newman (Arnold's primary target in the lectures)
answered quickly with a pamphlet called Homeric Translation
in_Thee;y_eng_£;eeeiee (1861). Arnold then lectured again,
in response to Newman. James Spedding (1861) argued with
Arnold’s ideas about the English hexameter, and H. A. J.
Munro (1861) argued in turn with Spedding.‘l

Spedding, while professing to quibble with Arnold only
over the English hexameter (which he does technically and at
length), manages an interesting parting shot on his last
page. If, as Arnold maintains, no translation of Homer will
be as good as the original, then Spedding asks: "Is it not
better that those who wish to know what Homer is really like
should be recommended, as the shortest way, to learn Greek
and read him?" (714). For the rest-~that is, those who do

not need to know Homer intimately--perhaps they would be

 

"Matters regarding the hexameter will be taken up more
fully in Chapter Five.

30

served best by a simple retelling of Homer’s story, without
concern for the fine points of his manner: "Though we
cannot have Homer himself in English, there is no reason why
we should not have in English the story which Homer told."
The teller of this story, according to Spedding, could use
whatever style and diction suits him best, in prose or
verse, while borrowing, adding, or leaving things out as
necessary:

He must address his audience in his own and their own

language, in such forms as may find easiest passage

through their ears and into their hearts. (714)12
This question of the appropriate form and diction for
translating Homer has been, in subsequent years, argued from
all sides. The boldest of all statements, though, is
Spedding's final dictum: "[The translator] must consider
himself rather as a rival than an imitator."

In the same year (1861) the Seegzgey Review published a
review of Arnold's published lectures and Newman's
pamphleted response. After taking Arnold to task for the
vagueness of his most important terms (e.g., "grand style,"
"pre-eminently noble") the reviewer argues, like Spedding,
against Arnold's suggestion of the English hexameter, but

for different reasons. When translating a poet, he says:

we want to preserve the manner of the author as well as

his matter. . . . We will suppose [the translation] is
meant to give some idea of the Greek poet to [the non-
scholarly reader]. . . . Neither Mr. Newman nor Mr.

 

12Spedding here anticipates the ideas and work of Robert
Graves--whose Ange; e: Aehiliee in 1959 set off something of
a controversy of its own—~and the work of Christopher Logue.

31

Arnold seems to have thought of the alternative of
prose-~not flowing newspaper prose, but such prose as
our translators have put the poems of David and Isaiah
into. Here you may show very fairly what the Homeric
diction is, but you lose the Homeric metre." (96)

This conclusion anticipates ideas (though the reasoning is
different) contained in the preface to Butcher & Lang’s
Odyssey, published only a few years later.

Butcher & Lang attempted a prose translation of the
Odyssey (1879) with an "old and plain diction," similar to
that of "the English of our Bible," which seemed to them
most analogous to epic Greek. "The epics are," they said,
"historical documents":

Whoever regards them in this way, must wish to read
them exactly as they have reached us, without modern
ornament, with nothing added or omitted. He must
recognize, with Mr. Matthew Arnold, that what he now
wants, namely, the simple truth about the matter of the
poem, can only be given in prose, ‘for in a verse
translation no original work is any longer
recognisable.’ . . . Without [the] music of verse,
only a half truth about Homer can be told, but then it
is that half of the truth which, at this moment, it
seems most necessary to tell. (vii-viii)l3

A different view in this regard is that of Charlton T.
Lewis, who reviewed William Cullen Bryant’s Iliad in 1871.
Lewis identifies "three well-marked schools" regarding the
best "artistic form" for translating the Iliad:

The first and oldest school simply accepts the Iliad
from the ancients as the masterpiece of poetry . . . so
that its English representative must also be a great
poem. . . . The verse and style must then be the best

which can be found in English for a great epic or
narrative poem. (349)

 

”These ideas were later applied to the Iliad by Lang,
Leaf & Myers.

32
That verse will usually be either the heroic couplet or
blank verse, and examples include "most versions of the
Iliad from Chapman to Bryant, including all that have been
widely read" (350).
A second school, says Lewis,
correctly discerns in the Iliad an original series of
popular ballads, joined together as an afterthought by
others than the bard or bards who first sung them.
. . . [A] translator must rise and sink in style with
his author, and . . . a ballad metre is the only one
[to be used]. (349)
Examples include versions by Newman and Blackie.
The third school, he says,
requires of the translator that he shall employ all his
resources to transfer them into English just as they
are, in matter and in form; that he shall, for example,
adopt the metre of the Iliad, and make an English
hexameter like the Greek hexameter, photographing the
ancient poem upon the modern mind. (350)
This school is represented, he says, by the translations of
Herschel and Simcox, and by "critical discussions" such as
the "well-known and brilliant essays by Professor Matthew
Arnold" (350).

But, says Lewis, "Every one of these theories of
translation is utterly unsatisfactory." Pope was unhomeric,
and others of the first school fall short of greatness. The
ballad metres are vulgar. And the English hexameter "is no
more a hexameter, in the Greek sense, than scolding is song"
(351). The best English representative for the hexameter,
he says, is "the heroic blank verse of Milton" (355). It is

noble, it has variety, it flows, and it is metrical without

undue restriction.

33

Yet another view is that of Richard Garnett, who argues,
nearly two hundred years after Pope, for the heroic couplet.
In his 1889 essay "On Translating Homer" (echoing Arnold),
he picks up and discards in turn each of the possibilities
for translating Homer. "[A]lthough blank verse is the
easiest metre to write, it is the most difficult to write
well” (7). More importantly, he says, again echoing Arnold,
”the finest English blank verse is too slow" (8). The
English hexameter, the next possibility, does not work as
well as its practitioners like to think, says Garnett,
although a rhymed variation by Arthur S. Way is not bad.
Better yet, though, would be a new version in heroic
couplets. Pope’s version was unhomeric, he says, but the
form’s epic possibilities have not been exhausted.

One other point needs to made, which T. S. Omond, in
"Arnold and Homer" (1912), says Arnold has missed: "No
version of the Iliad . . . is at all ‘faithful’ if it does
not give us the feeling that we are reading a great poem"
(75). The examples he cites are the translations by Chapman
and Pope; each has its faults, but each is clearly a great
poem.

H. A. Mason, however, in a 1965 review of various Iliads,
laments the lack of that greatness in twentieth-century
prose translations up to that time:

My verdict on these translations is as depressing as
could be: they do not transmit any of the qualities
that make the Tiieg distinguished or deserving of our

attention: they do not incite me to take up Greek
grammar and dictionary: nobody with a smattering of

 

34

Greek could find a use for them. Consequently . . .

they must be condemned en_blee as not performing the

function of assimilating into living culture what is

still there to be represented in modern English. (186)

In the twentieth century, translators themselves are

still using Arnold’s terminology to define the way they see
Homer and/or their own translations.“ For example,
introducing his 1928 Iliad, Maurice Hewlett says of Homer:
"greng_menner I don’t find. I find igiem, racy language,
great giyeeeneee and simpiicity, much seriousness and much
humor" (ix, italics mine). Translators Chase and Perry

(1950) state in their introduction:

In the present translation we have attempted to find a
medium which shall neither lose Homeric rapidity

through archaism nor sacrifice Homeric dignity to a
slick colloquialism. . . . In [the original] the

greatest poetry rises from the sweep of many lines. We
have striven to reproduce these longer cadences through

the greater zepigiey of Homer’s simplicity e: speeeh.
(vii, italics mine)

The second half of the 20th century has brought no more
agreement on translating Homer than any other period.
Introductory professions from translators run from the
fairly literal position (Cook”) to the very free (Graves)

to the middle-of-the-road (Fagles).

 

l‘Ithas been claimed that.Arnold, in his famous lectures,
only reflected the current thinking of his time. Even if this
is true, he certainly focused and crystallized those ideas, as
is made clear by the way so much later work reflects not just
those ideas, but also his very words.

lsCook translated the Odyssey, but not the Iliad.

 

35
Albert Cook, in the preface to his 1967 Odyssey, is
particularly concerned with preserving that most homeric of

features:

For sense, the heavily formulaic character of Homer
recommends that one render words, lines, and phrases as
nearly identically as possible. This conviction
suggests that one should not opt for a variety in
translating kelee ("fine, "beautiful," "lovely,"
”pretty,” "fair," and so on) but choose one and stick
to it most of the time. I choose "lovely." (ix)

Robert Graves, on the other hand, takes a much different
tack. In the introduction to The Anger of Achillee he calls
the literal version of Richmond Lattimore a "competent
crib,” refusing to call it a translation. In a decidedly
non—Arnoldian vein, he states:

Translations are made for the general, non-Classical
public, yet their authors seldom consider what will be
immediately intelligible, and therefore readable, and
what will not. Homer is a difficult writer. He was
breaking new ground, and often failed to express a
complex idea adequately in hexameters; he also omitted
many vital pieces of information, or inserted them too
late. Few translators save Homer’s face by remedying
these defects, or soften the wearisome formality of
phrase which slows down the action. (33)
No writer of renown in the previous thirty centuries or so
has allowed himself to be so critical of The Great One,16
but Graves does so in order to pay honest tribute to Homer’s
achievement, to translate the original as best he can.

Graves makes clear his position: "Paradoxically the more

accurate a rendering, the less justice it does Homer" (34).

 

” Or The Great Many, depending on one’s answer to "the
Homeric question."

 

36

The most recent complete translation of the Iliad is that
of Robert Fagles. In his preface he too addresses that old
problem, "the fixed and formulaic parts of Homer." He says,
finding the middle way, "I have treated them in a flexible,
discretionary way . . . answering to the ways we read today"
(x). Fagles is less rigid than Cook in his use of Homer’s
conventions, but less free than Graves. For example, he
claims to retain the "ritual of introductory words for every
speech" but vary the phrasing according to the "nuance of

the moment" (x).

 

 

Part Three: Criteria for Judging Translations of the Iliad

In the following chapters, the criteria for judging
passages of the Iliad in translation are as follows:

Several criteria are contained in the ideas of various
early writers discussed in this chapter. The most easily
identifiable and often the most important is the general
sense of the original--i.e. to what degree does the
translation maintain it? Another, equally identifiable
though at times less important, is the literal word of the
original. A third is tremendously important in most cases
but impossible to define clearly: the spirit of the
original. The fourth criterion is the style or manner of
the original, also hard to define; or rather, it can be
defined in various ways: similarity in diction, or in tone,
or in sound.

The most famous criteria are the four characteristics of
Homer as outlined by Matthew Arnold. As already noted, he
argues that Homer is 1) "eminently rapid," 2) "eminently
plain and direct . . . in his syntax and words," 3)
"eminently plain and direct . . . in his matter and ideas,"
and 4) "eminently noble." A successful translation,
according to Arnold, should emulate Homer in these four
respects. These are ideals, of course, and the years before
and since Arnold’s lectures have shown the impossibility of
emulating Homer perfectly. As absolute criteria, they leave

no work still standing; as guidelines, they are useful.

37

38

Two other criteria are from John Wilson (aka Christopher
North). The first is in the form of a question: "What
effect does it (any translated passage) produce in your
imagination?" How close is it to the effect produced by
Homer? "Try then each translation separately, by this test
of truth, and judge for yourself which is good, which bad,
and which indifferent." Wilson’s other criterion is that the
translation should be good poetry (or prose, as the case may
be). In other words, the work should be a good specimen in
its own right (that is, without regard to its role as a
translation), especially in movement and sound, of whatever
form--prose or some verse form--the translation takes.

Another criterion is that a translation should maintain
as much of the emotion and power of the original as
possible. The presence of this emotion and power at
particular points in the text would constitute evidence of
the greatness that Omond (above) sought in the work as a
whole.

The next criterion is clarity. This means not only that
the work is understandable, but also that it can be seen in
the reader’s mind.

The final criterion is unspecified: if a translation is
deficient in one or more of these areas, it might have
other, compensating, strengths--having not to do with close
approximation of the original, but with either pure
entertainment or a version’s ability to reveal aspects of

the original in new, unexpected, or indirect ways.

39

I take it as given that the choice of prose or some verse
form is not by itself a valid criterion for judgment. Each
of the more common forms has its strengths and weaknesses.
Critics in the past have had their preferences, and I have
my own. But we cannot say a translation of the Iliad is
good or bad based only on its form.

It is also understood that many of the criteria outlined
above overlap, and that many are not so clearly defined as
we would like. In some cases the different criteria are
merely different ways of looking at the same phenomena. Nor
is there a set hierarchy here. One can look for these
aspects in every translation, but the importance of each
aspect varies according to the intentions of the translator,
the verse type (for verse translations), and the particular
point in the text under scrutiny.

The judgment of literature is not an exact science (nor
should it be), and no amount of definition and arrangement
would make it perfectly objective. I hope my arguments in

the following chapters are persuasive; we know all too well

they are not proof.

 

*Chapter Two*
Heroic Couplets, Ballad-Measures,
and Other Rhyming Translations
I will venture to assert that a just translation of any
ancient poet in rhyme, is impossible.

William Cowper,
preface to the Iliad

Why make a translation of the Iliad in rhyme? Cowper’s
words seem, at first glance, quite accurate. The needs of
any rhyme scheme pull the words too far away from the
original, do they not? Or in the words of Cowper again,

No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing
every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the
same time the full sense, and only the full sense of
his original. (viii)
The only possible result, it seems, is a work that relies
too much on the poetic invention of the translator, and not
enough on the words and ideas of the original author.

With regard to Homer particularly, the argument in its
simplest form is that Homer does not rhyme. The notion did
not exist in his time, so there is no point in imposing such
an unhomeric characteristic on a translation of his work.

With regard to heroic couplets, we can add the objection
of Matthew Arnold, which is that couplets often join lines
inappropriately, where the narrative should simply move
ahead without looking back to the previous line, "and thus
the movement of the poem is changed" (106). As for ballad-

measure, by its very nature it can seem absurd and

unhomeric, as rhyme and meter combine for a tone of boyish

4O

41
adventure, lacking the dignity required for Homer.
Spenserian stanzas not only must rhyme in an intricate knot,
but also must be chopped and sized in Procrustean nine-line
units, imposing yet another unhomeric requirement on an
already difficult task. These are the arguments, at any
rate, against the use of rhyme. So why rhyme a translation
of the Iliad?

The first answer, applicable especially to the early
translations of Homer such as Chapman’s and Pope’s, is that
they were written in times when rhyming was the accustomed
mode for poetry. The Elizabethan poet Chapman wrote in a
milieu that included the lyrics and other poems of Sidney,
Spenser, and Shakespeare. Pope was writing amidst works by
Dryden and Congreve. But the argument cannot rest there, as
unrhymed poetry, especially in iambic pentameter, was hardly
unknown in their times. Chapman had the example of blank
verse in the dramas of Shakespeare and Marlowe, and a
century later Pope had the undeniable example of a great
epic written in blank verse: Milton’s Paradise Lost. Both
Chapman and Pope had the earlier epic example of Surrey’s
sixteenth-century blank verse translation of two books of
the Aeneid.

A more objective argument is articulated by an anonymous
writer in £reee;;e_negezige (1868). In discussing
translations of the Iliad, he has this to say:

Rhyme fills up a want which did not exist in the

classical languages, but which is of the very essence
of English. . . . A variously inflected language like

42
Greek opened to the poet at once a whole storehouse of
means for varying his sound, the order of his words,
and (by consequence) his rhythm. . . .

In order, therefore, to have any chance against a
classical poet, in the matter of varying his sound, an
English poet must have recourse to other means than
that of employing different forms. Rhyme, or the
ordered succession of similarly sounding words, is one
of these modern devices for enhancing uniformity by
difference. The translator, then, who employs rhyme
has a great advantage, so far, over the translator who
does not: he can represent some of the colour of his
original, though by a different distribution. If he
loses, as he must, in inner resemblance and accuracy,
he gains in general harmony of effect. (Rev. of The
Iliad, trans. Worsley & Conington 518-19)

Is the reader convinced? Probably not--in this age we are
quite used to successful blank verse (dependent on
variations in rhythm) and free verse (dependent on
variations in imagery), which are our "modern devices for
enhancing uniformity by difference." No longer can any
logical argument for the use of rhyme be absolutely
compelling.

So why rhyme a translation of the Iliad? The best reason
may be serendipity. Because in poetry, restrictions (such
as rhyme) require invention, which in good hands leads to
inspiration. The man who walks straight from point A to
point B is efficient, perhaps, but he sees less, encounters
less, and discovers less than one who takes the wandering
and difficult course. Yes, rhyming will inevitably pull a
translation away from the literal word of the original, and
yes, there are no rhymes in the Iliad. But the fact remains

that many of these rhyming versions are both interesting and

enlightening. The fact remains that the search for a good

43
rhyme often leads the translator on a path that eventually
enables him (and the reader) to see the material in a new
way--one that is, nonetheless, as true to the original as a

literal prose version.

If we accept rhymed verse as an imperfect yet still
reasonable choice, by what criteria, then, do we judge a
particular rhymed translation of the Iliad?

Some things we cannot expect a rhymed version to do well,
and these should not be held as primary criteria. The
literal word of the original is certainly not to be
expected, and the style and manner of Homer is absent,
inasmuch as Homer does not rhyme. The sense, as claimed by
COWper, will at times be sacrificed, but we might expect
some reasonable limits to the deviation. Arnold’s plainness
and directness of syntax and diction will be sacrificed at
times, although again, we can expect some limits.

We can expect certain strengths, especially these three:
we can insist that a rhymed translation be good poetry in
its own right; we can expect to find nobility and strength
of emotion; and in many cases we should find other strengths
to compensate for deviation from the original--especially
entertainment in the case of ballad-rhythms, and
enlightenment in the case of heroic couplets. These three
things we will look for, while checking that other criteria

are held within reasonable limits.

44

Complete versions of the Iliad in rhyme are actually
relatively few in number--eleven in all. Four were written
in fourteen-syllable couplets or other variations of ballad-
measure; three in heroic couplets; two in Spenserian
stanzas; one in ten-syllable quatrains; and one in hexameter
couplets.‘ The number of partial versions in rhyme is
larger, at least twenty-five, and probably more.

In the Comparison section we will examine three ballad-
measure translations, and in the Closer Look section we will
examine four partial translations--three in heroic couplets,

one in rhymed trochaic lines.

Comparison (Ballad-Measure) of

Blackie (1866), Merivale (1869), and Tibbetts (1907)

The ballad-measure is the meter least likely to be
appreciated by modern audiences, especially for the
translation of a work of literature so revered as Homer’s
Iliad. The ballad-measure has a "popular" feel to it,
rather than one of high art. To audiences accustomed to the
subtle cadences of recent blank or free verse, the highly
regular and often boisterous beat of most ballad-measures
may sound ludicrous, or at best juvenile.

The ballad-measure versions of the nineteenth century owe
their existence, to some degree, to the scholarly ideas of

the time. The theory claimed that Homer was the Greek

 

‘For brief information and comments regarding these
works, see Appendix.

45
equivalent of a balladeer, and that the Iliad as we know it
is a collection of songs, or ballads--and so it ought to be
rendered as such. Scholarship has since moved on, and so
have the modes of translation. The medium seems as outdated
as the ideas behind it. But if written well and geeg
QRDIQEIIQSQlY, this meter can be a valid and exciting medium
for translating Homer. Though we should not expect to see
any new versions of the Iliad in this meter anytime soon,
the versions from the nineteenth century need not be ignored
completely. The three versions compared here use three
variations of ballad-measure, with three different levels of
success.

John Stuart Blackie published his ballad-measure
translation as part of a four-volume work covering many
other aspects of Homer’s Iliad. Blackie’s version has the
plainest, most regular meter of the three--an iambic
heptameter line, rhymed in couplets and occasionally
triplets. The actual rhythm, however, is something closer
to the movement of a good blank verse, with varied mid-line
pauses and occasional substitutions of trochees and spondees
for iambs, without awkwardness. As the rhythm varies, the
meter does not feel violated.

Charles Merivale’s ballad-meter is more varied than that
of Blackie’s version, but the rhythm is more regular. The
first line of each couplet has six beats, with the line
divided in half between two unaccented syllables. The

natural grammatical pause of this first line does not always

46
coincide with the mid-line break, however, and the first
syllable of the second half, metrically unaccented, often
carries at least a secondary stress. The second line of
each couplet is straight iambic heptameter, which breaks
into halves of four beats and three, although the force of
that break varies. This second line occasionally contains an
internal rhyme on the second and fourth beats. A third
line, also iambic heptameter, occasionally makes a triplet.
Furthermore, occasionally, into the middle of a couplet is
inserted a four-beat line, which rhymes with the fourth beat
of the following (heptameter) line. The meter, then, has a
clear overall plan, and an interesting one, at that, with
several variations; the rhythm, meanwhile, rarely deviates
from the meter.

Edgar Alfred Tibbetts’ translation is not only the last
ballad version, but also the last complete translation of
the Iliad in any sort of rhymed meter. Tibbetts’ meter is
as regular as Blackie’s, although of a different sort, with
every line a split six-beat. Unlike Blackie’s, however, the
rhythm is also very regular, and the variations, unlike
Blackie’s comfortable blank verse-like substitutions, often
consist of an extra unaccented syllable, or, frequently, an
awkwardly long penultimate syllable.

Ballad-measure, as the name implies, is best appreciated
when read aloud. Blackie’s blank verse-like lines, if read
loosely enough, would sound the most poetic (of the three

compared here) to modern ears. Merivale’s varied meter in

47
the mouth of a skilled orator might prove to be entertaining
to an audience of the nineteenth century, or even to a
present-day audience, but its regular rhythm brings the poem
continually to the brink of bathos. Tibbetts’ lines are
either too regular or too awkward, and even with the best
possible reading, can only parody themselves. Blackie wins
the prize for meter, then, and Merivale is awarded honorable

mention for metrical ingenuity and entertainment value.

But Hector, when the mighty-souled Patroclus he beheld,

Called by the pitiless-tearing brass, to slow retreat
compelled,

Forward he came full near, and made his pointed lance
to pass

Through the soft flesh above the groin; full deeply
stuck the brass.

With heavy fall he fell; and grief seized each Achaean
wight . . .

(Blackie)

But Hector, when beheld he Patroclus staggering back,--

Wounded and stunn’d,--from rank to rank advanced he to
the attack,

And close before him levell’d his spear, and drove it
well

His belly through;--with horrid clang,

While groans of Grecians round him rang, the mighty
warrior fell!

(Merivale)

When now great-souled Patroklos was by great Hektor
seen

Receding from the foremost and wounded by brass keen,

He went near through the orders and wounded with his
spear,

In the groin’s extremest portion, and drove the brass
through clear.

He fell with crash, distressing th’ Achaian people

sore-- . . .

(Tibbetts)

'Exrwp 6' dc GIGEvIHnTpoxAfia ueydfivuov
&¢ dvaxafégevov, BEBAnuévov 6567 xakxé,
oyxiuokév pd oi fiAOe xard orixac, abra 6E sovpi

48
weiarov éc xeveava, scanpb 6E xakxbu ékaaoe'
aoénnoev 6E «:06», uéya 6' fixaxe Aabv 'Axacau'
(16.818-22)
(But Hector, when he beheld great-souled Patroclus
drawing back, smitten with the sharp bronze, came nigh
him through the ranks, and smote.him‘with a thrust of his
spear in the nethermost belly, and.drave the bronze clean

through; and he fell with a thud, and sorely grieved the
host of the Achaeans.) (literal prose of Murray)

Blackie consistently fills his lines with strong imagery
here. The first line is literally rendered and without
fault. The second has "galled by the pitiless-tearing
brass" for BeBAnuévou 6532 xaAKQ ("having been struck with
the sharp bronze"), in which "Galled" is strong, specific,
and unclichéd; and "Pitiless-tearing," while far from
literal, captures the general sense with a powerful image.
"To slow retreat compelled" for a¢ dyaxaféuevov ("retreating
back") conveys the sense of Patroclus’ wounded state. In
the third line "made his pointed lance to pass" teeters on
the edge between deft, effective understatement and simple
weakness. I defer to the reader for final judgement,
although the Greek--obra ("stabbed")--is in no way subtle or
weak. In the fourth line "through the soft flesh above the
groin" is horribly specific, and so is perfect. "Full
deeply stuck the brass" does not carry the violence of
EAaaoe ("drove"), but works well enough as a follow-up to
the previous phrase. The next line is unusual in its
sounds: the repetition of "fall"/"fell" is rather awkward
(certain rhetorically-minded ancient Greeks liked to work

variations on a single root, but it is not typical of Homer,

49
nor is it considered good form in modern English); but the
repeated long e sounds in the last half of the line are
effective, as the tightness of long e reinforces the
meanings of "grief" and "seized." Blackie shows us the same
pictures that Homer offers, and he shows them with good
strong diction, capturing at most points the spirit of the
original.

Merivale, in this passage, starts out strong, and then
takes a different turn. In the first line Patroclus is
”staggering back,-- / Wounded and stunn’d"--effectively
maintaining the sense and spirit of the original. From
here, though, Merivale’s lines are increasingly unhomeric.
"From rank to rank advanced he to the attack" is a valid
translation of the letter of the original, but a violation
of the spirit, conveying less the violence and horror of
Homer’s war, and more the ring and clamor of a medieval
romance. "Levell’d his spear" is not found in Homer, but it
is well-suited to many a knightly tale, whenever a dueling
knight prepares to charge. "Drove it well" correctly
translates the verb Ekaooe but has a cheery, carefree tone
that violates absolutely the spirit of the original. "His
belly through" has none of the specificity of the original
(or of Blackie), and so none of its horror. "With horrid
clang" is simply absurd; the sound of a spear passing
through soft flesh must surely be "horrid," but it just as

surely is not a "clang." The same problem is found in

50

"While groans of Grecians round him rang," because groans,
by their nature, do not ring. This line as a whole--"While
groans of Grecians round him rang, the mighty warrior
fell!"--takes the work from pseudo-medieval knightly tale to
something more like "Casey at the Bat."2

Clearly, Merivale’s version at this point has lost all
the dignity and emotional force of Homer’s original. It
does score well on another point, though. While it is not
Homer, or even homeric, Merivale’s translation is lively and
entertaining in the process of conveying Homer’s story. In
its own way instead of Homer’s it is spirited and metrically
interesting. At the very least, it could in our day be
appreciated as high camp. In this regard, at least, it

rises above many other versions.

Tibbetts, in this passage, misses on several counts.
Clarity is lost at many points, such as both uses of "he,"
each of which is ambiguous. Each "he" (in the third and
fifth lines) refers to a different man, but their
antecedents are both found in the first line. "Near" in
line 3 is also potentially confusing (near to what or to

whom?), as is the phrase "through the orders." In the next

 

2Merivale’s meter is remarkably close to that of the
classic American ballad. And while there is no direct
correspondence of diction between this line and anything in
"Casey," terms such as "groans" and "rang" and.the phrase "the
mighty warrior fell" are the sort of thing one might expect to
find there. If, for whatever reason, one were to write a
parody of the Iliad in the style of Casey, one could
effectively use whole lines such as this one.

51

line, "in the groin’s extremest portions" is unclear, mainly
because "extremest” lacks direction. There is also little
emotional power here; much of the weakness lies in the verbs
and participles. In the first line the verb is passive
("was seen"), and in the second line "receding," while
grammatically an active participle, is passive in its
connotations; one thinks of a wave receding from the
shoreline--naturally, inexorably--utterly opposed to the
painful struggle of Patroclus. In addition, "went,"
"wounded," and "distressed" are by turns ordinary, vague,
and weak. The passage is weakened further by awkward
versification, such as "by brass keen" (difficult to
pronounce), "the brass through clear" (difficult to
pronounce and having inverted syntax), and "fell with crash"
(the missing indefinite article being woefully obvious).

In short, Tibbetts’ version has neither the strong
imagery of Blackie’s nor the partly redeeming entertainment

value of Merivale’s.

A Closer Look
This section examines, without direct comparison, four
translations of relatively small parts of the Iliad--one
book or less. None of the versions is particularly well-
remembered in our day, but each has enough merit--in prosody

or ideas or both--not to be forgotten entirely.

52
JOHN DENHAM, "Sarpedon’s Speech to Glaucus in the 12th of

Homer" 12.309-28 (1668)

Thus to giegege spake
Divine Serpegeg, since he did not find
Others as great in Place, as great in Mind.
Above the rest, why is our Pomp, our Power?
Our flocks, our herds, and our possessions more?
Why all the Tributes Land and Sea affords
Heap’d in great Chargers, load our sumptuous boards?
Our chearful Guests carowse the sparkling tears
Of the rich Grape, whilst Musick charms their ears.
Why as we pass, do those on Xenehge shore,
As Gods behold us, and as Gods adore?
But that as well in danger, as degree,
We stand the first; that when our Lycians see
Our brave examples, they admiring say,
Behold our Gallant Leaders! These are They
Deserve the Greatness; and un-envied stand:
Since what they act, transcends what they command.
Could the declining of this Fate (oh friend)
Our Date to Immortality extend?
Or if Death sought not them, who seek not Death,
Would I advance? Or should my vainer breath
With such a Glorious Folly thee inspire?
But since with Fortune Nature doth conspire,
Since Age, Disease, or some less noble End,
Though not less certain, doth our days attend;
Since ’tis decreed, and to this period lead,
A thousand ways the noblest path we’ll tread;
And bravely on, till they, or we, or all,
A common Sacrifice to Honour fall.

abrixa 6t FAanov npoaé¢n, naia' 'Innokéxoco'
"Pkafixe, 1i i 6h v01 reriufiueOOa udkiora

Espu re xpéaaiv 16 £63 nAeiozc sendeoocv

év Avxiu, névrec 6t 0600; Dc eioopéwaa;

xai répevoc veuéueOOa uéya Edeono nap' 6x0ag,
xakbv ¢v1akific Kai dpoépnc flUpO¢6pOLO.

to vbv xph AvKEOLaL péra npérococu éévrac
éaréuev #66 uéxnc xavoreipnq durifiokfioat,

6¢pa TLC éS' Gina Avxiwv nfixa Gwpnxréwv'

‘ob udv dxkeéeq Avxinv Kara xocpavéovacv
fipérepo: Baockfiec, éaovoi re niova pike

oivév r' Eeacrov nekcn6éa' 6AA' dpa Kai IC
éaOAfi, énei Auxi0i0i uéra npéro:o: udxovrai.’
& uénov, 61 pt» yep nékeuov napi 16v66 ¢v76vre
ale} 6% uékkoauev dyfipw r' éflavérw Te

éoaeaO', 0516 xev abrbc évi npéroco: uaxoiunv
0516 xe at oréAAOLHL uéxnv éc xv6céveipav'

vbv 6' Eunnc yep xfipec é¢eardacv 00v610co
uvpiai, dc obx Ear: ¢vyeiv Bporbv 096' bnakfiiai,

53

Iouev, fié {w ebxoc bpéfoueu, hé TLC huiv."
(12.309-28)

(Straightway then he spake to Glaucus, son of
Hippolochus: "Glaucus, wherefore is it that we twain are
held in honour above all with seats, and.messes, and full
cups in Lycia, and all men gaze upon us as on gods? Aye,
and we possess a great demesne by the banks of Xanthus,
a fair tract of orchard and of wheat-bearing plough-land.
Therefore now it behoveth us to take our stand amid the
foremost Lycians, and confront the blazing battle, that
many a one of the mail-clad Lycians may say: ‘Verily no
inglorious men be these that eat fat sheep and drink
choice wine, honey-sweet: nay, but their might too is
goodly, seeing they fight.amid the foremost.Lycians.’ .Ah
friend, if once escaped from this battle we were for ever
toibe ageless and immortal, neither should I fight myself
amid the foremost, nor should I send thee into battle
where men win glory; but now--for in any case fates of
death beset us, fates past counting, which no mortal may
escape or avoid--now let us go forward, whether we shall
give glory to another, or another to us.") (literal prose
of Murray)

In this 29-line poem in heroic couplets, Denham, like
others of his time, does not concern himself overmuch with a
literal translation, but instead conveys the general sense
and spirit of the original. Denham makes some Tytlerian
additions, such as lines 2b-3, "since he . . . great in
Mind,” and modifies some images, as in 8-9, where the
original has neither guests nor music, and even rearranges
to suit his needs, such as moving "As Gods behold us" from
the fourth line of the original passage to the eleventh of
his own.

But the essence remains. Why, Sarpedon is asking, do we
have this wealth and power and privilege? Denham emphasizes
this questioning, using "why" three separate times, to

Homer’s single rt. But Homer then takes the next step more

54
clearly. The question goes unanswered, but the implications
are made clear: 18 vfiv xpfi ("Therefore now it is
necessary"). Denham makes the turn with a subtler "But
that"--perhaps too subtle for an important point. But the
rest of that line (12) finishes the connection, marvelously
capturing the ambiguity of the original

(18 vb» xph Avxiocac uéra «paratacv éévrac
éafduev #66 udxnc xavafeipnc dwrcflokfiaai)

and showing the importance of both senses ("being among the
foremost [i.e. best] Lycians [it is necessary] to stand and
join the blazing battle"; and "it is necessary to stand
among the foremost [i.e. on the front lines] Lycians and
join the blazing battle"). What cannot even be said
gracefully here in prose3 is managed economically and
clearly by Denham’s zeugma: "But that as well in danger, as
degree, / We stand the first."

The speech of the imagined Lycian is rendered by Homer
with concrete images--the luxury enjoyed by the kings
juxtaposed with their strength in battle--with the phrase
Auxioco: uéra npérocae repeated from above. Denham manages
the same point in less concrete but more human terms, with
the word "un-envied" in line 16, and with the following,
again beautiful in its economy and clarity: "Since what

they act, transcends what they command."

 

3Rieu ("Does not all this oblige us now to take our
places in the Lycian van . . . ?") and.Murray (see above), for
example, translate only one of the two meanings, so that
Denham’s version is far richer.

55
In the next part, where Homer’s Sarpedon makes a pair of

conditional statements (i.e. "If . . . then I would") and
uses évi upéIOLOL to continue the thread from above--

A néuov, 62 pt» 7&p nékeuov nepi 16966 ovyévre

aiel 6h utAAOLuev dyfipw 1' dOavérw re

toasaO', ofire xev airbc évi npéro¢ac uaxoiunv

obre xe at oréAAOch uhxnv éc xv6:&VELpav' (322-25)
--Denham’s Sarpedon only asks questions. In the midst of
several rhetorical flourishes, Denham sacrifices some
clarity. Up to this point, Denham has kept one foot in
Homer’s age with the other obviously in his own. But here
Denham steps away from Homer altogether, as clarity is
abandoned to style. To what does "this fate" refer? How
might it decline? To where would he "advance"? What is the
”Glorious Folly"? It seems likely that in the oral
presentations of Homer’s own time, the audience would have
had to perceive immediately or not at all. This Restoration
version can be puzzled out, and with certainty, but not
without a pause for contemplation. At this point we are
where Pope was soon to be; it is still a tremendously good
poem, but it is no longer homeric in that one respect.

In the last part Denham uses seven lines to Homer’s

three. The terminology differs--xfipec 0avdro¢o ("fates of
death") is rendered by Denham as a combination of "Fortune"

and "Nature"--but the sense and spirit are captured well.

And importantly, amid some beautiful lines--e.g., "A

56
thousand ways the noblest path we’ll tread"--clarity returns
when it is needed most.

This poem is an example of what a rhymed couplet
translation can do best; it maintains the power of Homer’s
Iliad while presenting its own good poetry. Denham
accomplishes this in part by repeatedly straying from and
returning to the original. That sort of strategy has been
much maligned by literalists over the centuries, but
Denham’s poem is true to Homer in deeper ways than they

recognize.

THOMAS YALDEN, "Patroclus’s Request to Achilles for His
Arms" 16.5-45 (1694)
This 75-line poem in heroic couplets is found in

niggelleny_£eem§, edited by John Dryden. Yalden’s English

is less efficient than Homer’s Greek, but he does keep
fairly close to the text, at least as close as can be
expected in a rhyming version:

Why like a tender Girl dost thou complain!

That strives to reach the Mother’s Breast in vain:
Mourns by her Side, her Knees embraces fast,

Hangs on her Robes, and interrupts her Haste;

Yet when with Fondness to her Arms she’s rais’d,
Still mourns, and weeps, and will not be appeas’d.
Thus my Patroclus in his Grief appears,

Thus like a froward Girl profuse of Tears.

"tints Jeadxpvaac, Horpéxkeec, fifire xofipn

vnnin, fi 0' duo unrpi Oéova' dwekéoOac duéyec,
eiavofi enrouévn, net 1' éaovuévnu xarepfixet,
saxpvéeoaa Sé paw HOTLSépxerai, bop' ovéknroi'
1i Ixekoc, Dbrpoxke, répeu Karo sdxpvov eiBecc."
(16.7-11)

57

("Why, Patroclus, art thou bathed in tears, like a girl,

a mere babe, that runneth by her mother’s side and

biddeth take her up, and clutcheth at her gown, and

hindereth her in her going, and tearfully looketh up at

her, till the mother take her up? Even like her,

Patroclus, dost thou let fall round tears.") (literal

prose of Murray)
In this excerpt where Achilles first questions the returning
Patroclus, the first line quoted here captures accurately
the tone of gentle chiding--neither too harshly mocking nor
completely sympathetic. In the next line Yalden changes
Homer’s image but maintains the sense, with "strives to
reach the Mother’s breast" for ovekéaflac dvéyec ("bids [her]
to take [her] up"). In the next two lines Yalden avoids the
potential snare of the original’s compacted grammar by using
four mostly parallel clauses, each with an interesting
action verb, an object, and the pronoun "her," capturing
admirably the conflicting forces of haste and hanging on.
Each of the next two lines of Homer is similarly expanded by
Yalden; his images remain clear, and the sense of the simile
is held to faithfully.

At one point in the midst of Patroclus’ response to

Achilles, three lines of Homer become eight lines of Yalden:

What, will thy Fury thus for ever last?

Let present Woes attone for Inj'ries past:

How can thy Soul retain such lasting Hate?

Thy virtues are as useless, as they’re great.

What injur’d Friend from thee shall hope redress?

That will not aid the Greeks in such distress:

Useless is all the Valour that you boast,

Deform’d with Rage, with sullen Fury lost.

”uh éué 7' 08v 0516; 76 Adflon xékoc, by ab ¢vkéaa£:¢,

aivapérn' ti oev hkkoc bvfiaerai b¢iyov6c nap,
a1 x6 ufi 'ApyeiOLaLv decxéa kaiybv dufivug;" (16.30-32)

58

("Never upon me let such wrath lay hold, as that thou

dost cherish, O thou whose valour is but a bane! ‘Wherein

shall any other even yet to be born have profit of thee,

if thou ward not off shameful ruin from the Argives?")

(literal prose of Murray)
Here an important point is to be made, and Yalden dares not
let it pass in too terse a form. Having made no claims of
fidelity to the literal word, he has the luxury of unfolding
the Greek to make it workable--both clear and strong--in
English. One word, the vocative aivapérn, becomes an entire
line in English: "Thy virtues are as useless, as they’re
great." As Yalden has realized, Homer’s compression is to
be marvelled at but not necessarily imitated. The next one
and two-thirds lines of Homer are rendered closely by
Yalden, but he then repeats the point, even though Homer has
already moved on. A reader could consider the repetition
insulting, but this point is so crucial to the story, the
moment so charged with emotion and apprehension, that
Yalden’s lingering on the idea is justifiable. One might
also consider the repetition in Patroclus’ mouth to be
insulting to Achilles, but Patroclus’ words in the next
three lines of the original are stronger and more insulting
than anything Yalden could have invented:

"vnkeéc, obx dpa act 76 narfip fly innéraiflnkefic,

obGE 861:; ufirnp' ykavxh 6t 06 15x16 Odkaoaa

uérpa: 1' fiAiBaTOL, 61: TOL véoc éoriv dnnvfic."

(16.33-35)

("Pitiless one, thy father, meseems, was not the knight

Peleus, nor was Thetis thy mother, but the grey sea bare

thee, and the beetling cliffs, for that thy heart is
unbending.") (literal prose of Murray)

59

Here, as elsewhere, Yalden sometimes doubles the image,

as if to make sure he--or the reader--gets it right:

Could cruelty like thine from Peleus come,

Or be the Off-spring of fair Thetis’ Womb!

Thee raging Seas, thee boist’rous Waves brought forth,

And to obdurate Rocks thou ow’st thy birth!

Thy stubborn Nature still retains their Kind,

So hard thy Heart, so savage is thy Mind.
Where Homer has 7Aavxh St 06 15x16 oaxaaoa ("the gray sea
bore you"), Yalden gives two yoked images--"Thee raging
Seas, thee boist’rous Waves brought forth." Where Homer
says 61: To: véoc éariv dpnvfic ("so that your mind is
harsh"), Yalden renders it "So hard thy Heart, so savage is
thy mind." The doubling is convenient here for the
translator, as words like v60; and onnvfig are hard to
capture with a single English word. Therein lies the duty
of the translator, of course (that is, to make difficult
choices), but a bit of latitude here allows the poem to
blossom.

Yalden, in the space of this relatively small piece of
the Iliad, is not especially inventive. While it is not
closely literal at all points, it never strays far and is
always clear. The strength of Yalden’s translation is that
it slows the narrative speed of the original to allow the
reader to concentrate on this highly charged exchange
between the two heroes. A scene like this, important as it

is, can easily get lost in the long narrative run of the

original, or of a complete and literal translation. Yalden

60
preserves the emotional power of the original while also

making each point clear.

MR. MAYNWARING, "The First Book of Homer’s Iliads,
Translated from the Greek by Mr. Maynwaring" 1.1-412 (1694)

This small piece of the Iliad also comes from Miscellany
Peeme, and is also in heroic couplets. The invocation has a

different twist:

To Sing Achilles’ Wrath, O Muse! prepare,

Which plung’d the Graecians in destructive War;
And sent untimely to th’ Infernal Coast,

The bravest Souls of Heroes early lost;

Whose Limbs in Phrygian Plains extended lay,
Expos’d to Dogs and rav’nous Birds of Prey:

So Jove decreed, whence fierce Contention rose,
To make Atrides and Achilles foes.

Nfiuiv deLSE, 066,3HnAnTéaew 'AxLAfioc
obkouéynu, 5 uva' 'Axacoic fiAye' éOnxe,
uokkdc 6' i¢0iuov¢ ¢vxdc 'ATSL npofa¢ev
fipéwv, abrobc 6E éAépta rebxe xfiveaaiv
oiwvoiai 16 noon, Acbc 6' érexeiero Boukfi,
é£ 0% 6h rd npbra acaorfirnv épioavre
'AIpeLSnc re dvaf dquév xai 610; 'Axckkeéc.
(1.1-7)

(The wrath do thou sing, O goddess, of Peleus’ son,
Achilles, that baneful wrath which brought countless woes
upon the Achaeans, and sent forth to Hades many valiant
souls of warriors, and made themselves to be a spoil for
dogs and all manner of birds; and thus the will of Zeus
was being brought to fulfillment;--sing thou thereof from
the time when at first there parted in strife Atreus’

son, king of men, and goodly Achilles.) (literal prose
of Murray)

"To Sing . . . prepare," he tells the Muse, emphasizing
the nature of the invocation as a preparation for the real
story. The alliteration from "prepare" to "plung’d" works
nicely, because in both story-telling and war, one prepares

and then plunges into the middle. The third line has echoes

61
of Ogilby’s invocation (see Appendix), with "untimely" and
”Coast."
Maynwaring’s first couplet at the scene of Apollo’s anger
is especially good--full of emotion and action and their
connections:

His fervent Pray’r the God’s Compassion drew,
Who breathing Vengeance, from Olympus flew;

“n; é¢ar' ebxéuevoc, 10% 6' Exkue 00280; 'AnéAva,

B?) 6% xa‘r' Obkéunoco xapfivwv xwéuevoc xfip,

(1.43-44)

(So he spake in prayer, and Phoebus Apollo heard him.

Down from the peaks of Olympus he strode, wroth at

heart,) (literal prose of Murray)
This couplet is a microcosm of the Iliad’s story, where
every action, fueled by emotion, leads inevitably to its
consequences, often dire and always full of more emotion
that fuels the next action.

The two insults of Achilles toward Agamemnon are also

handled well by Maynwaring. In the first--

0 Prince! with Craft and Insolence endu’d;

"b #0:, draneinv én:6:uéue, x€p5aA66¢pOV," (1.149)

("Ah me, thou clothed in shamelessness, thou of crafty

mind,") (literal prose of Murray)
--the insult is not literal, but captures the sense and
spirit in one strong line. The next is even better, though,
as Maynwaring rearranges the parts to help manage a

difficult original line:

Thou Chief, more Heartless than a flying Deer,
Who dar’st not first in Bloody Fields appear;

62

Nor doubtful Ambush for thy Foes design,
Vain empty Heroe, ever steep’d in Wine.

"oivoflapéc, xvvbc buuar' éxwv, xpaSinv 6' éké¢0¢0,

0016 ”01' 6c uékeuov bud Aaé 0wpnx0fivac

0016 Aéxova' iévac 00v opaorfieoocv 'Axaiév

1&1Anxac Ovué'"

(1.225-28a)

("Thou heavy with wine, thou with the front of a dog but

the heart of a deer, never hast thou had courage to arm

thee for battle with thy folk, or go forth to an ambush

with the chiefs of the Achaeans.") (literal prose of

Murray)
He actually omits the xvvbc bpuara ("eyes [or face] of a
dog") portion of the triple-insult, but makes up for the
loss. "More Heartless than a flying Deer" makes plainer
than usual the sense of that insult, thereby losing some of
the subtlety of xpa6inv 6' ékdooio ("heart of a deer"); but
that line by Maynwaring is then able to work as a strong
basis for the next two, which deal specifically and
exclusively with Agamemnon’s cowardice as Achilles sees it.
The fourth line, with its heavy irony, then works
effectively as a final assessment--"Vain empty Heroe."
"Ever steep’d in Wine," effectively worded and in a new
place, takes on a different character from the original
oivoflapéc ("wine-heavy") and other English translations of
it. When it is given as the initial part of the insult, one
imagines it spat out angrily, daringly, loudly. Here,
following "Vain empty Heroe," one imagines it said more
quietly, Achilles now beyond anger and daring, filled only
with disgust. Even without the "dog-face" insult,

Maynwaring’s is, I think, the very best English rendition of

‘ .

 

63
this difficult passage. Maynwaring’s rendering of about
half of the first book demonstrates the curious way that
necessity drives invention. The requirements of meter and
rhyme force Maynwaring away from the original, and in
response he finds solutions that ring with truth while
showing the reader interpretations of Homer undreamed of by

those working in blank verse or prose.

WILLIAM AYTOUN, "The Twenty-Second Book of the Iliad.
Translated into English Trochaics" (1839)

This partial version appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine.
In couplets, the meter runs to seven and a half trochaic
feet, the final unaccented syllable replaced with a rest;
occasional couplets run to eight full feet per line, ending
on feminine rhymes. The lines are regularly end-stopped,
usually with punctuation, and are regularly broken in the
middle--after the fourth foot--again, usually with
punctuation. The rhythm is almost completely regular;
almost every foot (but the last) of every line is indeed a
trochee. Most lines run like the first--

Thus, like deer, all terror-stricken, through the city
streets they spread,--

all trochees, broken at the midpoint with a comma (or other
punctuation). Occasionally lines run like the following:

Thus he spake; and to the city once again he turned his
face,

 

w

64
where the punctuation falls after the second foot, but the
flow of the line actually breaks at the usual spot (after
the fourth). More rarely occur lines like the next one:

Rushing like a courser, often victor in the chariot
race,

where the punctuation falls after the third foot and does
require a pause, with no break after the fourth foot. In
this way there is some variation in Aytoun’s rhythm, but it
is slight. I say that the lines "run," because they do just
that. Even with mid-line pauses, these lines rush forward
incessantly. This version is nothing if not rapid.
Aytoun’s work is too rapid, too rushed to be a great
translation. But if any book of the Iliad is at all suited
to this frenzied pace, it is the twenty-second, where the
sense of urgency and crisis is foremost. A careful
reading--resisting where appropriate the impulse to rush the
lines, and allowing them to hurry along when appropriate--
can take advantage of this sense of urgency, at times
flowing with it, at others pulling against. Such a regular
and hurried meter could easily fall into absurdity if read
badly; if read well it achieves an effect both interesting
and homeric that is not possible with other meters.
And so, in the first seven lines--
Thus, like deer, all terror-stricken, through the city
streets they spread,
Cool’d themselves from sweat and labour, and their
burning thirst allay’d,
Safe behind the massy bulwarks; whilst the Greeks
across the field,

March’d beneath the very ramparts, each protected by
his shield.

65

Hector stay’d, for fate compell’d him, like a fetter’d
slave, to wait

Still before his father’s city, and without the Scaean
gate.

Meanwhile thus to bold Achilles spoke the radiant God
Apollo,

'06 01 ukv x010 601v ne¢v§616c #016 yeBpoi

16p& du6¢6x0v10 fliov 1' dxéovré 16 Si¢av,

x6xALu6v01 xakfiozv 6ndk£eaav° abrdp 'Axatoi

165x60; 6000» Iaav, adxe’ buoaa: xkivav1ec.

'Ex1opa 6' ab100 ueivai bkoch poip' 6n66n06v

'IAiov np0n6p0106 uvkdwv 16 Exatéwv.

0010p Hakefwva npoanfisa 00130; 'Anékkwu'

(22.1-7)

(So they throughout the city, huddled in.rout like fawns,

were cooling their sweat and drinking and.quenching their

thirst, as they rested on the fair battlements; while the

Achaeans drew near the wall leaning their shields against

their shoulders. But Hector did deadly fate ensnare to

abide there where he was in front of Ilios and the Scaean

gates. Then unto the son of Peleus spake Phoebus

Apollo:) (literal prose of Murray)
--1et the first line be read as rapidly as possible,
matching the "terror-stricken" flight, and establishing
immediately both the urgency of the story and the rapidity
and regularity of the meter. The second line should be read
a bit more slowly, as the soldiers slow their own pace,
while the urgency of their state, and of the meter, are
still felt. The third and fourth can be read slower yet,
still working against the stream, until the fifth line
almost stands in place--or hesitates, at least, broken by
commas into short sections, as Hector stands and waits; this
pace is maintained through the sixth line. The spell is

broken with the seventh line as normal speed resumes.

w

 

66
This pattern is reversed later in the chapter, as Hector
stands, tension-filled, before the oncoming Achilles, and

then bolts:

Thus remaining fast, he communed, and Achilles now drew

near,

Like to Mars, the helmet-shaker, brandishing the Pelian
spear

On his shoulder, and around him all his brazen armour
shone,

Either like a blazing furnace, or more like the rising
sun.

Then a panic seized on Hector, neither durst he longer
wait;

But, all terror-struck, departed, and behind him left
the gate,

Fleeing onwards, and Pelides followed, trusting to his
pace.

“nc bpuacve uéuwv, b 66 01 0x666» fikflev 'Axckkebc
{00¢ 'Evvakiw, Kopvfléix: nperuiarfi,

oeiwvlflnkcé6a nekinv x016 66510» buoy

661vfir' du¢2 66 xaxxbc 6A6un610 eixekoc abyfi

fi #006; aiOouévov fi fiekiov du16v10c.

'Ex1opa 6', Ac 6v6n06v, 6A6 1péu0c' 096' bp' 61' 61An
abflc uéveav, bniaw 66 nékac kins, Bfi 66 003n06ic'
HnA6T6nc 6' 6népovae n00} xpacnvoiac neflocfléc.
(22.131-38)

(So he pondered as he abode, and nigh to him came
Achilles, the peer of Enyalius, warrior of the waving
helm, brandishing over’his right shoulder the Pelian ash,
his terrible spear; and all round about the bronze
flashed like the gleam of blazing fire or of the sun as
he riseth. But trembling gat hold of Hector when he was
ware of him, neither dared he any more abide where he
was, but left the gates behind him, and fled in fear; and
the son of Peleus rushed after him, trusting in his
fleetness of foot.) (literal prose of Murray)

If the pace of the meter, in reading, is held back through
the first four lines, the resulting metrical tension will
reflect the mounting tension of the narrative. The sudden

movement of Hector creates a release of tension, in the

story and in the meter, and the frenzied chase is now easily

67
handled by a meter that was not quite comfortable during the
wait.

As the narrative wears on, one is likely to grow rather
tired of this too-rapid and too-regular meter. At the very
end of the book, Aytoun’s trochees cannot handle with
appropriate sensitivity the sorrow of Andromache:

"Now the creeping worm shall waste thee--lying naked on
the shore,

Neither friend nor parent near thee--when the dogs have
ta’en their fill.

Naked!--and thy graceful garments lie within thy palace
still;

These, the skilful work of women, all to ashes I will
burn,

For thou never more shalt wear them, and thou never
canst return;

Yet the Trojans will revere them, relics of their chief
so true!"--

Thus she spoke in tears, and round her all the women
sorrow’d too.

"va 66 a6 #69 napd unvol xopquOL 960¢i Toxfiwv
aiékai 6bkai 660v1ai, 6166 K6 xfivec xopéowv1ac,
yvuvév' 6160 10: eiua1' 6V1 ueyépOLac x60v1a:
A6n16 16 Kai xapievra, 161vyu6va x6p01 yvvacxév.
dAA' 5 10: 1666 ndv1a xa1a¢A6£w nvpi xnkéw,
0666» cat 7' bdekoc, 6H6} obx 67x6£06a1 ab1olc,
dkkd upbc Tpéwv Kai pr166wv xkéoc eivai."

‘flc 6¢a10 xkaiovo', éfli 66 016v6x0V10 yvvaixec.
(22.508-end)

("But now by the beaked ships far from thy parents shall
writhing worms devour thee, when the dogs have had their
fill, as thou liest a naked corpse; yet in thy halls
lieth raiment, finely-woven and fair, wrought by the
hands of women. Howbeit all these things will I verily
burn in blazing fire--in no wise a profit unto thee,
seeing thou shalt not lie therein, but to be an honour
unto thee from the men and women of Troy."

So spake she weeping, and thereto the women added
their laments.) (literal prose of Murray)

The meter is not entirely successful over the course of

a whole book; much less can one conceive of an entire Iliad

68
of this sort. But in Aytoun’s singular attempt the greatest
fault is also its greatest asset, as this partial Iliad gets
its power directly from the frantic meter. It is a
translation that will make a reader sit up and pay
attention. Aytoun’s work can lead a reader to appreciate

the twenty-second book in a way otherwise impossible.

These rhymed versions are not the sort to be immediately
perceived as homeric, because of their styles and the way
they stray from the literal word of the original. The
writers of these rhymed Iliads, however, have found other
ways to be homeric, and so can be as true to the original as
Iliads in any other form. Each has its own strength, its
own contribution: Denham’s has poetry and power; Yalden’s
has clarity through expansion; Maynwaring’s has
interpretations that are interesting and unusual, yet also
true to the original; and Aytoun’s has a peculiar power by

means of an extraordinary meter.

*Chapter Three*
Blank Verse Translations (pre-Twentieth Century)
Bad blank verse is in our language a better medium for
rendering Homer’s manner than good blank verse.

Richard Garnett,
"On Translating Homer"

If the first wave of great English translations of the
Iliad was done in heroic couplets, then the second wave was
surely blank verse. The first complete blank verse version
was by William Cowper, and not surprisingly, his Iliad was
presented as a reaction against the excesses of Pope’s
couplets. Two earlier lesser-known partial translations
also owe their existence, it seems, to the necessity to put
right again what Pope supposedly had put askew.l

It has been said that blank verse is the easiest English
verse to write, but the hardest to write well (Garnett 7).
Both parts of that axiom would seem to apply to translating
the Iliad; it is the easiest standard verse to use while
staying close to the original, yet the nineteenth century
especially saw a spate of mediocre literal translations in
blank verse.

The use of blank verse does offer some distinct
advantages over other forms, especially any rhyming verse.
Its demands, at the first level, are few: no rhyme; an

iambic beat that is natural to the English language; a

 

lSee Joseph Nicol Scott (1755) and Samuel Langley (1767)
in Appendix.

69

7O
comfortable, medium-sized line of ten syllables; the
possibility for run-over lines without awkwardness; and an
easily varied rhythm, with the substitution here and there
of a trochee or spondee for the usual iamb. The mid-line
pause can be moved about or eliminated. The most ordinary
everyday speech can be turned into something recognizable as
blank verse with only a minimum of effort.2

Blank verse is a standard English meter in the same way
that dactylic hexameter was standard in Homer’s time and
place. It is variable enough to match the hexameter’s
variability, although in a different way. And it can
maintain a high standard of dignity and poetry over the
course of a long narrative poem, most ably proved by
Milton’s garegise Lose.

So why not use it in every case? What can’t blank verse
do? Primarily, it does not in any way reproduce Homer’s
meter: it is based on accent instead of syllable length; it
is shorter; it is based on a different foot--iamb rather
than dactyl; it begins on a light syllable and ends on a
heavy, while the reverse is true for Homer; and its manner
of variation is different, changing the stress within a
foot, where Homer changes the number of syllables. Both are

unrhymed, it is true, and that fact is not without

 

2There lies the danger, certainly, implied
In Garnett’s axiom: that one’s blank verse
Will be no more than ordinary prose

With alternating barely rhythmic taps;

Or simple verse with dogged, thumping beats.

71

importance. But the only other way it reproduces the effect
of Homer is that it is standard to English to the same
degree that the hexameter was standard to Homer’s Greek.

There are other arguments against the use of blank
verse. One reviewer complains that blank verse is too
literary a form, not "bardish" in the way that the hexameter
was in Greek, or the way that ballad-measure can be in
English. While acknowledging the greatness of the blank
verse of Peregiee_Lge;, Matthew Arnold argues that its
movement is slower than the Iliad’s; Milton’s is "a
laboured, a self-retarding movement," while Homer’s is "a
flowing, a rapid movement" (145). These different speeds
are the results of two different manners of presentation.
"Milton is trying to press a thousand things into one," says
Arnold, while Homer "says a thing, and says it to the end,
and then begins another." Richard Garnett agrees with
Arnold, to some extent; a "good" blank verse is too slow for
Homer, because good blank verse needs frequent and varied
pauses to avoid monotony, but those pauses slow the line too
much for Homer (8).

The strongest advocates of blank verse translation are
those who have used it--William Cowper, for example. In his
need to refute Pope’s approach, his argument for blank verse
covers first the absence of rhyme: "I will venture to
assert that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme,
is impossible," he says. Moreover, the better the poet at

the use of rhyme, the more likely he is to be led astray

72
from the words and sense of the original. Furthermore, says
Cowper, rhyming poetry will not abide the sort of "breaks
and pauses" (viii) that are most suggestive of the original.
Where blank verse makes good use of such effects, rhyming
poetry is utterly broken apart by them, and must avoid them,
thereby becoming even less Homeric. "A translator of Homer,
therefore, seems directed by Homer himself to the use of
blank verse, as to that alone in which he can be rendered
with any tolerable representation of his manner in this
particular" (viii).

Edward, Earl of Derby, in arguing for blank verse,
addresses himself less to the dangers of rhyme than to the
"pestilent heresy" of the English hexameter. That aside,
then, he says that blank verse is "the only meter capable of
adapting itself to all the gradations . . . of the Homeric
style" (viii), from elaborate similes to simple, "homely"
passages. It can especially "do full justice" to speeches
full of strong emotion, where rhyme can destroy the effect.

William Cullen Bryant also argues for blank verse,
echoing, along the way, his predecessors. Rhyme in
translation "is a constant temptation to petty infidelities"
(vi). Ballad-measure "would lead to some sacrifice of
dignity." The hexameter is "imperfect" in English--meaning
simply that our ears are not used to it. "I therefore fall
back on blank-verse" (vii) he says, choosing it not for any
great strengths, it seems, but merely by process of

elimination. But, he reminds us, it is responsible for the

73
"noblest poetry" in English, and the "flexibility of its

construction" fits the long narrative poem.

If we accept blank verse as an imperfect yet still
reasonable choice, by what criteria, then, do we judge a
particular blank verse translation of the Iliad?

We might start by asking what a blank verse translation
can be expected to do well, and what it cannot. If one of
the strengths of the form is that it is standard to English
the way the hexameter was to Homer’s culture, then we should
expect a successful blank verse translation to be, first,
good poetry in itself. Given the malleable nature of the
verse, we can also expect a version to be open to most of
the other general criteria outlined in Chapter One:
emotional strength in its diction, and so forth. The only
criterion that is not reasonable here is Arnold’s
requirement of rapidity. Blank verse, by its very nature,
is not rapid. Its rising rhythm is generally slower than a
falling rhythm, and its disyllabic iambs are generally
slower than trisyllabic feet. Furthermore, as Garnett has
pointed out, the frequent pauses, so important to the

success of blank verse, slow the line further.

There exist over twenty-five English blank verse

translations of the Iliad--complete and partial--written

74
before 1900fi’and only three of those were written before
1800. Three complete versions gained reasonably wide fame
and readership--by Coner, Derby, and Bryant--while the
others fell quickly into obscurityu‘ The Comparison section
examines five of those lesser-known versions, each showing
mixed success. The Closer Look section first examines the
versions of Derby and Bryant,’ showing why they, too, are
not completely successful. Finally, we will take a look at
the best blank verse translation of the nineteenth century--
an anonymous partial version from book 18, "The Shield of

Achilles."

Comparison of Morrice (1809), Brandreth (1846), Norgate
(1864), Caldcleugh (1870), and Cordory (1886)

These five little-known blank verse translations,
spanning the nineteenth century, are strong in some places,
weak in others. None is good enough to stand out from the
rest. This section examines them at four short passages
near the end of book 16, using the criteria set out earlier,

and ranks them at each step.

Hector observ’d
The wounded chief retiring, and advanc’d

 

3Blank verse of the twentieth century is covered in
Chapter Seven.

‘For brief information.and comments regarding blank verse
translations not covered in this chapter, see Appendix.

5Cowper’s version is covered thoroughly by Crossett.

75

With hasty stride, and deep infix’d his spear
Beneath the heart, and pierc’d his body through:
He fell; then deeply griev’d the Grecian host.
(James Morrice)

. . . whom half-withdrawn
Hector beheld and in such wounded plight,
And, through the files advancing, pierced his side
Nigh the fifth rib, and drave the point right through.
Loud clash’d his armour on him, as he fell,
And falling, anguish’d all Achaia’s host.
(J. G. Cordery)

[Patroclus] fell back somewhat,
Retreating towards his comrades; Hector saw,
And drawing near him pierced him in the groin;
Down fell the chief, the Greeks lamenting much.
(W. G. Caldcleugh)

And Hector, when he brave Patroclus saw,

Struck with sharp brass, retiring from the war,

Came through the ranks, and push’d him with his spear
Upon the groin, and through it drove the brass.

He falling sounded; and the Argives grieved.

(T. S. Brandreth)

But Hector,
Soon as he saw the mighty-souled Patroclus
Withdrawing back again, hurt by keen weapon,
At him full near he came along the lines,
And in the lowest part ’twixt hip and rib
Wounded him with the spear; and drave the brass
Through-out: and down he fell a heavy thump;
And mightily distressed the Achaians’ host.
(T. S. Norgate)6

'Ex1wp 6' bc 6166p Ho1p0xkfia ueydOvuov

6¢ dvaxafé evov, Befiknuévov bfé? xakxb,
dyxiuokév p& 01 fikOe xa1h a1ixac, 0610 66 60vpi
v65a10v 6c xevebva, 6canpb 66 xakxbv 6Aa006'
606nn06v 66 fiEOéV, uéya 6' fixaxe Aabv ’Axaiév'
(16.818-22)

(But Hector, when he beheld great-souled Patroclus
drawing back, smitten with the sharp bronze, came nigh
him through the ranks, and smote him with a thrust of his
spear in the nethermost belly, and.drave the bronze clean

 

6Norgate’s verse is not decasyllabic, and does not scan
iambically; instead, it is, in his words, "dramatic blank
verse," having "an unvarying number of feet (five), and yet
a varying number of syllables" (Preface vii).

76

through; and he fell with a thud, and sorely grieved the
host of the Achaeans.) (literal prose of Murray)

Here Morrice is best; his verses are unmarred, and the
diction is strong and simple. "Deep infix’d his spear /
Beneath the heart" is close to the original in sense, and is
equivalent in spirit--harsh but not overly gruesome. "He
fell" is simple where others fall into absurdity. "Then
deeply griev’d the Grecian host" is perfect on all counts.

Cordery’s "drave the point right through" is sufficient
for second place, capturing something of the strength of
6ianpb 66 xanbv 6A0006. "Loud clash’d his armour on him"
violates Wilson’s maxim, though, as Homer in no way
"clash’d" here.

Caldcleugh takes third by default; his version skips
much, and therefore doesn’t have a chance to be truly bad in
the way Brandreth and Norgate are here. Brandreth’s diction
is weak; "pgsh’g him with his spear" and "He falling
sounded" have some of the sense but none of the spirit of
Homer. Norgate starts fine, keeping "mighty-souled
Patroclus" where the others have dropped it, but later he
commits the worst foul--the sheer absurdity that renders all

else invisible--"and down he fell a heavy thump."

"Patroclus, thou didst think, and vainly too,
Our city to despoil, and captive bear
The Trojan matrons to thy native land.
Insensate! ’tis for them the Hectorian steeds
To battle speed their way; for them I wield
This spear, amongst the warlike sons of Troy
Excelling, to ward off that fatal day.
Thee, wretched man! the vultures shall devour:"
(Morrice)

77

"Thou saidst, Patroclus, thou wouldst waste our town,
And Trojan dames, of freedom’s day deprived,
Lead in your swift ships to your fathers’ land;
Fool; Hector’s rapid steeds before them stretch
With feet to war, and I with spear excel
Amongst the warlike Trojans to ward off
Their evil day; but vultures thee shall eat."
(Brandreth)

"To thine own heart, Patroclus, thou hadst said
How thou wouldst make my city desolate,
And bear the women of Troy across the seas
To a dark life of slavery in your homes:
Fond! For before them bounded to the fray
The steeds of Hector; and myself excel
All warriors, warring for their sake, and keep
Such day of doom afar; but thou becom’st
The food of vultures!"
(Cordery)

”Patroclus! thinking wast thou sure, I ween,
On ravaging our City, and of robbing

Our Trojan women of the day of freedom,

And taking them away on board thy ships

To thy dear fatherland; Ah, simpleton!

For in defence of them, Hector’s swift horses
Apace have galloped forward to the battle:
Myself too am distinguished for the spear
Amongst our warlike Trojans, and ’tis I
Ward off their day of slavery: but thee
Shall vultures here devour. . .

(Norgate)

"Oh, Patroclus! thou doubtless didst expect
Our city to destroy, and lead away
Our wives and children to thy fatherland;
Such was thy hope, thou miserable fool!
But Hector’s chariot meets thee in the field,--
Hector conspicuous in warlike deeds,
And ever prompt his people to defend;
Now hungry vultures shall thy corpse devour."
(Caldcleugh)

Wfl6100xk' , n no» 6¢n006 06%;» x6pa?£666» 6pn»,
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10001» opwpéxo1a¢ noxeuifeiv 67x6t 6 6010;
pral ¢LA0n10A6u0101 ue1anp6nw, 6 0¢:» 6pvvw
fiuap 6»ayxaio»° 06 66 1' 6»0666 70060 660»1a¢."
(16.830-36)

78

("Patroclus, thou thoughtest, I ween, that thou
wouldest sack our city, and from the women of Troy
wouldest take the day of freedom, and bear them in thy
ships to thy dear native land, thou fool! Nay, in front
of them the swift horses of Hector stride forth to the
fight, and with the spear I myself am pre-eminent among
the war-loving Trojans, even I that ward from them the
day of doom; but for thee, vultures shall devour thee
here.") (literal prose of Murray)

None of the five is especially good in this passage, but
Morrice once again takes first place, mainly on the strength
of his repeated "for them," having found a way to make clear
Homer’s subtle 16w» n06006».7 lBrandreth takes second place
for his daring, having rendered 00002» bpwpéxa1a: the most
literally, as "stretch with feet to war." The phrase is
hardly idiomatic English; Norgate’s "galloped forward to the
battle," in fact, is a perfectly idiomatic equivalent, for
which he is to be commended. But in the way that no common
idiom can, "stretch with feet to war" creates a vivid
image--one of the best things a poem can do. Cordery takes
third place with the line "To a dark life of slavery in your
homes," not a literal but an emotional and vivid rendering

of the women’s potential fate. Cordery loses points for his

last clause, "but thou becom’st / The food of vultures!",

 

7The absolutely literal meaning of 006006» here is
”before" or "in front of," as Cordery and Brandreth have it.
The lexicon of Liddell & Scott adds to that definition: "with
collat[eral] notion of defence," as Norgate and (vaguely)
Caldcleugh have it. But Liddell & Scott further adds to the
definition--"for, on behalf of"--and refers to Iliad 16.833,

the very point in question. "Before them" is too literal
here, missing part of the meaning, and obscuring the
importance of Hector’s efforts. "In defence of them" is

better, but still narrow, as it eliminates the richness of
connotations of the simple "for them," as, for example, when
we say "for God and country."

79
where the passive construction softens and obscures the
horror of the Greek: 06 66 1' 6»0666 70060 660»1ac ("and
the vultures will eat you here"). Fourth place goes to
Cordery, held out from last place by the "galloped"
mentioned above, but unable to rise further with the weight
of this absurd line: "Myself too am distinguished for the
spear." Caldcleugh takes last place, having rearranged

Hector’s defence into obscurity.

 

”One other word I also have to say,

Ponder it well: thy life will not last long,
Soon in the dust thou prostrate, too, will lie,
By the illustrious Achilles slain."
(Caldcleugh)

"Yet else I’ll tell thee, and lay it thou to heart:
Sure no, not long shalt thou go on; but near
Already stands thy death and violent Doom,

For thee to be bowed down beneath the hands

Of blemishless Aeacides Achilles."

(Norgate)

"Yet hear
These my last words, and lay them to thy heart:
Nor thou hast long to live; but even now
I see Death stand--Death and a violent Fate
Beside thee; and the child of Aeacus,
The blameless chief Achilles, strikes thee down!"
(Cordery)

"But this I tell thee, and mark well my words,
Not long shalt thou survive: already Death
And Fate approach thee near; destin’d to fall,
And shortly too, by great Achilles’ arm."
(Morrice)

"And this I say, and cast it in thy mind;
Thyself not long shalt live; but now to thee
Resistless Fate and hateful Death stand near,
Tamed by the hand of Peleus’ faultless son."
(Brandreth)

"6AAO 66 101 6p6w, 06 6' 6»i ¢p601 fi6kk60 afiacv'
0% On» 066' 66166 6npb» 360, 6AA6 10: fi6n
67x: nap601nx6» 06»610c x61 uoipa xpa1atfi,

8O

x6002 6au6»1' 'Axikfioc 6u6u0»0ciAi6xi6ao."
(16.851-54)

("And another thing will I tell thee, and do thou lay it
to hear: verily thou shalt not thyself be long in life,
but even now doth death stand hard by thee, and mighty
fate, that thou be slain beneath the hands of Achilles,
the peerless son of Aeacus.") (literal prose of Murray)

The first prize in this round goes to Caldcleugh, whose
rendering is not the most literal, but matches well Homer’s
sense and spirit, and is "eminently plain and direct."
English often relies on monosyllables for its strongest
messages, however much the phenomenon may seem foreign to
polysyllabic Greek. In this case, Caldcleugh’s half-line,
"thy life will not last long," is the sort of message that
cannot be ignored. The effect is not merely one of
monosyllables, as the other versions are similar; but none
matches Caldcleugh’s in simplicity of syntax and diction,
and in placement (end of line). Caldcleugh’s next line,
"Soon in the dust thou prostrate, too, will lie," seems
perfectly Homeric; lying stretched out in the dust is the
fate of many heroes in this story, including Patroclus
himself (hence, "too").

Second prize goes to Norgate, where "and lay it thou to
heart" loosens the literal word of the original just enough
to make the phrase both idiomatic and vivid. Brandreth’s
"and cast it in thy mind" is too literal, sounding just a
bit foolish. Morrice’s "and mark well my words" and

Caldcleugh’s "Ponder it well" are idiomatic, but not as

vivid as Norgate’s. Cordery’s phrase is close to Norgate’s,

81

but he takes third place for a different reason. His "I see
Death stand--Death and a violent Fate" I like, personally,
partly because it reminds me of Christopher Logue’s
astounding version of this passage.8 But the "I see" isn’t
in the Greek, and Norgate’s "near / Already stands thy death
and violent Doom" is perfectly literal and just as strong.
Brandreth and Morrice tie for last place; neither has much

to recommend it in this passage.

"Why dost thou, Patroclus, foretell my death?
Who knows but great Achilles may himself
Die before me, and by my spear be slain?"

He said; and drew his weapon from the wound,
Pressing his heel upon the warrior’s breast,
Then dashed him prostrate on the dusty ground;
(Caldcleugh)

"Wherefore, Patroclus,
Dost prophesy for me o’erhanging ruin?
And who knows, but that fair-tressed Thetis’ son,
Achilles, may be first to lose his life
Smitten by this my spear?" As thus he spake,
Planting his heel, he drew his brazen lance
From out the wound, and from the shaft thrust back
The corse, face upward.
(Norgate)

"Patroclus, why foretellest thou my fate?
Who knows, if swift Achilles, Thetis’ son,
Struck by my spear, may first his own life lose."
So saying, from the wound his brazen spear
He drew with heel, and cast him on his back;
(Brandreth)

"Why of my fate
Prophetic thus? Who knows but he may fall,
The Son of Thetis, by this self-same spear?"
He spake; and from the wound the weapon drew,
Spurn’d with his heel, and thrust to earth the corpse:
(Morrice)

 

3 See Chapter Six.

 

82

"Predoom’st thou me, Patroclus, to this death?
Yet it may hap that Peleus’ noble Son
Shall be the first to perish by my spear."

He spoke, and stamp’d his heel upon the corse,
And pluck’d the brazen weapon from the wound,
And toss’d him off the point supine;
(Cordery)

"HOTpéKAELC, 1i »6 00¢ 06»166661 6100» 6A6000»;

1i; 6' 066' 61 x 'Axixeéc, 961660C 06Tq 66066010,
¢Ofiu 606 606 60001 10061; 606 0006» 6A6006:;"

“QC 606 ¢w»fiaac 6600 x6Ax60» 65 6161A6¢
610006 A6£ 000056;, 16» 6' 600:0» 60' 606 60006;.
(16.859-63)

("Patroclus, wherefore dost thou prophesy for me sheer
destruction? Who knows but that Achilles, the son of
fair-tressed Thetis, may first be smitten by my spear,
and lose his life?"

So saying, he drew forth the spear of bronze from the
wound, setting his foot upon the dead, and thrust him
backward from the spear.) (literal prose of Murray)

In this final round, the first place goes again to
Caldcleugh, for two reasons especially: 1) "great Achilles
may himself / Die before me" uses enjambment to its utmost,
the heavy downbeat on "Die" feeling like Death itself; 2) he
has the good sense to use "prostrate" and "dusty" to match
the diction from the previous section.

Second place goes to Norgate, very close to the original
in word, sense, and spirit at all points. His phrase
"o’erhanging ruin" is a master stroke, making 6106» into a

vivid picture such as the dangling sword of Damocles.9

 

9But is it in the original? Very nearly so. We should
not be fooled by Murray’s prose, where "sheer" is really a
clever pun. Without the Greek, we might take it to mean
"complete, utter," but the:Greek word is 6106» ("steep, lofty"
or, of course, "sheer"). "O’erhanging" is only a small step
away.

 

 

83
Third place is a tie between Morrice and Brandreth,
equally unexceptional, and almost identical in the second
half of this passage. Last place, then, goes to Cordery.
”Predoom’st thou me" would have been enough to earn last
place, but the verbs used in the second half-~"stamp’d,"
"p1uck’d," and "toss’d"--thoroughly violate the spirit of

the passage.

Which of the criteria have held most sway? Diction that
carries some suggestion of homeric emotion and vigor is
often the deciding factor, especially because it is all too
often quite scarce in blank verse translations. This is
closely tied to the second factor--evidence of good English
blank verse poetry. Closeness of word, sense, or spirit is
also essential, but only occasionally is it the deciding
factor (except to the degree that homeric emotion and vigor
are part of spirit). One other factor, avoidance of

absurdity, all too often makes a difference.

A Closer Look
Unlike the five obscure translations examined in the
previous section, the translations by Edward, Earl of Derby
and William Cullen Bryant were widely reviewed and
frequently reprinted, and are still relatively easy to find
in libraries. The two versions were published only six

years apart--1864 and 1870, respectively--but are very

84
different, reflecting their authors’ professions; Derby was
a statesman, Bryant a poet. Though each was clearly a
success by standards of publishing, neither is completely

successful by the criteria outlined in this chapter.

EDWARD. EARL 0F DERBY. The_lliad_ef_nemer (1864)

Of Peleus’ son, Achilles, sing, O Muse,

The vengeance, deep and deadly; whence to Greece
Unnumber’d ills arose; which many a soul

Of mighty warriors to the viewless shades
Untimely sent; they on the battle plain

Unburied lay, a prey to rav’ning dogs,

And carrion birds; but so had Jove decreed,

From that sad day when first in wordy war,

The mighty Agamemnon, King of men,

Confronted stood by Peleus’ godlike son.

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'A106T6nc 16 6»6£ 6»60&» x61 6206 'Axikkefic.
(1.1-7)

(The wrath do thou sing, O goddess, of Peleus’ son,
Achilles, that baneful wrath which brought countless woes
upon the Achaeans, and sent forth to Hades many valiant
souls of warriors, and made themselves to be a spoil for
dogs and all manner of birds; and thus the will of Zeus
was being brought.to fulfillment;--sing thou thereof from
the time when at first there parted in strife Atreus’
son, king of men, and.goodly'Achilles.) (literal prose of
Murray)

Lord Derby asks the muse to sing the veggeance of
Achilles, which is not quite accurate for ufi»:»; but his
distorted syntax obscures the opening lines further. The
first word e; seems, at the reader’s first glance, to be
governed by eigg, with the sense of "about." The reader is

not likely to recognize "the vengeance, deep and deadly"

fc
fc

mi

la
cc
tc
0!

tr

1;.8’

i
I

85
immediately as the direct object of ging, without
preposition (rightly imitating the original) and modified by
gt. The opening is no place for grammatical and semantic
confusion, however momentary it may be; the confusion
dampens the impact on the reader.

”Untimely sent" in Derby’s fifth line is intriguing. The
standard view seems to be that HDSIEQIY is not actually
found in the original, although it can reasonably be
inferred from the context. But maybe it ie in the text, in
flpOTG¢€V, even though Autenrieth dismisses the 000- as
"merely for emphasis," and Liddell & Scott gives only "send
forth, hurl away." Most words beginning in 000- refer to
forward motion, forward place, or earlier time; but one
might be seen to carry a sense of "too-early time," and so,
of course, ”untimely." 00670»0c ("earlier-born") refers to
lambs, which are at considerable risk if born before
consistently warm weather sets in. There is no way for us
to know if Derby’s use of untimely sprang from his reading
of 000-, or from the larger context, or from earlier

translations,lo but it is illuminating nonetheless.

 

loCowper uses "premature," and Maynwaring "untimely."
Ogilby was the first to translate 000‘5’666» in this way
("untimely"), and he included an explanatory note:

The Ancients suppos’d those that died a violent death to
die before their time, and that such deaths came not by
Fate; wherefore Virgil saies of Dido, that--pee fato,

' o ' e --000?6¢6»
implies such an unnatural anticipation of Fate.

86
Syntax is a problem again in Derby’s last lines of the
invocation. "Wordy war" is a weak rendering of 60106»16,
although its mocking tone might actually be more appropriate
than 60106»16 to describe the trouble between Agamemnon and
Achilles. "Confronted stood," on the other hand, is a
perfectly apt rendering of 61601610». However, while the
passage unscrambled reads ”When Agamemnon stood, confronted
by Achilles, in wordy war," Derby’s placement of "confronted
stood by" leads the reader, at first glance, to picture the
two men standing side-by-side--hardly an appropriate image.
Inverted syntax is certainly not to be considered a
universal crime in poetry. In a work like the Iliad,
however, where a reasonable narrative speed is important,
and especially in the invocation, where our first images are
being forged, clarity is essential; syntax that throws up
road-blocks is no help at all.
Derby is slightly off in the following passage:

Like the night-cloud he pass’d; and from afar

He bent against the ships, and sped the bolt;

And fierce and deadly twang’d the silver how.

6 6' 616 »0K11 60106;.

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661»6 66 KA6776 76»61' 607006010 31010.

(1.47b-49)

(and his coming was like the night. Then he sate him

down apart from the ships and let fly a shaft: terrible

was the twang of the silver bow.) (literal prose of

Murray)
According to John Wilson in 1831, Cowper had rendered 6 6'

616 »0x11 601xé; best up to that time, even "perfectly"

(12)--"Like night he came." Wilson argues that Homer has

87
not turned day into night, but has only made Apollo into an
inversion of himself--the sun-god, in his anger, has become
a blackness within the daytime. Derby’s "night-cloud" is
nowhere in the original, and is ambiguous: is it a cloud
that is dark as night, or is it a cloud in the night?
”Pass’d" is wrong in its connotations, as Apollo has come
down toward them from the mountain-top. Derby’s sins here
and elsewhere, it should be noted, are nothing like the
absurdities seen in the Comparison section; where he misses,
he usually misses by only a little.

Derby’s next line misses for a different reason. "Sped
the bolt" provides an appropriate image, once the reader has
turned it into an image, but the problem is with the words
themselves. Matthew Arnold argues that the words should
never draw attention to themselves, should never interfere
with the image they are intended to portray, should never
seem odd. But "odd" describes "sped the bolt" exactly. The
meaning is clear enough--"shot the arrow"; but even in 1864
Derby’s phrase must have drawn attention to itself, away
from the image.

The third line is much better, especially "fierce and
deadly" for 661»6, although Twang’g runs dangerously close
to the problem mentioned just above.

In this next passage Derby commits no glaring errors, but
his lines do not have the straightforward ease of Homer’s

original, or of good blank verse:

88

and when his bark
Had reach’d the shelter of the deep sea bay,
Their sails they furl’d, and lower’d to the hold;
Slack’d the retaining shrouds, and quickly struck
And stow’d away the mast; then with their sweeps
Pull’d for the beach, and cast their anchors out,
And made her fast with cables to the shore.
Then on the shingly breakwater themselves
They landed, and the sacred hecatomb
To great Apollo; and Chryseis last.

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(1.432-39)

(When they were now got within the deep harbour, they
furled the sail, and stowed it in the black ship, and the
mast they lowered by the forestays and brought it to the
crutch with speed, and rowed her with oars to the place
of anchorage. Then they cast out the mooring-stones and
made fast the stern cables, and themselves went forth
upon the shore of the sea. Forth they brought the
hecatomb for4kpollo, that smiteth.afar, and forth stepped
also the daughter of Chryses from the sea-faring ship.)
(literal prose of Murray)

Derby is too obviously molding his descriptions to fit
the iambic pentameter line: "deep sea bay"--what does sea
add, except another syllable?; "Their sails they furl’d"--
too much unlike ordinary speech patterns, without gaining
any poetic vigor from the difference; "themselves / They
landed"--same problem.

Derby is much stronger at Hector’s prayer for his son:

"Grant, Jove, and all ye Gods, that this my son
May be, as I, the foremost man of Troy,

For valour fam’d, his country’s guardian King;
That men may say, ‘This youth surpasses far

His father,’ when they see him from the fight

From slaughter’d foes, with bloody spoils of war
Returning, to rejoice his mother’s heart!"

89

"Z60 6AAo1 16 0601, 6616 66 061 16»66 76»60061
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(6.476-81)

(”Zeus and ye other gods, grant that this my child may
likewise prove, even as I, pre-eminent amid the Trojans,
and as valiant in might, and that he rule mightily over
Ilios. And some day may some man say of him as he cometh
back from war, ‘He is better far than his father’; and
may he bear the blood-stained spoils of the foeman he
hath slain, and may his mother’s heart wax glad.")
(literal prose of Murray)
Each line, each phrase rings with the pride and hope of
fatherhood. The secondary quotation, "This youth surpasses
far / His father," is a fine rendering of a difficult yet
important spot; in my view, there are only two better
versions (see Chapter Five).

Even better is the triple zeugma in the last lines. The
prepositional phrases pile one upon another until the
tension is released finally by the verb returning. Derby
does not follow the order of the original very closely here,
but he captures the sense adequately, and captures the
spirit exceptionally well, proving that he cap write like a
poet from time to time.

Near the beginning of book 16, Derby starts the passage
poorly, but improves:

"Oh, be it never mine to nurse such hate

As thou retain’st, inflexibly severe!

Who e’er may hope in future days by thee

To profit, if thou now forbear to save

The Greeks from shame and loss? Unfeeling man!

Sure Peleus, horseman brave, was ne’er thy sire,
Nor Thetis bore thee; from the cold gray sea

90

And craggy rocks thou hadst thy birth; so hard
And stubborn is thy soul.”

"06 606 7' 06» 0616; 76 A6301 x6A0;, 60 06 ¢0A60061;,

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(16.30-35)

("Never upon me let such wrath lay hold, as that thou

dost cherish, O thou whose valour is but a bane! ‘Wherein

shall any other even yet to be born have profit of thee,

if thou ward not off shameful ruin from the Argives?

Pitiless one, thy father, meseems, was not the knight

Peleus, nor was Thetis thy mother, but the grey sea bare

thee, and the beetling cliffs, for that thy heart is

unbending.") (literal prose of Murray)
"Inflexibly severe" captures absolutely nothing of 61»6061n.
The phrase makes sense within the context, but it is not
Homer, in meaning or in sound. This kind of complete miss
is unusual for Derby. More typical is the fourth line: "To
profit, if thou now forbear to save." It is in no way
incorrect--but is simply an abomination to the ear.

Derby redeems himself a bit in the last two and a half
lines. The images of "cold gray sea" and "craggy rocks" are
right on the money in both sound and sense. The last
clause--"so hard / And stubborn is thy soul"--is
surprisingly free from the literal word, but again the sense
is there and the poetry is far better than the usual Derby.

The Iliad of Lord Derby is a solid piece of work, the
kind of work one might expect from a well-educated and well-

respected statesman and peer. The choice of blank verse

seems only reasonable. That it is a close translation is no

91
surprise at all. That it rarely stumbles is to be expected.

That it rarely soars is unfortunate.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. Ths_llisg_2f_flgmsr (1870‘71)

The opening invocation of the Iliad as rendered by Bryant
is as good as any version:

0 Goddess! sing the wrath of Peleus' son,
Achilles; sing the deadly wrath that brought
Woes numberless upon the Greeks, and swept

To Hades many a valiant soul, and gave

Their limbs a prey to dogs and birds of air,--
For so had Jove appointed,--from the time
When the two chiefs, Atrides, king of men,

And great Achilles, parted first as foes.

It starts with a cry--"O Goddess!"--and from there
follows the original in many significant aspects. "Sing the
wrath of Peleus' son" puts Homer's words and syntax into
plain English order, preserving the sense and force.
Achilles stands at the head of the second line--always
important words in important places in this invocation.
£139 is repeated, unlike the original but in no way awkward,
leading to the important repetition and intensification
”deadly wrath"--a perfectly simple rendering of obkou6»n».
Of this line and the next two, each ends in an active verb
(brought, swept, gage), which in turn leads to its object
(direct or indirect) near the head of each subsequent line
(flogg, [To] gages, [Their] limbs). This is vigorous

composition for a vigorous opening, by a poet who knows his

craft well.

92
In the following, Bryant gives us one of those
translations that is slightly less literal than it could be,
but through deliberate choice becomes more revealing:
"Ha, thou mailed in impudence
And bent on lucre! Who of all the Greeks
Can willingly obey thee, on the march,
Or bravely battling with the enemy?"
"& #01, 6»6166[n» 6fl161u6»6, K6p606€6¢pov,
”6C 15¢ 101 npéopw» 6fl601» flEiOnTat 'Ax61é»
6 666» 6606u6»61 fi 6»6p601» I¢1 p6x60061;"
(1.149-51)
("Ah me, thou clothed in shamelessness, thou of crafty
mind, how shall any man of the Achaeans hearken to thy
bidding with a ready heart either to go on a journey or
to fight amain with warriors?") (literal prose of Murray)
"Mailed in impudence"--Agamemnon is not simply covered
("clothed") by his disrespect, he is armored with it, he
uses it for protection of the fragile self within. The
suggestion of immaturity in the leader of leaders makes the
insult especially wounding, and accurate. The rest of the
short passage is concise and straightforward and nearly
literal, although the last line does not flow as well as it
should.

The triple insult is not handled so well:

"Wine-bibber, with the forehead of a dog
And a deer's heart!"

"oivoBapéc, xv»6C buuaf' Ewa. Kpa6inv 6' €60¢0¢0r"
(1.225)

("Thou heavy with wine, thou with the front of a dog but
the heart of a dear,") (literal prose of Murray)

93

W1ng;h1pber is a horribly weak rendering of oiuoflapéc, but

worse yet, was probably either borrowed--it was common

enough in English translations--or simply cribbed from the

dictionary (Autenreich). One expects better of a poet such

as Bryant.
In the following passage Bryant handles the routine
fighting episode well:

The warlike Polypoetes overthrew
Astyalus; Ulysses smote to earth
Pidytes the Percosian with the spear,
And Teucer Aretaon, nobly born.

The glittering javelin of Antilochus,
The son of Nestor, laid Ablerus low;
And Agamemnon, king of men, struck down
Elatus, who on lofty Pedasus

Dwelt, by the smoothly flowing Satnio's stream.
Brave Leitus slew Phylacus in flight,
And by Eurypylus Melanthius fell.

7A0166A0» 6' 60' 6n6¢»6 06»6n1ékeuoclflokvuoi1nc'
11166111» 6' '0600661; H60x16010» 6&61'610186»

67x67 XOXKéiw, T66x00c 6' 'A06160»6 620».
'Ay1ikoxoc 6' 'ABano» 6»fi0610 60001 ¢661»®
N60100£6n¢, 'EA610» 66 6»6£ 6»60&» 'A7auép»w»'
»616 66 261»166»10c 66006£160 nap’ 6x06c
Hi6600» 61n61»fi». Qfikaxo» 6' 6X6 Afil10¢ fipwc
¢6fi70»1" Ebpfinvkoc 66'Nkkfi»010» 6f6»601£6».
(6.29-36)

(And Polypoetes staunch in fight slew Astyalus,

Odysseus with his spear of bronze laid low Pidytes of
Percote, and Teucer goodly Aretaon. And Antilochus, son
of Nestor, slew Ablerus with his bright spear, and the
king of men, Agamemnon, slew Elatus that dwelt in steep
Pedasus by the banks of fair-flowing Satnioeis. And the
warrior Leitus slew Phylacus, as he fled before him; and
Eurypylus laid Melanthius low.) (literal prose of Murray)

Most of the pairs of fighters are dispatched as efficiently

as in the original, until Bryant offers one clear image

using one full line: "The glittering javelin of

94
Antilochus."” The line is like a jewel buried in the sand;

who would expect to find it there?

In another spot, where Helen addresses Hector, Bryant's
abilities as a poet work against him:

"Brother-in-law,--for such thou art, though I
Am lost to shame, and cause of many ills,—-
Would that some violent blast when I was born
Had whirled me to the mountain wilds, or waves
Of the hoarse sea, that they might swallow me,
Ere deeds like these were done!"

”6660 6u610 xv»6c x6xounx6»ov 6x000600nc,

6c 0' 6¢6A' 60611 16 616 06 00610» 16x6 ufi1n0
01x60061 n00¢600006 xaxfi 6»6u010 066660

61c 600C 6 62¢ x606 n0Av¢A0iaBo10 06%600nc,

6»96 06 xbu' 6n66006 n600c 1666 6076 76»60061."
(6.344-48)

("0 Brother of me that am a dog, a contriver of mischief
and abhorred of all, I would that on the day when first
my mother gave me birth an evil storm-wind had borne me
away to some mountain or to the wave of the loud-
resounding sea, where the wave might have swept me away

or ever these things came to pass.") (literal prose of
Murray)

More than any other blank verse translation of the Iliad,
Bryant's is always smooth and sonorous. The version by
Derby, who was not a poet by profession, has certain
strengths, but rarely achieves the poetic gracefulness that
Bryant's Iliad almost always holds. But passages such as
this call for something other than gracefulness, and Bryant
seems unable to turn it off. ". . . for such thou art,
though I / Am lost to shame, and cause of many ills"

contains none of the jarring, violent self-hatred

 

" The line scans only if "glittering" and "javelin" are
each held to two syllables (each is well within the bounds of
reasonable usage); a two-syllable "glittering" will be
sonorous only if both ts are heard-—g it:t;ing.

95
characteristic of the original: xv»6c xaxounx6»ov
6x0006000c. Likewise, the rest of the passage is highly
poetic, full of motion--but not the emotion of Helen.

At Hector’s prayer, again the poetry is smooth but unable
to rise to the heights of emotion where Homer's Hector
should be taken:

"0 Jupiter and all ye deities,

Vouchsafe that this my son may yet become

Among the Trojans eminent like me,

And nobly rule in Ilium. May they say,

‘This man is greater than his father was!’

When they behold him from the battle-field

Bring back the bloody spoil of the slain foe,--

That so his mother may be glad at heart."
The secondary quote, the end of which should mark the
highest emotional point of the passage, ends instead
disappointingly with the bg-verb "was"; that the line ends
on this same weak note only exacerbates the problem. It may
read smoothly, but it holds little of the power of emotion
that is needed here.

In the last two lines, even the smoothness stumbles. In
"Bring back the bloody spoil of the slain foe,--" the words
do not fall off the tongue as easily as we expect from
Bryant, and the rhythm is hard to find. In the last line,
"That so" is unidiomatic and awkward.

At Patroclus' speech to Achilles, Bryant shows an
interesting twist at one point:

”O, never be such fierce resentments mine
As thou dost cherish, who art only brave
For mischief! Whom wilt thou hereafter aid,
If now thou rescue not the perishing Greeks?

O merciless! it cannot surely be
That Peleus was thy father, or the queen

96

Thetis thy mother; the green sea instead

And rugged precipices brought thee forth,

For savage is thy heart."
"Who art only brave / For mischief!" does not quite capture
the subtleties of 62»6061n, but it finds a truth of its own.
"Brave for mischief" describes--what else?--a boy! And
that, of course, is part of the problem for Achilles, who
sulks, and weeps, and carries on. He is much more than a
boy, without question, but Bryant has reminded us of the
part that explains so much. In the last part of the
passage, though, the strength is again missing. "The green
sea” is precisely the wrong image. "Rugged precipices" is
an architectural feat of versification indeed, working as it
does with the meter of the line. But "precipices" actually
sounds rather silly here where a strong monosyllable (e.g.,
tggkg) is called for by the image if not the meter.

Bryant's poetic craft makes his Iliad a very different

and far more readable work than Derby’s. But like Derby’s,

it does not soar; in fact, despite being a rather pretty

bird, it all too often cannot get off the ground.

"THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES" 18.483-608 (1875)

The very best pre-twentieth-century blank verse
translation is, unfortunately, only one small part of the
Iliad, just over one hundred lines. It sits humbly at the

end of a multiple review of translations of the Iliad, in

the Lgndon Quartgtly Review; there is no name attached.

97

It might be said that a small piece cannot be valued
equally with a complete translation, and I do not disagree.
The magnitude of achievement of this small piece does not
rival that of a good complete translation.

On the other hand, good is good, and no other version
stands by this one. It is superior by nearly every
criterion for blank verse translations, as set out in the
first part of this chapter.

It is as rapid as blank verse can be; it is plain and
direct at almost every point, except for a rare
circumlocution and one other phenomenon that is, I think, a
plus. Is it noble? Let us say, for the moment, that it
never stumbles and is never absurd. The work is literal to
a degree that is continually surprising, and it never strays
from the sense or the spirit of the original. It is always
perfectly clear; and it carries the emotion, the vigor, the
force, even the violence of Homer's original, adjusting and
capturing the appropriate tone from scene to scene--of joy
and sorrow, of clamoring crowds and beautiful vineyards, of
dances and bloody battles.

Could the author have sustained this level through a
complete translation? Probably not, but the question is
moot. The piece, as we have it, is a treasure:

I.
And there he wrought the world, the sea, the sky,
The unreposing sun, the full-faced moon,
With all the starry signs that crown the heavens,
The Pleiads, and the Hyads, and Orion's might,

And Arctos, named the Wain by name, who wheels
His restless round, to watch Orion's ways,

98

Sole star that never shares the ocean's baths.

IV.
Around the second city sate two hosts,
Shining in arms, divided in desire
To dash it into dust, or harry half
The lovely city held within her walls;
Surrender scorned, for ambush silently
They arm. Upon the walls their sweet wives stand,
Their children, and their sires of years infirm,
To guard their homes. On marched the men led forth
By Mars and by Minerva, each in gold,
And each in golden garments garmented,
Divinely beautiful and tall. . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Each host
Made halt beside the river's bank and fought
The fight, each smiting with the bronze-bound spear.
Tumult and Strife and Fate raged there--
Destroying Fate--one with his gash still green
She grasped a captive, and one without a wound,
And one in death she dragged forth by his feet
From out the battle. Bright with blood the robe
Upon her shoulders blazed. Like mortal men
Ranging the field, and mingling in the fight,
They slew, and haled from either host the slain.

X.
And there in quaint device a dance he wrought,
Like to the dance that Daedalus designed
Of yore in spacious Cnossus to delight
The fair-tressed Ariadne. Many a maid
Worthy to win the wooer's gift of kine,
Of countless kine, danced with their partners there,
Wrist upon wrist, and hand on hand, the maids
Mantled in tender-tissued gauze, the men
In tunics glossy, as the gloss of oil;
Those crowned with crowns of beauty, these
With swords of gold from belts of silver swung.
They whirled the dance with fleet and practised feet,
With ease, as when the working potter whirls
His wheel, to gauge his gear, and spins it round,
To rule its circling speed; so, with all ease,
These wheeled around, and crossed from side to side,
While crowds delighted stood around the dance
Of joy. The holy minstrel, in their midst,
Sang meanwhile to his harp; and tumblers twain
His song took up, and tumbled as they sang.
And for the margin of that matchless shield,
The mighty strength of ocean's stream he made.

99

In the first lines, we see immediately the dignity and
ease with which the translator arranges the pieces--
literally yet without the awkwardness that typically marks a
literal version. In the fifth line we have the first
example of polyptoton: ”named the Wain by name.” In this
case, the original provides the basis, with énixkn01»
x6A6ova1». In countless other cases throughout this work,
the translator indulges in polyptoton even where the
original does not. While these figures are not in
themselves plain, nor especially homeric, they do have
precedent in other Greek works. Working with alliteration
that is even more pervasive, the polyptotons help create the
atmosphere of decoration, which is, after all, the subject
of the entire piece.12 The rhetorical figures do not get
out of hand; there are few of any other type. The
straightforward syntax helps preserve a sense of plainness
and directness in the midst of the decorations.

The tone near the end of paragraph IV is far different
from previous paragraphs, yet the words are still very close
to the original, and are still strong--full of violent verbs
and verbals: "smiting," "raged," "Destroying," "grasped,"
”dragged," "ranging," "mingling," "slew," and "haled."

There is one bit of circumlocution: "one with his gash

still green" for »6061610» ("lately wounded" [Autenrieth]),

 

12In other words, the polyptoton is more appropriate here
than in a battle scene, such as the end of book 16, where I
criticized Blackie for "fall he fell."

100
but it is fascinating in itself, and one instance hardly
creates a pattern.

And at all points, the blank verse lines flow easily,
whether describing the bloody battle or whirling in the
dance in paragraph X, "as when the working potter whirls /
His wheel, to gauge his gear, and spins it round." The
words almost speak themselves, in a way that is alien to the
likes of Derby or Brandreth.

Curiously, near the end of paragraph X, the translator
inserts one and a half lines or so that have no basis
whatsoever in the original: "The holy minstrel, in their
midst, / Sang meanwhile to his harp," and changes the next
line and a half to include the singing, where the original
has only the dance. The clause seems to fit in well, giving
the tumultuous scene a center, of sorts, but one can only
speculate on the reasons for the sudden change, where none
had occurred through the entire piece.

If the work has a fault, surely it lies in the extensive
polyptoton and alliteration. But they need not be seen as
faults at all; instead, I think, they are an integral (and
unusual) part of a truly poetic translation of the Iliad in

blank verse.

to
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car. '

*Chapter Four*
Prose Translations
An age which is clearly not an age of poetry does not take
to verse translation, and our respect for accuracy, which is
part of our respect for science, has committed us to
preferring a translation with no beauty at all to one with a
false beauty.
Edward Le Comte,

"Homer Transposed"
A prose translation cannot give the movement and the fire of
a successful translation in verse; it only gathers, as it
were, the crumbs which fall from the richer table, only
tells the story, without the song.

Butcher & Lang,
preface to the Odyssey

Can a long poem such as the Iliad be translated
successfully into prose? Many poets would argue that poetry
cannot truly be translated at all. However, if pressed to
choose a medium for the impossible task, they would say that
poetry mggt be translated into poetry, no matter how great
the transformation that takes place. Only in this way can
any of the spirit of the original come through to the other
side. If the impossible is going to be attempted, it had
better be done in a poetic form of the receiving language.
Matthew Arnold apparently assumed this to be the case; in
his lengthy discussion of the merits of various
possibilities for translating Homer, prose hardly comes up
at all. Likewise, Richard Garnett, in his own "On
Translating Homer."

D. S. Carne-Ross, in a retrospective review of the

Penguin Classics, argues that prose simply cannot exert the

101

 

an:

pro

 

 

ca
Tc
Cc

TIC

102
same control over the translated material that poetry can;
it cannot manage the same subtle points of emphasis or
changes of speed that make a reader stop and take notice in
the middle of a lengthy epic such as one of Homer's (407).
The repetitions of Homer, too, are difficult enough in
poetry, he says, but "are bound to defeat the prose
translator altogether" (408). The "principle of recurrence"
is a characteristic of all [traditional] poetry," making it
a more suitable medium for the translation of Homer.

Not everyone agrees, of course. For example, an
anonymous writer in Eraset'g Magazine (1868) argues that
prose can preserve qualities that verse cannot:

Prose could be made to preserve all the inner qualities
of the original--its dignity, life, simplicity,
movement: with perfect literalness it could save alive
all its peculiarities without running into pedantry.
Much, no doubt, is lost with the loss of a poetical
setting; yet a good prose translation adds something
where it has taken away: indeed, the effect of
poetical thought is sometimes silently enhanced by the
throwing off of its more appropriate form; and this is
especially the case with a translation of an antique
work, written in a strange and inimitable metre. (Rev.
of the Iliad, trans. Worsley & Conington 518)

There are certainly two things that a prose translation
can do more easily and comfortably than the poetic forms.
To whatever extent a literal version is possible, prose of
course allows the greatest possibility. The translator has
no restrictions of verse-form in his quest for the "right"
word or phrase. As mentioned in the first chapter, Butcher

& Lang say in their preface that "the simple truth about the

matter of the poem can only be given in prose" (vii). But

103
prose is also the most reasonable choice for a much freer
sort of retelling, a recasting of the story into
contemporary terms and manners. Robert Graves suggests
something of this sort, and puts it into practice, although
he also chooses to use verse at certain points (see Chapter
Six). James Spedding earlier had suggested something of
this sort (see Chapter One), not just as a simplified
version for children, or a useful synopsis for students, but
as an artful narrative in its own right, told in the way
that we tell stories in our own time.
Between these extremes, however, Peter Jones argues along

a different line--honesty. He says that "Homer has not been
translated successfully into poetry" (5). But, according to
Jones, it is easy to see why verse is so often attempted:

"Poetry," or what passes for it (poetic vocabulary set

in lines with unjustified right-hand margins and a

passing shot at rhythm) is able to create (however

falsely) the illusion of a "world" in which the literal

translation of Homer, with all its repetitions and

oddities, somehow seems to make sense. (5)
But this kind of presentation, together with some archaic
diction to make it sound right is, he says, "simply a fraud"
(5), pretending to portray accurately the original, while
actually giving us something else entirely. The more honest
alternative is prose, according to Jones, dropping all
pretensions and giving "what the Greek says in clear,
strong, idiomatic English" (6).

Whether a prose translation is literal or free, formal or

informal is a matter of the translator’s preference, and to

104
some degree a function of the intended purpose. But a good
prose translation should retain some of the vigor and
emotion that Homer's original has. No prose version can be
expected to hold these things to the same degree as the
original, but even a teaching version must have some hint of
them, or it will not teach the Iliad. The other criterion
most applicable to prose is clarity, without which a prose
translation has little or no reason for existence.
Regarding Matthew Arnold's four directives, rapidity is
irrelevant, and plainness and directness in ideas is not
likely to be lost in a prose version. Plainness and
directness in diction and syntax, on the other hand, is
important but sometimes lost, especially in a literal

version.

Approximately twenty complete translations of the Iliad
in English prose have been published since the first in
1773. Most appeared in the one hundred years from 1850 to
1950; only two appeared before, and two since. Most prose
versions have been written with an eye toward the literal
word, some to an extreme degree; many from the nineteenth
century were written as textbooks to aid the student in
working through the original--not as works of art in
themselves. Most of the twentieth-century versions have

been written to appeal to the general reader who has no

105
intention of learning the Iliad in Greek, and who might be
put off by a verse translation.‘

In this chapter, the Comparison section examines two
twentieth-century prose versions with essentially the same
intended purpose and audience, with remarkably different
results. The Closer Look section examines four prose
versions from different ages, with different purposes and
styles. Each makes a significant contribution to the total

range of English translations of the Iliad.2

Comparison of Riau (1950) and Hammond (1987)

As of 1987, the Penguin Classics series includes two
prose translations of the Iliad, the more recent by Martin
Hammond, the earlier by E. V. Rieu. Rieu’s translation has
been since its publication one of the most widely read of
all Iliads in English, due in part no doubt to external
reasons, such as Penguin's reputation and its capacities for
marketing and distribution. But the "success" of Rieu's
work must also be due to internal reasons--mainly its
accessibility. Its prose is easy to read; most of the
potentially perplexing patronymics and epithets and other
formulae are smoothed over or ignored, and there is a fair
degree of freedom from the literal word of the original in

all other parts-~so that the book resembles a modern novel.

 

‘See Le Comte 316.

2For brief information and comments regarding prose
versions not covered in this chapter, see Appendix.

106

Therein lies the problem. Read like a novel, judged by
the standards of a novel, it is not a very good one. The
scenes of fighting seem endless. The catalogue of ships
becomes absurd. Without a clear recognition that the Iliad
is indeed a different sort of work than anything the reader
has ever encountered before, and that it therefore demands
to be read in a different way, the reader will certainly
wonder why this old story has been kept around for so long.

In contrast is Martin Hammond’s version. While not
without faults of its own, it maintains more of the flavor
of the original and retains a sense of its grandeur and
significance, a sense of difference from modern fiction--and
from ordinary life.

First Rieu, near the end of book 16:

When Hector saw the great Patroclus creeping wounded from
the field, he made his way towards him through the ranks,
and coming up, he struck him with a spear in the lower
part of the belly, driving the bronze clean through.
Patroclus fell with a thud; and the whole Achaean army
was appalled" It‘was like the conquest of an indomitable
wild-boar by a lion, after a battle fought in high fury
up in the mountains over a little stream at which both
wish to drink. The lion's strength prevails and his
panting enemy is overcome. So, after killing many men
himself, Menoetius' valiant son fell to a short spear-
cast from Hector son of Priam, who now addressed him as
his conqueror. "Patroclus," he said, "you thought you
would sack my town, make Trojan women slaves, and ship
them off to your own country. You.were a fool. In their
defence, Hector's fast horses were hasting into battle;
and so was Hector himself, I, Hector, finest spearman of
the war-loving Trojans, who stand between them and the
day of slavery. So now the vultures here are going to
eat you up. IPoor wretch; even the strong arm of Achilles
did not save you. I can imagine all he told you when he
sent you out--and stayed behind. ‘Patroclus, Master of
the Horse, don’t let me see you back at the hollow ships,
till you have torn the tunic on man-killing Hector's
breast and soaked it with his blood.’ That is what he

107

must have said; and like a lunatic you took him at his
word."

And what did the knight Patroclus say to this?
”Hector," he replied in a failing voice, "boast while you
may. The victory is yours--a gift from Zeus the Son of
Chronos and Apollo. Iggy conquered me. It was an easy
task: they took the armour from my back. If twenty
Hectors had confronted me, they would all have fallen to
my spear; No; it was hateful Destiny and Leto's Son that
killed me. Then came a man, Euphorbus; you were only the
third. But listen to this and ponder it well. You too,
I swear it, have not long to live. Already sovran
Destiny and Death are very close to you, death at the
hands of Achilles the peerless son of Peleus."

Death cut Patroclus short and his disembodied soul
took wing for the House of Hades, bewailing its lot and
the youth and manhood that it left. But illustrious
Hector spoke to him again, dead though he was.
"Patroclus," he said, "why be so sure of an early end for
me? Who knows? Achilles, son of Thetis of the Lovely
Locks, may yet forestall me by ending his life with a
blow from my spear."

Hector put his foot on Patroclus to withdraw his
bronze spear from the wound, and thrust at the corpse
till it came off the spear and fell face upwards on the
ground. Then with the same spear and without pause, he
went after Automedon, the noble squire of the swift son
of Peleus. He was eager to catch him. But Automedon was
carried out of harm's way by his swift immortal horses,
the splendid gift that Peleus had received from Heaven.

Now Hammond:

But when Hector saw great-hearted Patroklos moving
back, and wounded by the sharp spear, he came up close to
him through the ranks and stabbed him with his spear in
the base of his belly, and drove the bronze right
through. He fell with a crash, and brought anguish to
the Achaian army. As when a lion masters an untiring
boar in battle, when they fight in high fury on the peak
of a mountain over a little spring of water where both
want to drink, and the boar, panting hard, is brought
down under the lion’s power-~so Hektor, son of Priam,
with a close spear-thrust took the life from the brave
son of Menoitios when he had killed many men, and spoke
winged words in triumph over him: "Patroklos, you must
have thought that you would sack our city, and take the
day of freedom from the women of Troy and carry them off
in your ships to your own native land--poor fool! In
their defence Hektor's swift horses speed into battle,
and I am renowned for my spear among all the war-loving
Trojans, for keeping the day of compulsion from them--but
you, the vultures will eat you here. Poor wretch, not

108

even Achilleus, for all his greatness, could help you.
He must have given you firm instructions when he stayed
behind and sent you out, saying, ‘let me not see you back
at the hollow ships, horseman Patroklos, until you have
ripped and bloodied murderous Hektor's tunic on his
chest.’ That is what he will have said, and swayed your
foolish heart."

Then with the strength low in you, horseman
Patroklos, you said to him: "Yes, make your great boasts
now, Hektor. You were given the victory by Zeus the son
of Kronos and Apollo--it was they who overpowered me with
ease: they took the armour from my shoulders. But if
twenty such men as you had come against me, they would
all have died where they stood, brought down under my
spear. No, it is cruel fate and Leto's son that have
killed me, and of men Euphorbos--you are the third in my
killing. I tell you another thing, and you mark it well
in your mind. You yourself, you too will not live long,
but already now death and strong fate are standing close
beside you, to bring you down at the hands of Achilleus,
great son of Aiakos' stock."

As he spoke the end of death enfolded him: and his
spirit flitted from his body and went on the way to
Hades, weeping for its fate, and the youth and manhood it
must leave. Then glorious Hektor spoke to him, dead
though he was: "Patroklos, why make me this prophecy of
grim death? Who knows if Achilleus, son of lovely-haired
Thetis, might be struck by my spear first, and lose his
life before me?"

So speaking he braced his foot against him and
pulled the bronze spear out of the wound, then kicked him
over on his back free of the spear. Then immediately he
went after Automedon with his spear, the godlike
lieutenant of swift-footed Achilleus, eager to hit him:
but he was carried clear by the swift immortal horses
that the gods had given as a splendid gift to Peleus.

At several points Rieu's easy-reading style loses the
feeling of drama and power that infuses the original, and at
some places he simply does not present the same image as the
original. Hammond, on the other hand, manages to retain
these aspects and usually gets the image right.

In Rieu, we find "Patroclus creeping wounded from the

field." "Creeping"? Is he crawling? No, because he is

109
about to be wounded in "the lower part of the belly,"3 and
will then fall "with a thud." If Patroclus is upright, then
he must be "creeping" in the sense of "moving slowly." But
does a hero such as Patroclus ever creep? A hero might
stagger, or move slowly, but he never creeps. Hammond has
him simply "moving back," a close rendering of 60
6»6x6{606»0», but he also gives us "wounded by the sharp
spear," sharpening for us our sense of Patroclus’ desperate
state.

When Patroclus falls in Rieu's version, "the whole
Achaean army was appalled." Has Hector committed a breach
of etiquette in the manner of his killing? No, Rieu has
simply weakened the original fixaxe, (from 6x6xifw "grieve").
Hammond says that Patroclus "fell with a crash, and brought
anguish to the Achaean army."

In the simile of the lion and boar, Hammond follows not
the word order but the grammar of the original--"As when a
lion masters an untiring boar in battle," while Rieu
paraphrases the first sentence of the original, changing the
grammatical relations of the parts, thereby weakening the
whole: "It was like the conquest of an indomitable wild-
boar by a lion . . ." Presumably Rieu wanted to begin the
simile with a more idiomatic construction--"It was like"--

instead of the typically Homeric "As when" (6g 6' 616). But

 

3Actually, the Greek is x6»6&»6, which can.mean "small of
the back," in which case he could be crawling, but Rieu's
translation keeps him upright.

 

 

110
"like" demands an object, and Rieu chooses "conquest," which
leaves the clause without an active verb, and ultimately
relegates the original nominative noun A66» to the weaker
place as object of a prepositional phrase. The general
sense of the original remains, but the vigor is gone.

As Hector addresses the dying Patroclus,‘ Rieu uses "as
his conqueror,” where Hammond says "in triumph." The Greek
has the participle 6660x606»0c, "boasting over, exulting."
The original is fraught with emotion, where Rieu gives us
bald fact. Hammond falls somewhere between the two.

Among Hector's words a bit later is the insult »fin16.
Hammond renders it "poor fool!" while Rieu replaces the
immediate force of a single vocative noun with a complete
sentence--"You were a fool"--once again diluting the power
of Homer's original. The next words of both Rieu and
Hammond are "in their defence" for the Greek 106006. This
explains, but it does not show, does not contribute to the
image, as "before them," or "in front of them" could, nor is
it as rich as "for them," as discussed in the previous
chapter. Both translators further weaken the image: Rieu’s
horses "were hasting" and Hammond's "speed," while Homer's

horses ”0001» 60606x6161 ("stretch out their feet"). A

 

"'With winged words," according to the original and
Hammond, but not Rieu. This inscrutable phrase, common in
Homer, has been the subject of much debate regarding its
presence or absence in translation, IMy argument is that it is
homeric--what other phrase taken out of context would more
quickly bring to mind Homer and no one else?--and so ought to
be included in any translation that supposes to show us
something of Homer.

111
literal rendering here may not be idiomatic English, but it
paints a clear and interesting picture where Hammond and
Rieu do not. In the next half-sentence, Rieu over-
intensifies the intensive pronoun 6016;: "Hector himself,
I, Hector." Hammond commits the opposite but lesser offense
by understating it: "I." Rieu's "So now the vultures are
going to eat you up," sounds like something a child’s older
sibling might say, but not Hector. Hammond's "but you--the
vultures will eat you here" preserves at least some of the
dignity.

A problem of another sort arises during Patroclus’ turn
to speak. Both translators render 266; K00»i6n; x61
’Aflékxw» as "Zeus the Son of Kronos and Apollo." For the
knowledgeable reader, the phrase presents no problem, but
for a novice reader with little or no framework of knowledge
of the ancient world--exactly the sort of reader at whom
these Penguin Classics editions are directed—-the phrase
must be a head-scratcher. If this same naive reader has
picked up on the ubiquitous rumor of ancient Greek
pedophilia, who knows what conclusions may be reached? By
Opening up the Homeric patronymic for the benefit of the
reader, both translators have created a new problem.

Finally, line 861 of the original--

¢0fin 606 006 60001 10061; 606 0006» 6160061;
--is no doubt difficult to translate smoothly, but Rieu
renders it absurdly: "[Achilles] may yet forestall me by

ending his life with a blow from my spear." By keeping

112
Achilles as the active subject throughout the clause, we are
left with a Monty Pythonesque image of Achilles running
himself onto Hector’s spear, thereby winning the race to be
the first to die. Hammond actually translates less
literally than Rieu in this place, rearranging the clause
into two manageable halves--"might be struck by my spear
first, and lose his life before me"--maintaining both the
sense of the original and its dignity.

Hammond's prose maintains a greater share of Homer’s
power and emotion, and this is the most important difference
between the two translations. Both stumble occasionally,
even over the same spot, but Hammond more often gives the
reader what Jones asks for: "what the Greek says in clear,
strong, idiomatic English." Hammond's translation is not a
great work, as Omond asks for (see Chapter One), but it does

have its own useful place in the ranks of English Iliads.

A CLOSER LOOK
JAMES MACPHERSON, The Iliad (1773)

Macpherson's was the first prose translation of the Iliad
into English. Written with a suggestion of a cadence that
is marked by punctuationfi‘its appearance on the page can be
a bit strange. The work was not much appreciated in its
time. For example, one anonymous reviewer (Monthly Review

1773) says "to us it seems destitute of every principle of

’See Little 100-01.

113
that harmony which is adapted to our language" (395). The

work has some interesting points, though, and is worth a

brief look.

The invocation as rendered by Macpherson has all the

right emphases:

The wrath of the son of Peleus,--O goddess of song,
unfold! The deadly wrath of Achilles: To Greece the
source of many woes! Which peopled the regions of
death,--with shades of heroes untimely slain: While pale
they lay along the shore: Torn by beasts and birds of
prey: But such was the will of Jove! Begin the verse,

from the source of rage,--between .Achilles and. the
sovereign of men.

IME»1» 66166, 066, HnAnT66ew 'Ax1660;
006006»n», 6 0001' 'Ax6101; 6676' 600x6,
00666; 6' 1601000; 00x6; "A161 0001606»
6066», 66106; 66 616016 166x6 x0»6001»
oiw»0201 16 0601, A16; 6' 616661610 30066,
62 06 66 16 00616 61601fi1n» 60106»16
'A10616n; 16 6»6£ 6»606» x61 610; 'Ax16660;.
(1.1-7)

(The wrath do thou sing, O goddess, of Peleus’ son,
Achilles, that baneful wrath which brought countless woes
upon the Achaeans, and sent forth to Hades many valiant
souls of warriors, and made themselves to be a spoil for
dogs and all manner of birds; and thus the will of Zeus
was being brought to fulfillment;--sing thou thereof from
the time when at first there parted in strife Atreus’
son, king of men, and goodly Achilles.) (literal prose

of Murray)
"Wrath" is repeated in two different forms, and so is
Achilles. The arrangement differs from the original's, but
the points of emphasis are equivalent. The phrase in
between, "0 goddess of song, unfold!", is not quite literal,
but "unfold" puts an interesting spin on the role of the

muse. "Regions of death" has a comfortable cross—cultural

114
non-specificity, without seeming vague.“ Macpherson, like
Ogilby and Maynwaring before him, chooses to include the
notion of "untimely," from the verb 0001606», which, if
valid,7 increases the pathos of the majestic and portentous
opening. "While pale they lay along the shore" is entirely
the invention of Macpherson, contradicting the claim in his
preface of having "translated the Greek VERBATIM" (xix), but
the phrase works well nonetheless.

In the insults by Achilles against Agamemnon,
Macpherson is again far less literal than he claims, but his
translation is interesting at every turn:

Ha! lost to shame! as studious of paltry gain!

Thou, given to debauch and riot! Fierce as the hound in
looks;--but timid in heart as the hind!

"6 001, 6»61661n» 6016106»6, K6066666¢00»,"

"ozvofiapéc. xvvbc 60001’ Exwv, “0055"” 5' ékd¢°‘°v"
(1.149, 225)

("Ah me, thou clothed in shamelessness, thou of crafty
mind,"

"Thou heavy with wine, thou with the front of a dog but
the heart of a deer,") (literal prose of Murray)

In the first, "lost to shame" is a nice twist on
6»616610» 6016106»6 ("clothed in shamelessness"), and
perfectly clear; the same can be said of "studious of paltry

gain" for K6066166¢0ov ("crafty-minded" with a connotation

 

“"Multiculturalism" was hardly a concept of Macpherson's
time, but he might have had his own reasons for eclipsing the
difference between pagan and Christian markers.

7This possibility of "untimely" from flpOTQ¢€V is
discussed more thoroughly in Chapter Three.

115
of avariciousness). The word "paltry," though without
direct basis in the original, makes the insult particularly
effective. If translated literally as "crafty-minded" or
something similar, the insulting nature of the K6066666¢00»
is lost, or weakened at best. But "studious of paltry gain"
is faithful to the sense of the original if not the letter,
and manages to imply that Agamemnon's "shame" lies not just
in immorality, but in foolishness as well.

Macpherson's version of the triple-insult at line 225
might be the most clearly explained of any English
translation, prose or otherwise. "Given to debauch and
riot" is not literal for 01»03606;, but it makes clear what
is implied. "Fierce as the hound in looks;--but timid in
heart as the hind" makes the middle third of the line, x0»6;
60061’ 6x6» ("having the face of a dog"), not so much an
insult in itself, as it is usually handled, but more of a
set-up for the final insult, x0661n» 6' 6660010 ("[having]
the heart of a deer"). While "deer-heart" as a label for
timidity is not the sort of thing we really need explained,
"dog-face" can be a puzzler, open to various
interpretations. Macpherson's take on the phrase rings
true.

Macpherson renders Hector's prayer for his son with the
majesty and emotion that befits this moment that is both
royal and personal:

"O Father Jove, and all ye gods! Grant this! Let my son

be like me. Let him shine in the midst of the Trojans,--
distinguished in council and fight,--—and o’er sacred

116

Ilium with glory reign. Let hereafter, some warrior
say,--beholding him returning from fight: ‘This gallant
youth is braver far than his father renowned!'--Let him
bear, aloft, the bloody spoils of the foe. Let the Soul
of his mother rejoice!"

"266 66601 16 0601, 6616 66 x61 16»66 76»60061

0616' 606», 6; x61 676 060, 601006066 T066001»,

666 310» 1' 67606», x61 '16100 161 6»60061»'

K61 0016 11; 61001 ‘06106; 7’ 666 00666» 6061»w»'

6x 0066000 6»16»16° 66001 6' 6»606 300166»16

x161»6; 6610» 6»606, X60610 66 606»6 06100."

(6.476-81)

("Zeus and ye other gods, grant that this my child may
likewise prove, even as I, pre-eminent amid the Trojans,
and as valiant in might, and that he rule mightily over
Ilios. And some day may some man say of him as he cometh
back from war, ‘He is better far than his father'; and
may he bear the blood-stained spoils of the foeman he
hath slain, and may his mother's heart wax glad.")
(literal prose of Murray)

In too many prose translations, this important passage is
simply prosaic. Macpherson lets the pride and hope of the
young father shine through: "Let him shine in the midst of
the Trojans." The next phrase, "distinguished in council
and fight" is partly the invention of Macpherson, but it is
perfect, nonetheless, referring as it does to the two arenas
of conflict that are the subject of the entire Iliad. "This
gallant youth is braver far than his father renowned" is
fine in both diction and rhythm--more poetic, in fact, than
many verse translations of this line.

Macpherson could be faulted for straying from his
purpose, as professed in his curious-sounding preface, part
of which is quoted here:

To do all the justice, in his power, to his Author, as

well, as to render his version useful to such, as may
wish to study the original, through an English medium,

117
he has translated the Greek VERBATIM: Even to a minute
attention to the very arrangement of the words, where
the different idioms of the two languages required not
a freedom of expression, to preserve the strength and
elegance of the thought. (xix)
"Verbatim" this translation is not. But I argue that it
certainly is "useful to such, as may wish to study the
original," as it sheds certain lights on certain passages
that a perfectly literal translation would not. And aside
from mere utility, this unappreciated translation is, in its

own way, quite beautiful.

”THE ILIAD OF HOMER, TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH PROSE, AS
LITERALLY AS THE DIFFERENT IDIOMS OF THE GREEK AND ENGLISH
LANGUAGES WILL ALLOW; WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES. BY A GRADUATE
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD" (1821)

The preface to the fourth edition of this work examines
the limitations of and objections to a literal translation
of Homer. But the writer (identified further by the
initials H. P. on the last page of the preface) also argues
for the usefulness of a literal translation for young
learners of Greek. The superior student will not trust any
translation completely, he argues, and so cannot be harmed
by this or any other version. The struggling student,
however, needs every possible aid, including a literal prose
version such as this one. The author then tells us of his
mixed attitudes toward his work:

To translate the poetry of one language into the prose

of another, is, to say the least of it, an irksome
task, and necessarily obliges the translator to lay

118

aside every idea of elegance in his composition. With
respect to Homer, in particular, these objections are
peculiarly strong. Although certainly as simple as a
poet can be, Homer delights in numerous and compound
epithets; expressions which, though in the Greek poem
they are extremely beautiful, become in an English
prose translation almost ridiculous. To make the
translation at all what it was intended to be, however,
those epithets must be fairly and literally given, the
consequence of which is, that the style is always
pompous, and not unfrequently bombastic. It would be
quite needless to offer an apology for a fault which
there is no possibility of avoiding. (vi-vii)

We will see that this is indeed a useful translation,
with an accurate and illuminating text, truly helpful notes,
and reasonable use of italics. We will also see that this
translation is far less odious, and more poetic, than the
author has suggested.

The opening invocation in this translation does not stand
out from the others in grandeur or perfection of phrase, but
it is handled clearly, accurately, even efficiently:

Sing, Goddess, the destructive wrath of Achilles, son
of Peleus, which brought. myriad. disasters upon ‘the
Achaeans, and sent many gallant souls of heroes to Hades,
and made themselves a prey to dogs and all birds Qf_ptey
(for so the counsel of Jove was fulfilled), from the time
when, first, Atrides, king of men, and the godlike
Achilles, quarrelling with each other, separated.

Which then of the gods set them together to battle in
the strife words?

"Sing, Goddess," while hardly unique, is a strong
opening. "The destructive wrath" is strong and accurate,
and is properly the direct object of "sing." The most
interesting aspect of this version, though, is the phrase

"quarreling with each other," as the translator makes clear

that the 601; between Agamemnon and Achilles is primarily

119
verbal. He reemphasizes this in the next sentence with the
italicized "strife ef_getge."

H.P. makes good use of rather copious explanatory notes.
One way he uses them is to help bridge the gap between
idiomatic and literal translations, giving the former in the
text, the latter in a note. For example:

”Ha! shameless* and rapacious! how can any of the

Achaeans cheerfully obey thy orders, either to undertake

an expedition,* or bravely to fight with men?" (5)

"6 001, 6»61661n» 6016106»6, K6066666600»,

06; 11; 101 006606» 60601» 06100161 ’Ax616»

6 666» 660606»61 6 6»60601» 161 06x60061;"

(1.149-51)

("Ah me, thou clothed in shamelessness, thou of crafty

mind, how shall any man of the Achaeans hearken to thy

bidding with a ready heart either to go on a journey or

to fight amain with warriors?") (literal prose of Murray)
Here "shameless" gets a note: "Clothed or covered with
impudence." Another use of the notes is to explain where
Homer doesn’t; in these cases H.P. gives a literal rendering
in the text and a fuller explanation in the note. He
translates 666» as "expedition," and then explains: "An
ambuscade, or a foray--to intercept caravans, or seize upon
cattle."

Another strategy H. P. uses for teaching is to italicize
every word or phrase that does not have a direct counterpart
in the original--i. e. any additions he made, to make the
translation smoother or clearer. The italicized parts

become, then, not quite text, not quite note. This strategy

has been used by others, and is not universally appreciated.

120

The approach does have some merit, however. Clearly, any
translation whose primary claim is artistic should have
nothing to do with separating the text in this way; but in a
work such a H. P.'s whose primary claim is to teach about
the Iliad, the italics can help show, along with the notes,
where Homer's usage differs from reasonable English usage.
This technique can only point toward some of the
differences--it should never be mistaken for the whole
story--but in this way it brings us a little closer to the
original.

For another example:

And then after they had prayed, and cast down the salt
and barley,* they drew back first the e s o the
victims, and cut their throats, and skinned.them, and.cut
off the hind legs, and covered them with the caul, making
it double,* and. placed. morsels of flesh. (egt__£;em
diffetent patts of the yictim) upon them. Then the old
man burnt them upon cleft wood, and poured ruddy wine
over them; and while beside him young men held long forks
in their hands. And when the legs were quite consumed,
and they had tasted the entrails, they divided the rest
into small pieces, and pierced them with spits, and
cooked them carefully, and drew them all off again. And
when they had accomplished the labour, and prepared the
feast, they ate, nor did the appetite of any fail of a
just feast. And after they had removed the desire of
eating and drinking, the attendants crowned goblets with
wine; and with cups, beginning frem the tight, they
distributed them to all. And the youths of the Achaeans
all day propitiated the God with singing, chanting a
beautiful paean, and celebrating the Far-darter; and he
was delighted to hear them.

 

H.P. includes a lengthy note at "barley," and a shorter one
at "double," using each to explain an aspect of the ritual,
where Homer could have assumed the hearers' knowledge. But
H.P. simply italicizes "the heads of the victims" where the

phrase is understood as the object of 6660006». In this way

121
we can eat our cake and have it, too; the English makes
sense, but the difference from the Greek is also made clear.
Throughout this passage describing the mechanics of holy
ritual, H. P. stays remarkably close to the original while
keeping his English clear and strong. Farther down he gives
a clear and reasonable translation of 66116; 6100;, often
rendered too literally as the perplexing "equal feast."8 IL
P. makes it a "just feast" with the note "11:1 Every one had
his due share." Toward the end of the passage he wisely
lets 061fio»6 keep its form in the English "paean," instead
of the over-simplified "song" (Rieu) or "hymn" (Hammond).
In the next line H.P. unfortunately renders 6x66070» as
"far-darter," which is not even accurate here-~literally
"far-worker."

Where dawn appears a few lines later, H.P. renders the
line literally, yet also as poetically as any other: "And
when the rosy-fingered Aurora, daughter of the morn,
appeared . . ." The following lines are rendered by H.P.
as if he knows about sailing--full of sound and motion:

And the breeze filled the middle of the sail, and the
purple wave roared loud around the keel, as the ship
scudded away; and she bounded along, cutting her path
through the billows.

6» 6' 6»600; 00606» 0600» 10110», 6061 66 x606

016100 00060060» 06766' 16x6 »n6; 10000;'

6 6' 6066» x616 x606 616000000006 «666000». (1.481-83)

(So the wind filled the belly of the sail, and the dark
wave sang loudly about the stem of the ship, as she went,

 

8E.g., Murray, et al.

122

and she sped over the wave, accomplishing her way.)
(literal prose of Murray)

In Hector's brief prayer for his son, H.P. captures--not
spectacularly, but adequately--the pride and hope of a
father for his son:

"Jove, and ye other gods, grant that this my son also may
become distinguished among the Trojans, as I have been;

W thus brave, and may powerfully govern
Ilium; and may some one say of him, returning from

battle--‘He is much mightier than his father;' and,

slaying his enemy, let him bring the bloody spoils, and

gladden the heart of his mother."
The secondary quote is not great--the alliteration on m in
"much mightier" loses some of the dignity of the original,
but the rest of the sentence works especially well. H.P.
changes the order of the half-line phrases to help the
English work more smoothly--putting one participial phrase
before the secondary quote, then moving the other
participial phrase out from between the optative and
subjunctive clauses, allowing a single "let him" to control
the two subjunctive clauses in English. This feat of
grammatical engineering is further heightened by the now
juxtaposed images of violence ("bloody spoils") and
affection ("heart of his mother"). H.P.'s preface, and the
technical aspects of notes and italics, show his translation
to be directed toward teaching about Homer's Iliad, but
passages such as this show that the text itself does

occasionally aspire toward art--which is, of course, yet

another way of teaching the Iliad.

 

123
This translation by the "Graduate of Oxford" would make a
fine teaching text,’ especially if used along with the
original Greek and a good verse translation. The work does
well one of the things that a prose translation can do best,
that is, to make Homer's work understandable, while still
retaining some of the homeric qualities--especially vigor

and emotion--that every translation should have.

W. H. D. ROUSE, The iiiad: The Stoty of hehilles (1938)

Rouse's is a prose version of a sort much different from
that of the "Graduate of Oxford." Rouse makes his
intentions clear at the beginning of his preface:
This book . . . is a translation into plain English of
the plain story of Homer, omitting the embellishments
which were meant only to please the ear--stock epithets
and recurring phrases where the meaning is of no
account. (v)
The different nature of this translation is apparent in
the invocation:
An angry man--there is my story: the bitter rancour of
Achilles, prince of the house of Peleus, which brought a
thousand troubles upon the Achaian host. Many a strong
soul it sent down to Hades, and left the heroes
themselves a prey to dogs and carrion birds, while the
will of God moved on to fulfillment.

"An angry man": I am usually critical of any version that

focuses initially on the man rather than his anger, but I

must admit Rouse’s opening is effective. The sheer banality

of the opening phrase--where the reader expects something

 

9This is impractical now because the book is long out of
print, and even library copies are rare.

124
magnificent and strange--is enough to surprise the reader
into paying attention, into seeing this story as something
extraordinary yet accessible and relevant. "There is my
story”: no muse or goddess here, but a forthright narrator
who speaks directly to the reader. "The bitter rancour of
Achilles" finally brings the matter into its proper focus,
but the previous two phrases have already softened up
skeptical readers and made them more receptive to this (for
some) daunting and distant epic.

At Achilles' insult toward Agamemnon, Rouse loses some of
the impact the insult should carry, due mainly, surprisingly
enough, to his being too literal:

"Ha! greedyheart, shamelessness in royal dress! How

could any man be willing to obey you, whether on some

errand or in the battlefield?"
"Greedyheart" sounds like a CareBear gone bad, even though
it translates K6066666600» quite literally. "Shamelessness
in royal dress" has the parts rendered literally, but the
sense of the whole is wrong. Having given himself some
leeway in his stated intentions, Rouse would have done
better to find more idiomatic equivalents. "Some errand" is
not just plain English; it narrows and belittles the
possibilities implied in 666» 660606»61.

Edward S. Le Comte says of Rouse's version that "its
incredible dialogues show that it is better to be formal
than to be informal out of key. The characters are always

saying ‘Bother it all!’ and ‘Upon my word!'" (319). This

comment certainly holds true here. Le Comte also says,

125
however, that Rouse’s version "is instructively simple in
its narrative parts," which we will see is also true.
Rouse does much better with the second insult:

"You drunkard, with eyes like a bitch and heart like a
fawn! You never arm yourself with your men for battle,
you never go out on a raid with the fighting men--no
pluck in you for that! You think that certain death! It
is much better, isn’t it, to stay in camp to rob any one
who tells the truth to your face!"

"01»06606;, x0»6; 60061' 6x6», x06616» 6' 6666010,
0616 001' 6; 066600» 606 666 0606x06»61

0616 66x0»6’ 16»61 06» 6010166001» ’Ax616»
16166x6; 0006' 16 66 101 K60 6166161 61»61.

6 0066 6616» 6011 x616 010616» 6606» 'Ax616»

660' 600610620061 6; 11; 0606» 6»110» 6106'"
(1.225-30)

("Thou heavy with wine, thou with the front of a dog but
the heart of a deer, never hast thou had courage to arm
thee for battle with thy folk, or go forth to an ambush
with the chiefs of the Achaeans. That seemeth to thee
even as death. In sooth it is better far throughout the
wide camp of the Achaeans to take for thyself the prize
of him whosoever speaketh contrary to thee.") (literal
prose of Murray)
This version of the triple-insult is not so dynamic as some
others, but it does sound as though it comes from the mouth
of an angry man. The rest of this passage is even better,
as Rouse’s plainness works effectively here to paint a clear
picture of Agamemnon’s cowardly ways-~in Achilles’ view,
that is.
Where Odysseus’ ship arrives at the harbor at Chryse,
most of the passage is not so very different from a literal
version such as H.P.’s--only condensed slightly--making one

wonder what Rouse’s fuss is all about:

They entered the deep harbour and furled the sails, and
stowed them below; quickly they lowered the mast into the

126

crutch, and rowed the ship to her moorings, where they
dropt the anchor stones and made fast the hawsers.

The next sentence, however, has problems:

Then they landed, and carried out the offerings for
Apollo Shootafar.

01 6' 616 66 6106»0; 006036»060; é»16; 1x0»10,
10116 06» 016166»10, 0606» 6' 6» ”fl? 06661»6,
1016» 6' 101066xu 066606» 00016»0101» 666»16;
660066106;, 16» 6' 61; 6000» 000606006» 6061001;.
6x 6' 66»6; 60660», x616 66 0000»601' 66606»'

66 66 K01 66101 361»0» 601 6701»1 0666006;,

6x 6' 6x616036» B606» 6x63666 'A0666w»1°
(1.432-38)

(When they were now got within the deep harbour, they
furled the sail, and stowed it in the black ship, and.the
mast they lowered by the forestays and brought it to the
crutch with speed, and rowed her with oars to the place
of anchorage. Then they cast out the mooring-stones and
made fast the stern cables, and themselves went forth
upon the shore of the sea. Forth they brought the
hecatomb for Apollo, that smiteth afar,) (literal prose
of Murray)
"Then they landed" is a gross simplification of 6x 66 x61
0 \ II \ ‘ A
60101 361»0» 601 06701»1 0666006; ("and they went out onto
the shore of the sea"). One cannot help but feel that the
Greekless reader is being cheated here, getting English that
sounds reasonable but contains only a scrap of Homer. Then
the term "offerings" (for 6x616036») is vague; we get
neither the literal but obscure rendering "hecatomb," which
might lead a novice reader to investigate or at least
wonder, nor the plain but specific "cattle" or "animals,"
which would leave a solid picture in the reader’s mind. To
the uninitiated reader at whom this work is apparently

aimed, "offerings" could well refer to a basket of fruit.

Finally, "Apollo Shootafar" seems both silly and

127
unnecessary, given Rouse’s statement in the preface
regarding "stock epithets."
A later part of the ritual fares far better in Rouse’s
plain English:
And when they all had prayed and cast the barley-grains,
they first drew back the heads, and killed, and flayed,
carved out the thigh-slices and rolled them between
pieces of fat, and laid more raw flesh upon them: then
the old priest burnt them upon sticks of wood, and poured
sparkling wine over, while the young men held their five-
pronged forks ready by his side. After the thigh-pieces
were burnt and the inner parts were divided, they chopt
up the rest and ran splits through the meat, roasted all
properly and drew it off. This work done, they prepared
their meal and enjoyed it, and no one lacked a fair
share. ‘When they had all had enough, the lads filled the
bowls to the brim, and served the wine to all after
spilling the sacred drops.

So all day long the young men of Achaia appeased the
god with sweet music, singing the Healer’s chant, a hymn
to the Farworker; and his heart was glad to hear.

The explanations are clear throughout; we are never puzzled
as to what exactly is happening. A passage like this is
served well by Rouse’s plain style, where the original
expresses neither emotion nor majesty--only simple actions.
"A fair share" is a clear rendering of 66116; 6106;, usually
rendered "equal feast." "After spilling the sacred drops"
is a clear and explanatory version of 60602606»01 66066001»,
which can be rendered in many ways, but often remains murky
in translation. Rouse explains this point further in a rare
footnote, but even the text by itself gives us a clear image
to remember.

The next scene contains a little bit of everything that

Rouse has to offer in a narrative passage: a nice bit of

128

interpolation; a neutrally literal sentence or two; and some
wretched misfires:

[B]ut as soon as Dawn showed.her rosy fingers through the

mist, at once they rose and sailed for their own camp.

Apollo Farworker sent them a following breeze. They

lifted the mast, and spread the white sails; the wind

filled the great sail, the purple wave swished and

poppled against the stem, the ship ran free on her way

over the waters.

606066x1060; 'Hé; has been rendered "rosy-fingered dawn"
so often as to become a cliche, and therefore nearly
invisible to the reader. The miet in "Dawn showed her rosy
fingers through the mist" is Rouse’s invention, and it is
just enough to bring the picture back to the light. The
next few clauses, regarding the sails, are clear and
ordinary. When Rouse comes to the water, however, he seems
a bit of a landlubber. "Swished and poppled" is different,
to be sure, but it fails utterly. A boat picking up speed
under sail is a magical event every time it happens, and
Homer understood this:
. . . 6061 66 x606
016106 00060060» 06766' 16x6 »n6; 10006;'
6 6' 6066» x616 x606 616006000006 K666000» (1.481b-83).
"swished and poppled" is an event for a bathtub.
At Hector’s prayer for his son, Rouse works with the grammar
in ways similar to H. P.’s version, and adds a twist:

"O Zeus and all ye heavenly gods! Grant that this my son

may be as notable among our people as I am, and let him

be as strong, and let him rule Ilios in his strength!

When he goes to war let them say, This man is much better

than his father! May he kill his enemy and bring home

the blood-stained spoils, and give joy to his mother’s
heart!"

129
The worst feature of this passage is the single word
"notable," presumably an attempt at plain speech. "Notable"
is a word for accountants and scholars, not warrior princes.
The play on "strong" and "strength," on the other hand,
works perfectly, the second word building on the first--
demonstrating that plain speech can indeed be effective.
"When he goes to war" is a change from the original 6x
0066000 6»16»16 ("coming from war") that controls the rest
of the prayer. Where the original has only the next clause
in a secondary quotation of someone else (11;), Rouse’s
Hector lets "them" complete the prayer, in a rousing style
where a single "May he" controls all three verb phrases.
The irony of the original is still present, but the tone is
much different in the voice of a crowd.
In the next passage, where Patroclus chastises Achilles,

Rouse’s results are, again, mixed:

"I pray I may never have such a grudge in my heart as you

have. Curse your courage! What good will you be to any

one from now to the end of the world, if you will not

save the nation from destruction? Cruel man! your father

was not Peleus nor your mother Thetis--you are a son of

the green sea and the stony rock, with that hard heart!"

"06 606 7' 06» 0616; 76 66301 x660;, 6» 06 60660061;,

61»6061n' 11 060 6660; 6»606161 66170»6; 060,

61 x6 06 'A07610101» 661x66 60176» 606»u;;

»n666;, 06x 606 001 76 06160 6» 1006162H6660;,

0666 9611; 06160' 7660x6 66 06 11x16 0666006

061061 1’ 66136101, 611 101 »60; 6011» 606»fi;."

(16.30-35)

("Never upon me let such wrath lay hold, as that thou

dost cherish, O thou whose valour is but.a bane! ‘Wherein

shall any other even yet to be born have profit of thee,

if thou ward not off shameful ruin from the Argives?

Pitiless one, thy father, meseems, was not the knight
Peleus, nor was Thetis thy mother, but the grey sea bare

130

thee, and the beetling cliffs, for that thy heart is

unbending.") (literal prose of Murray)
The first sentence is clear enough, and "grudge" works
effectively for x660;; but how much power is lost when the
verbs 66301 (”take") and 60660061; ("guard") are rendered as
"may have" and "have"? Here Rouse is plain indeed, and it
is nothing to brag about. The next sentence, "Curse your
courage!", might seem to a naive reader to be strong and
direct, until he reads the original (61»60616), or a better
English rendering, such as Yalden’s "Thy virtues are as
useless, as they’re great." Plain words for plain is a fine
thing, as later where "Cruel man!" serves well for »6666;.
But where the original is complicated we need something
else.

In the long sentence before "Cruel man," plain English
helps keep it untangled, and this important idea remains
clear. But the last sentence fails because it is of a type
that relies on strength of imagery rather than clarity, and
Rouse too often misfires on this count. The green in "green
sea" is, it seems to me, precisely the wrong choice for
7660x6 0666006, with precisely the wrong connotations.
"Stony rock" is redundant, less than half as good as almost
any other choice.

In the twenty-fourth book where Hecabe cries out at
Priam, Rouse is very good:

"O misery! where are your wits flown? Once you were

famous for good sense throughout your kingdom and even in
foreign lands! How can you wish to visit the Achaian

131
ships alone--to meet the eyes of the man who has killed
and stript so many of your brave sons! Your heart must
be made of steel."
"6 001, 06 66 101 606»6; 01x0»0', 6; 16 0600; 060
66x6' 60' 6»006000; £61»00; 66' 0101» 6»60061;;
06; 606661; 601 »66; 'Ax616» 660606» 010;,
6»606; 6; 66066006; 6; 101 00666; 16 «61 600606;
0166; 6E6»601£6; 01660616» »6 101 6100."
(24.201-05)
("Ah, woe is me, whither now is gone the wisdom for the
which of old thou wast famed among stranger folk and
among them thou rulest? How art thou fain to go alone to
the ships of the Achaeans to meet the eyes of the man who
hath slain thy sons, many and valiant?’ Of iron verily is
thy heart.") (literal prose of Murray)

"O misery" is a fine beginning, for the untranslatable 6
001. More important, though, is the way Rouse sorts out the
remainder of that line and the next (of the original). To
truly appreciate how well, and how clearly, Rouse has
rendered the lines, we must look again at a version that is
not handled so well, namely Murray’s:

[WJhither now is gone the wisdom for the which of old

thou wast famed among stranger folk and among them thou

rulest?
By the time the reader has sifted through this sentence and
has got the general drift, the effect is lost forever.
Rouse’s plain version, on the other hand, sorted out deftly,
shines with a bright light. The next sentence also runs
clear and bright in the face of considerable grammatical
danger. In the last sentence, where the Greek is so simple
yet so difficult to translate well--01660616» »0 101 6100--

Rouse makes the best possible use of plain prose. Where

other prose versions try to make something poetic, and fail,

132
Rouse’s rendering is simple and strong where the Greek is
simple and strong: "Your heart must be made of steel."
Where Achilles’ words to Priam echo those of Hecabe,
Rouse’s version serves this emotional point with grace and
dignity:
"Ah, poor man, indeed your heart has borne many sorrows!
How could you come to the Achaian camp alone? How could
you bear to look on the man who killed all your noble
sons, as I have done? Your heart must be made of steel."
"6 6616', 6 66 00666 060' 6»0x60 06» 0616 0006».
06; 6166; 601 »66; 'Ax616» 660606» 010;,
6»606; 6; 66066006; 6; 101 00666; 16 061 600606;

0166; 6E6»601£6; 01660616» »6 101 6100."
(24.518-21)

("Ah, unhappy man, full many in good sooth are the evils
thou hast endured in thy soul. How hadst thou the heart
to come alone to the ships of the Achaeans, to meet the
eyes of me that have slain thy sons many and valiant? Of

iron verily is thy heart.") (literal prose of Murray)

"Ah, poor man, indeed your heart has borne many sorrows"
is poetry in spirit and yet perfectly plain and simple in
the delivery-~exactly as this quiet and emotionally charged
moment requires. The next two sentences do not match
Hecabe’s words as closely as they might, but the effect is
right, with the exception of "as I have done." This is
Rouse’s attempt to make clear what is expressed in the
original by a mere change in tense, from 6E6»601£6 to
6£6»601£6. There is no conceivable way English could match
the subtlety of the Greek, but Rouse might have done better
to have left out "as I have done," and have relied instead
on the close attention of the reader. At any rate, he has

the wisdom to leave the last sentence exactly the same as

133
Hecabe’s words, letting them resonate with the barely
perceptible difference in meaning.

Rouse’s translation is an attempt to give, in Jones’s
words, "what the Greek says in clear, strong, idiomatic
English." As we have seen, this version is almost always
clear, usually idiomatic, and sometimes strong--but not as
often as it ought to be. Though it can hardly be called
great, the work does fill its niche--an informal,
accessible, close-to-literal prose translation--sitting
safely within the confines of what a prose translation can
do reasonably well. Hammond’s Iliad, as good as it is,
fills a different spot, so the door is still open for a
better informal, accessible, close-to-literal prose

translation of the Iliad.

JOHN COWPER POWYS, Homer egg the AEtBQE (1959)

If the literal prose translation of the "Graduate of
Oxford" sits at one pole, and Rouse’s and Hammond’s versions
sit somewhere near the equator (on opposite sides), then
Powys’s work must rest somewhere near the opposite pole.
hemer ehd the Aether strays far enough away from Homer’s
words that it must be called an adaptation rather than a
prose translation, but the work is an interesting
interpretation of Homer’s story.

The story is told with the help of an "imaginary thought-
reader, the immortal Aether" (14). The Aether claims that

he, not the Muse, is the true guide that enables Homer to

134
read the thoughts of both men and gods, and even gives him
"the power of reading the inmost responses of every form and
shape that has ever been assumed by matter" (23), including
not only the animal world but the "vegetable world" as well.
As daring as this approach seems, Powys clearly holds
enormous respect for Homer, claiming for him10 powers of
imagination that go beyond those of any poet before or
since.

There are several places where the passages used for
close study in this dissertation coincide with passages
where Powys’s narrative runs reasonably close to the
original. These places by themselves give an incomplete
picture of Powys’s work, but we can start there.

The invocation is left more-or-less intact, but it comes
to the reader as the voice not of Homer addressing the Muse,
but of the Aether addressing Homer:

Chant for us, therefore, O poet of poets, what it was
that aroused the wrath of Achilles, the son of Peleus--
that deadly wrath which worked such immeasurable griefs
for the Achaeans and hurled the souls into Hades of so
many valiant heroes whose bodies became the prey of dogs
and birds: for so, and only so, could the will of Zeus be
fulfilled.

It would seem that Powys has buried the lead here,
holding "the wrath of Achilles" until well into this

gargantuan sentence. But we already know the author is

playing with form--making it a part of the story--so it

 

10That is, assuming Powys aligns himself with the
attitudes implied by the words of his narrator. In this case,
it seems a reasonable assumption. Authors are rarely ironic
when approaching the greatness of Homer.

135
makes sense for the form to be mentioned first: "Chant for
us, therefore, O poet of poets."

The middle part of the invocation is quite close to the
original, and the last clause is the most interesting, as
Powys emphasizes the singularity of "the will of Zeus."

One of the Achillean insults of Agamemnon remains intact:
"You wine-bibber!" Achilles roared at the King. "You
staring dog-face, with.the guts of a'terrified.deer1 You
who never join the vanguard of a host in a real attack!"

"Wine-bibber" is unnecessarily foolish, and the rest is
nothing unusual.

Hector’s prayer carries most of the sense of the
original:

"May Zeus and the other gods," he prayed, forgetting in
that moment all his sorrowful forebodings, "grant that
this child of mine may grow up to surpass his father in
every possible way; and be wiser, stronger, braver than
his father in the eyes of gods and men!"
This English is even plainer than Rouse’s, but it is strong
in phrases such as "surpass his father in every possible
way” and "wiser, stronger, braver." Notable, too, is the
absence of "bloody spoils" or any direct mention of arms.

Patroclus’ speech to Achilles is heavily cut and
rearranged:

Pitiless one, thy father wasn’t Peleus, nor was Thetis
thy mother, but the grey sea bare thee to the over-
shadowing cliffs! How can you hold in your heart such
anger? hold it until your very valour has become a curse
to us all?

Here Powys recognizes the importance of 61»60616, and his

version is on target.

136
Hecabe’s words to Priam carry a small part of the force
of the original:

"Your heart is of iron," she cried in dismay. "Do you
really talk of going alone into their camp and of facing
this man who has killed so many of your sons?"

As suggested above, these passages do not give a complete

indication of heher_ehg_the_hether. Powys’s narrative

explores places not directly seen in Homer’s original. One
example provides Powys’s own answer to a very old question:

The perpetual presence of Patroclus in the tent of
Achilles, in spite of the fact that their real
relationship was pure friendship and had nothing sexual
about it, and in spite of the fact that they slept in
separate beds, each with a girl at his side, had had the
effect of frustrating completely any natural tendency in
Briseis to play the queen on that tent: but she had been
happy all the same.

That hemer end the Aether is a twentieth-century novel is
obvious here; this kind of introspection--by a woman, no
less!--is not Homer’s way.

Another example shows how Powys handles dialogue and
character. Here Menelaus, in book 6, ponders the fate of a
prisoner:

"O damn all these killings and revenges," he thought,
"if only I can get my lovely Helen safe back and out of
the hands of that devil Paris I’d willingly give the
whole lot of them their lives! I don’t hate a living
soul of them save Paris. If only I could have killed
that beguiling scamp when I had the chance! What a fool
I was!"

"Yes, surely, my good man; I’ll see that you’re
escorted straight to our ships. So get up, and---"

But at this moment the great Agamemnon, his brother,
who had noted this little scene under the tamarisk, came
indignantly to their side.

"What are you doing with this wretch, you little
softy?" he cried. "What we’ve got to do is to send as

137
many as we can of this spawn of thieves straight down to
Hades. There: you take that!"

And he dug his heavy brazen spear deep into the
prisoner’s flanks with so much force that man and spear
fell to the ground together.

One may judge Powys’s dialogue to be unwarrantedly ignoble,
but there is no denying that he can manage a strong
emotional effect.

One last example shows how the Aether occasionally
inserts himself into the narrative:

I, the immortal Aether, must again confess, much as it
goes against the grain to do so, that in Achilles’ lament
for Patroclus that followed his dragging the mutilated
corpse of Hector to the outskirts of the holy spot where
lay that sacred body, there was unquestionably real
feeling. That there must have been reality in his
emotion was proved forever, yes! forever, by the way my
incomparable Homer deals with it.

Powys’s novel of the story of Achilles’ anger is
unhomeric in some ways--especially in terms of nobility--but
it, too, has its place in the range of English Iliads.

Hemer end the Aether is the kind of retelling advocated by
Spedding, where the storyteller lets go of Homer’s form, and
uses one more amenable to the present age. No responsible
teacher would hand it to a student and say "This is Homer’s
Iliad," but one might assign it in tandem with a more

traditional translation. Powys’s vision of Homer can

certainly change the way one reads the Iliad.

138

The six prose versions examined in this chapter present a
wide array of choices for a potential reader,11 with
different degrees of fidelity to the words of the original,
and different styles. All are readable; but not one of them
is a masterpiece. The only prose version to approach that
status is the Iliad of Lang, Leaf & Myers, and even that is
often derided in this century.

Three metaphors apply, according to the time: in the
eighteenth century the first prose translation of the Iliad
was a new and bizarre invention, unappreciated in its time;
in the nineteenth century prose versions were the draft-
horses of Iliad translation--tremendously useful, but having
little of the sleek beauty or excitement of thoroughbreds;
in the twentieth century they are the fast food of Iliad
translations--intended to please the masses, even the best

are neither completely satisfying nor especially nutritious.

 

“Macpherson and the "Graduate of Oxford" are not actually
practical choices, as they are not readily available.

*Chapter Five*
Hexameter Translations
These lame hexameters the strong-wing’d music of Homer!
No--but a most burlesque barbarous experiment.
When was harsher sound ever heard, ye Muses, in England?
When did a frog coarser croak upon our Helicon?
Hexameters no worse than daring Germany gave us,
Barbarous experiment, barbarous hexameters!
Alfred Tennyson,
"Attempts at Classical Metres in Quantity"
[The English hexameter has] a lumbering rhythm, not inaptly
compared, by some author, to the noise of pumpkins rolling
on a barn-floor.
anonymous reviewer

of Derby’s Iliad, Catheiic World

The use of the English hexameter represents an attempt--
not universally appreciated--to present the Iliad in
translation in a form as close as possible to the original.
The history of the English hexameter bears a course
curiously parallel to that of translation in general:
everyone agrees that perfection is impossible and that none
of the attempts so far is entirely satisfactory; many
attempts, in fact, have been met with harsh criticism or
even derision, yet still the attempt continues to be made.
The main difference between the two courses is that
translation in general has long been accepted as necessary
even in its imperfections, while the advisability of the
English hexameter is still questioned.

If the English hexameter is an attempt to imitate as
closely as possible the original Greek hexameter of Homer,

what are the notable features of the original language and

139

140
meter? Primarily, they are syllable length as the basis of
the meter, dactyls and spondees as the units of the meter,
the caesura, pitch accent, and ictus (metrical stress).
Some of these features have found their way into English
hexameters, others have not. Their use differs widely, of
course, from writer to writer.

The first aspect of Homer’s meter is syllable length. A
syllable can be long by nature, having a single long vowel
or a diphthong; or it can be long by position, where a short
vowel is followed by two or more consonants. Most
everything else is shortn' 'These long and short syllables,
rather than accented and unaccented syllables as in most
English poetry, define the units of the meter. Some
attempts have been made in English to write hexameters based
on syllable length, but this is often considered to be too
foreign for English ears, and therefore most English
hexameters have been based on accent.

The feet of the original Greek hexameter are dactyls (one
long followed by two short syllables) and spondees (two long
syllables). Each of the first four feet of the dactylic
hexameter can be either a dactyl or a spondee; the fifth is
usually a dactyl, occasionally a spondee; and the final foot

always consists of a long followed by a syllable of either

 

1There are many refinements of these rules governing long
and short syllables. For example, if, after a short vowel,
one of two consonants is a liquid 6 or 0, then the syllable
can be considered either long or short. For a more complete
yet succinct explanation, see Benner 349-50.

141
length. Most English accentual hexameters maintain some
semblance of this pattern, although none follows it exactly.
Many writers, for example, have given up on the possibility
of finding accentual spondees, and have used trochees in
their place.2 Spondees (or trochees) are very rarely found
in the fifth foot of these English works, making the
"strawberry jampot" ending (tum-ti-ti tum-tum) almost a
rule, more hardened than in the original.

The next important feature is the caesura. In classical
prosody, a caesura can be defined as any instance where "a
word ends within a foot" (Benner 351). A caesura is called
masculine if it falls directly after the first syllable of
the foot, and feminine if it falls between two short
syllables. There is generally more than one caesura per
line, but in most cases only one indicates a pause, and this
is called the principal caesura. This principal caesura,
which effectively cuts each line in two, falls only in
certain places in the line--in the middle of the third foot
(that is, after the first syllable), or after the first

short syllable of the third foot, or in the middle of the

 

2There has been some objection to the use of classical
terms for feet--e.g. dactyl, spondee, even iamb--for
discussions of English accentual verse. See especially
Roberts 30-31 and 269-73; seelalso Fussell 20-21, although his
objection is less severe.

At any rate, these classical terms are still considered
fairly standard usage, and so I use them here.

142
fourth foot.3 In English prosody, the term eaesure has been
incorporated metaphorically, and less specifically, to mean
any sort of mid-line pause. Most writers of English
hexameters make use of caesura but are less exacting in that
use, so that the term applies in a sense somewhere between
the English and the classical.

Classical Greek accent, as far as scholarship can
determine on fairly scanty evidence, is essentially
irrelevant to the meter. It is also completely different
from our idea of an accent based on voice—stress; the
ancient Greek accent was based on rising and falling pitch.

The Greek hexameter might not have been completely
without stress rhythm, however. In the concept of metrical
ictus, the first half of every foot receives a stress,
called the thesis, while the arsis, or second half of the
foot, is unstressedu‘ The existence of the phenomenon of

ictus is widely but not universally recognized among

 

3The rules for the principal caesura, as with syllable
length, are actually more detailed than is indicated here.
There is also the matter of diaeresis, which is less important
to the discussion here. For more specifics, see Benner 351-
52.

‘According to Benner (350) the term thesis comes from the
Greek 0601;, "a ‘setting down,’ as of the foot in marching."
Arsis comes from.the Greek 6001;, "a ‘lifting,’ as of the foot
in marching." Benner adds that "Roman writers referring these
terms to the falling and rising inflection of the voice used
them in exactly the reverse way. Some modern books continue
the Roman use." A brief survey shows that West (22) uses the
terms as Benner does, while Monro (70), Bateman (v) , and
Denniston (564) reverse them.

143
scholars,’ and its exact nature is still debated. At least
one author sees ictus as the strongest force in any oral
reading of Homer, overshadowing even syllable length
(Nussbaum 16-17). The usual view, however, is that ictus is
something to be felt more than heard, and must always play a
secondary role--behind syllable length in any reading (e.g.,
Allen 132)--or even a tertiary role if the reader is clever
enough and practiced enough to include pitch accent in the
reading (Williams 314).

Even the exact nature of syllable length continues to
rest a little in the shade. Some scholars see the dactylic
hexameter as a fairly rigid 4/4 time, with every long
syllable--whether natural or artificial--being given exactly
twice the length of every short syllable (e.g., Bridges 2,
Benner 350, and West 21). Others assume syllable length to
be a bit less constrained by time, with a variable though
still perceptible difference between long and short (e.g.,
Allen 110-12).

The nature of the Greek hexameter is confused still
further because most native-English speakers read Homer in
something closer to 3/4 than 4/4 time, in effect

transforming Homer’s quantitative meter into a stress-based

 

5A brief discussion of the arguments for and against the
existence of ictus can be found in Denniston (564) although he
ends it thus: "It is impossible to decide with any certainty
between the contending views."

 

144
one.“ Given that this transformation occurs even when
reading the original, it is no wonder that the English
hexameter has so often been stress-based rather than

quantitative.

Not surprisingly, the English Renaissance brought the
first English attempts at the hexameter. Although two
centuries earlier Chaucer had set an accentual, iambic
pentameter standard for English verse, a movement arose to
bring verse back to the syllable-length basis of the
ancients. Roger Ascham is generally credited with the first
arguments and examples, in his §choiemaster (1570). Gabriel
Harvey has a dubious distinction as the man who tried to
persuade Edmund Spenser to write the Faerie Queene in
quantitative verse. Harvey advocated a verse based on
quantities always natural to the English usage of the time,
but his ideas did not go unchallenged, of course; Thomas

Nashe was the loudest and nastiest voice, maintaining

 

‘There is no criticism implied here. In British and
American culture that may be the most reasonable way to read
ancient hexameters. Even if one masters syllable length,
there is still pitch-accent to be dealt with. As for the
latter, Allen, after having listened to many recorded.attempts
at "melodic-accentual recitations of ancient Greek" (129),
advises his readers not to try. For those determined not to
heed his advice, though, he cites "the recordings by Prof.
Stephen Daitz--e.g. e r ci t o d Read' ’
greeh (2 cassettes), publ. Jeffrey Norton, Inc., N.Y./London:
2nd edn 1984."

Even if someone were to master all known aspects of
Homer’s verse, he would be highly unlikely to reproduce orally
those verses exactly the way they'were read in ancient Greece.
And if he did get it right, who could tell?

145
that classical meters in general and the hexameter in
particular had no place in English verse.

The first successful hexameter English work of any length
was Richard Stanyhurst’s 1582 translation of the first four
books of the Aeneid. The adjective "successful" should be
qualified, because the work was never much appreciated for
its artistic qualities. There has been admiration regarding
the technical aspect of those quantitative hexameters,
however. According to the 1909 Qembridge Hietory of Ehglieh

Literature, for example:
Though he wasted his time, he did nothing at haphazard.

He expounds his theory of the hexameter with great
care, and gives every syllable its proper quantity,
varying its length according to its termination and to
the consonant and vowel which follow it. (qtd. in Van
der Haar 25)

Sir Philip Sidney also tried his hand at quantitative
meter, although it comprised only a small part of his life’s
work--some dozen or so poems in all, only two in hexameter
(each a section of his "Old Arcadia" [1590]). Not
surprisingly, the poems are not usually considered
particularly successful.7

Sidney devised some rules of quantitative prosody; they
were written down only, it seems, in the margins of one

manuscript.8 .Although he based these rules on classical

rules for quantity, Sidney also realized the English

 

7E.g., Willcock, "Passing Pitefull Hexameters."

8The complete text of those rules can be found in The

Beehs of §ir Ehiiip Sidney 391.

146
language had some inherent differences from the classical
languages--e.g. "our tongue being full of consonantes and
monasillablles, the vowell slydes awaye quicklier then in
Greeks or Latin, which be full of vowells and longe wordes"
(391); he tried to make new rules accordingly. He did not
seem to grasp completely the nuances of pronunciation,
though, and often a rule followed orthography (e.g., a short
vowel followed by the double consonant eh became long [see
391-21) even where it differed from pronunciation.

George Puttenham found the idea of classical meters in
English interesting enough to include several short chapters
about them in the middle of his Arte of English Peesie
(1589). Disparaging the conservatively classical rules that
Stanyhurst used for his translation of the Aeneig, Puttenham
instead outlined by example some guidelines for quantity
that were closer to the ideas of Harvey, where syllable-
length is not dependent on artificial rules of position,
especially where misleading English "ortographie" would
stretch or squash a syllable beyond reason. In the end,
though, like so many before and since, Puttenham found
classical meters in English only interesting, and not to be
taken seriously:

Now peraduenture with vs Englishmen it be somewhat too
late to admit a new inuention of feete and times that
our forefathers neuer vsed nor neuer obserued till this
day, either in their measures or in their
pronuntiation, and perchuance will seeme in vs a
presumptuous part to attempt, considering also it would
be hard to find many men to like of one mans choise in

the limitation of times and quantities of words, with
which not one but euery eare is to be pleased and made

147
a particular iudge, being most truly sayd that a
multitude or comminaltie is hard to please and easie to
offend. (124)

In the eighteenth century the Germans took up the torch
of the hexameter9 and carried it well--more successfully, at
least, than their English predecessors. That success is
based in part, undoubtedly, on the change from a meter based
on quantities to one based on stresses, ceasing for a time
the effort to force quantities onto untrained and unwilling
ears. The first German hexameter work was Friedrich
Klopstock’s Messiah (1748); the best-known and best-received
critically was Goethe’s Hermann und Qgrothee (1797); the
most relevant to this study were J.H. Voss’s translations of
the [lien and Qdyssey (1793, 1781).

In the middle of the nineteenth century several English
poets followed the German example and wrote English
hexameters based on stress instead of quantity. The result
was often one of popular, but not critical, acclaim. The
first was Robert Southey, who published the long poem yieign
e£_lnggenent in 1822. In a letter of about the same time,
Southey writes: "[I]t has long been a favorite project of

mine to write one poem in hexameters, written, of course, by

accent, and formed upon the model of the Greek or German"

 

9Although the Germans most often receive credit for
keeping the hexameter alive, attempts were made in other
languages of Europe as well. For example, Southey, as an
addendum to his yision gt Jndgenent (Werhs 787), quotes from
two French. works (1553 and 1556) and. one Spanish. (year
unknown). He also claims knowledge of hexameters in
Portuguese and Bohemian, but says he knows of none in Italian.

148
(Lettere II: 214). He admits this form has its limitations:
"For rapidity, they are unequalled; [but] they fail in
solemnity; they are unfit for the dramatic parts of poetry"
(II: 214). But in another letter his enthusiasm is
unmitigated:
I have proved the hexameter may as well be written in
English as in German; that they are in no respect
dissuited to the genius of our language; and that the
measure is full, stately, and sonorous, capable of
great variety, great sweetness, and great strength.
(III: 189-90)
In yet another letter Southey explains his version of the
hexameter, and his attitude toward it:
I write upon the postulate of using in the four first
feet of the verse, any foot of two or three syllables;
the English hexameter in this respect bearing the same
loose resemblance to the Latin, that the English heroic
verse of ten syllables does to the ancient Iambic
verse. . . . Recollect that I do not propose it as a
better metre than blank verse, any more than I should
offer venison as a better thing than turtle, but as
something else--there being room for both. (III: 221-
22)

One of the most popular nineteenth-century hexameter
poems came from America. Longfellow’s Evangeline (1847) was
the "best-known, best-loved, long poem" (preface to 1966
ed., lst unnumbered page) of a well-known and -loved poet,
but the work nonetheless has been set up time and again in
later years as evidence of the accentual hexameter’s
inherent inadequacy.

Arthur Hugh Clough praised Evangeline, and appreciated
the degree to which it, through its popular success,

"attuned the ears of his [wide readership] to the flow and

cadence of this hitherto unacceptable measure" (583). But

149
Clough thought that Longfellow’s success would have been
slight if he had been translating the Greek or Latin epics,
rather than presenting his own charming tale: "In Greek,
where grammar, inflection, intonation, idiom, habit,
character, and genius are all most alien, the task [of
translating into English hexameter] is . . . hopeless"
(583).

Clough himself published two long poems in accentual
hexameters, The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich (1848) and Amenre
ge_yeyege (1858). Clough shows less enthusiasm than Southey
for the possible success of the English hexameter, seeing
instead his experiments with the meter as a show of
bravura--doomed to failure in themselves, yet still
providing a worthy legacy of sorts, if only as a useful
piece in the development of English prosody:

t v lu as! Let us go forward to our manifest
destiny with content, or at least resignation, and
bravely fill up the trench, which our nobler successors
may thus be able to pass. (583)

Charles Kingsley published in 1858 what might be the most
homeric of the non-Iliad hexameter poems, Andromeda. His
choice of subject matter, a story from Greek mythology,
helps provide an appropriate atmosphere, but the important
similarities to Homer lie in the lines themselves. His
lines reflect several aspects of the Greek hexameter, and
their movement is controlled and comfortable.

The others do not work quite so well. The movement of

Longfellow’s Evengeline is constantly threatening to gallop

150
away out—of-control, speed unchecked. Southey’s Vieion does
not gallop, but it is difficult to read--too often ambiguous
as to the proper placement of emphases--and so is out-of-
control in a sense different from Longfellow’s. The
movement of Clough’s Bethie is better controlled in both of
the above senses, but it is sometimes a bit awkward. For
example, he sometimes combines a spondaic line (i.e. a line
with a spondee in the fifth foot) with a principal caesuralo
in the fourth foot:

Be it recorded in song who was first, who last, in
dressing. (116)

If the strongest pause of the line is at the first comma,
the rest of the line jerks and stumbles. If we avert our
eyes from the punctuation and pause after "song" but not
after "first" (a reading that the sense allows) the line is
saved. But a few lines earlier, we find a similar
situation--

Eight stout shepherds and gillies had run, two wondrous
quickly (116)

--and there is no alternative reading to save this one from

awkwardness.

 

l°In discussing an English poem based on a classical
meter, I find myself in a no man’s land between English and
classical prosody. My use of the term caesnre here and
throughout this chapter means something other than "a mid-line
pause"; I mean a pause in the middle of a foot. Because
English tends toward monosyllables, caesuras in the classical
sense are that.much.morejprevalentn Therefore I choose to err
on the side of caution and use the classical term printinel
eeeenre here, to distinguish this caesura from the others.

151
Kingsley’s hexameter lines do not have these problems.

In the first two lines, for example--

Over the sea, past Crete, on the Syrian shore to the

southward
Dwells in the well-tilled lowland a dark-haired Ethiop
people, (174)
--the movement is, as I have said, controlled and
comfortable. One reason for this is that Kingsley’s
"spondees" are as close to true spondees as accentual verse
can come. In other words, in feet such as "past Crete,"
"well-tilled," and "dark-haired," the two syllables in each
case are roughly equal in weight, owing in part to the
length of each second syllable. The speed of the line slows
smoothly at these places, and increases at the dactyls, in
much the same way that the speed of Homer’s lines is
modulated smoothly. The other poets have replaced spondees
with quick trochees that too often stumble and jerk.
In another example, where Kingsley allows the coincidence

of a spondaic line and fourth-foot principal caesura, a la
Clough, movement complements sense perfectly, and the slow

movement of the end of the line flows nobly:

Watching the pulse of the oars die down, as her own
died with them. (179)

Angremede seems homeric in other ways as well. There is
one good homeric simile ("Just as at first some colt . . ."
188). The principal caesura almost always falls, with
varying strength, at one of the three homeric positions in
the line. There are a few repetitions, where the same

phrase falls at the same point in the line. The ratio of

152
dactyls to spondees and the percentage of spondaic lines are
close enough to Homer’s ratio and percentage to give the
poem a genuinely homeric feel. We can use Kingsley’s lines,
then, as a yardstick to help us measure hexameter

translations of the Iliad.

There are at least 27 published hexameter translations of
some or all of the Iliad--the earliest being 47 lines from
book 1 by Edwin Guest in 1838, the most recent a complete
version by Smith & Miller in 1944. This narrow range of 107
years is surprising, given the long history of Iliad
translations. Even more surprising, though, is that over
half of those were published in a range of only 17 years,
from 1861 to 1877. The former date is significant as the
year of Matthew Arnold’s lectures "On Translating Homer," in
which he advocates the use of the English hexameter as the
best means for translating Homer. His lectures were no
doubt responsible in part for the subsequent flurry of
hexameters good and bad-~probably not so much for planting
the idea as for legitimizing it. Although the merits of
accentual hexameters in English had been argued off and on
since the beginning of the century, Arnold’s words and their
progeny touched off a new fire-storm of debate over the
matter.

In his famous 1861 lectures, citing eleven hexameter
lines by E. C. Hawtrey as the best translation of Homer in

any meter, Matthew Arnold argues for the English hexameter:

153
Applied to Homer, this metre affords to the translator
the immense support of keeping him more nearly than any
other metre to Homer’s movement; and, since a poet’s
movement makes so large a part of his general effect,
and to reproduce this general effect is at once the
translator’s indispensable business and so difficult
for him, it is a great thing to have this part of your
model’s general effect already given you in your metre,
instead of having to get it entirely for yourself.
(148-49)

Arnold has two particular suggestions: that the English
form should contain more spondees than previous attempts
have (151, e.g., Lockhart, discussed later in this chapter);
and that the lines must "read themselves"--in other words,
that they should be constructed in such a way "that by
reading them naturally--that is, according to the sense and
legitimate accent,--the reader gets the right rhythm"
(153).“ As for the former suggestion, Guest had already
argued in 1838 that the notion of "accentual spondees" is an
"absurdity" (551), but seemed relieved at the discovery that
"a ‘spondee’ might in all cases be represented by a
‘trochee.’" Certainly the existence of a perfect accentual
spondee is unlikely, but an approximation is in no way
absurd, as Kingsley has shown.‘2

Arnold offers a few hexameter lines as examples; most of

these lines hold to two syllables per foot (however one

 

“This idea, and even the phrase "read themselves," had
already been put forth by William Whewell ("M. L.") in
"Letters on English Hexameters" (21) . In other words, he
said, "the rhythm should be unforced" (20).

12Guest was writing, of course, before the publication of
Angroneda, and Arnold apparently had not read it by the time
of his lectures. He refers to the hexameter works of Clough
and Longfellow, but not to Kingsley’s.

154
might characterize them) through the first four feet,
followed by the familiar dactyl and "spondee"13 in the last
two feet.
James Spedding quickly responded to Arnold’s ideas in an
1861 essay in Fraser’s hagazine. He claims that the
"English hexameter" does not truly resemble the Greek or
Latin. In fact, he says, any "resemblance which its
movement bears to Homer’s movement [is] the resemblance not
of mimicry but of mockery" (704). He goes on to define the
English and Latin“ hexameters, so as to distinguish them,
and finds,
that the only points in which the laws of the two
metres concur, are the number of the syllables and the
place of the two last accents. In all other respects
they are different, and in one contradictory. The
English takes account of accent only, and pays no
regard to quantity. The Latin is inexorable as to
quantity, requires the time of each syllable to be
distinctly felt and measured, and allows no choice but
between one long and two short; while with regard to
accent it gives much liberty. (706)

Arnold later claims that Spedding "suggests a type of

English hexameter in agreement with the Virgilian model, and

formed on the supposition that ‘quantity is as

distinguishable in English as in Latin or Greek by any ear

that will attend to it’" (192-93). He does quote Spedding

 

13Having noted Guest’s objections to the term, as well as
my own distinctions between the "spondees" of Kingsley and.the
more trochaic feet of others, I will henceforth use the term
Spengee (with a capital _S_) for any two-syllable foot in
English hexameters, to distinguish it from a spondee in the
classical sense.

14As the most clearly definable classical example.

155
correctly, but he misses the point; Spedding does not
advocate any kind of hexameter in English, and in fact
thinks the Iliad should be translated much differently (as
noted above, Chapter One). The English quantitative
hexameter would have its day, but not via Spedding.

At any rate, H. A. J. Munro replied quickly in turn to
Spedding (still 1861). He argues that accent and quantity
do often coincide in Homer (ignoring, apparently, the
different nature of the classical Greek accent), that such
lines "are among the very commonest types of Homeric rhythm"
(qtd. in Arnold 193). He also replies to Spedding that
English ears do not distinguish quantity "except that which
is produced by accentuated and unaccentuated syllables," and
so ”quantity must be utterly discarded" in the English
hexameter (193).

Arnold, in his "Last Words" that followed the essays by
Spedding and Munro, re—emphasizes his earlier ideas, that a
middle road is best, where accent predominates but quantity
is not disregarded. One "must not," he says, "make
eeyenteen a dactyl in spite of all the length of its last

syllable" (194).

Others soon joined the fray, whether with hexameters of

their own, or with criticism of those attempted.”

 

”The following brief survey is far from exhaustive. For
some discussions of the English hexameter not otherwise noted
in this chapter, see Felton, Jeffrey, Mackay, Omond, Palmer,
Scott, & Whewell (Rev. of Dart). Curiously, despite the

156
Edward Earl of Derby had a few words for the English
hexameter in the 1864 preface to his own blank verse
translation:
[Many meters] have had their partisans, even to that
"pestilent heresy" of the so-called English Hexameter;
a metre wholly repugnant to the genius of our language;
which can only be pressed into the service by a
violation of every rule of prosody; and of which,
notwithstanding my respect for the eminent men who have
attempted to naturalize it, I could never read ten
lines without being irresistibly reminded of Canning’s
"Dactylics call’st thou them? God help thee, silly
one!" (viii)
Many have found fault with the English hexameter, but
Derby’s criticism is notable for its vehemence.
Perhaps the most famous voice in the fray managed to
combine example and criticism. In 1865 Alfred Tennyson

published "Attempts at Classic Metres in Quantity" in

 

sizable amount of critical publication on the hexameter, and
the sizable number of translations of the Iliad, both seem to
have sunk into obscurity. For example, in 1933 one writer
claimed that "Dart’s is, so far as I am aware, the enly
complete hexameter translation of the Iliag" (Ruutz-Rees 212) .
Even more recently, Robert Fitzgerald stated flatly, in a
review of Lattimore’s Iliad, that "[t]he only translation ever
made of the entire Iliad into English dactylic hexameter
happens to have been published eight years ago, the work of
the late William Benjamin Smith and Walter Miller" (700).
Dart’s version was in fact the first, and Smith1& Miller’s the
last, but there were no fewer than four other complete
versions (by Cochrane, Herschel, Simcox, and Cayley) published
in the interim. Fitzgerald’s mistake may have resulted from
Miller’s preface, where it is stated: "The present
translation of the llieg is, as far as I can discover, the
first attempt to reproduce in English Homer’s great epic line
for line in the metre of the original. Other translations of
the llieg have been made into English dactylic hexameters but
neither complete nor line for line" (vii). Miller is right
about "line for line," but not about "complete."

157
Qernhill_hegetine. His words on the hexameter, like
Derby’s, are brief enough to quote in full:16
These lame hexameters the strong-wing’d music of Homer!
No--but a most burlesque barbarous experiment.
When was a harsher sound ever heard, ye Muses, in
England?
When did a frog coarser croak upon our Helicon?
Hexameters no worse than daring Germany gave us,
Barbarous experiment, barbarous hexameters! (707)
One can only assume that these lines were deliberately
tortured by Tennyson, in order to parody the possible
defects of the form in English. His attitude is clear, at
any rate.

In the preface to his 1865 hexameter version, Edwin W.
Simcox hoped that his translation is "a photographic view of
the poem so far as the English language in his (Simcox’s)
humble hands can produce the result" (qtd. in Little 140).
The desire for a "photographic view" seems typical of
hexameter translators, but the reality here as elsewhere is
something other than "photographic," even in metaphor.

This metaphor is dealt with, in fact, by John Stuart
Blackie in his "Remarks on English Hexameters" in Agree
fiellenicae (1874). While the English language is
"altogether incapable" of "pure dactylic hexameter verse"
(that is, quantitative), according to Blackie (283), there

is no organic reason--despite the arguments of Derby and

others--why English cannot handle an accentual hexameter.

 

1"’These are actually elegiac couplets--a line of hexameter
followed by a line of so-called pentameter, which in effect
has six beats also.

158

The reason it is not a good idea, he says, comes not from
the language itself but from its users. There is simply too
much prejudice against the form--too many associations
negative or facetious--and there is no compelling reason to
try to overcome that prejudice. The English hexameter is
most often used as a means of producing the effect of a
"facsimile" of the original:

But let us beware of being robbed of our senses by this

one idea of a facsimile, which it must be confessed has

something of the mechanical in its nature, and may

achieve wonderful likenesses--as Photography does--only

without the soul. (291)

Blackie suggested instead the iambic fourteener--better
yet, the trochaic 15-syllable line, which emphasizes the
first syllable of each line as did Homer.‘7

Even in the twentieth century, the matter has not been
decided. An anonymous reviewer (NY Times Rey, er Boeks) of
Prentiss Cummings’ 1910 abridged Iliad in hexameters denies
the feasibility of the English hexameter, and states that it
it "is to be vindicated as an English measure, it must be
triumphantly employed as an instrument by some true poet,
and not merely made skillful use of by a scholar. . . ."

This sentiment is echoed later by two reviewers of the
hexameter translation by Smith & Miller. Eugene O’Neill,

Jr. appreciates the technical merits of their translation,

but still considers it a failure:

 

l7Blackie used a fourteen-syllable meter for his own 1866
translation.

159

[A]1though I regard the Smith-Miller "Iliad" as an

extraordinary achievement, I feel that it merits this

designation more as a teur ge forge, or as a triumph of

ingenuity, than as an esthetically valid work of

literature. (25)
Reviewer Herbert Yeames says, "This new version of the Tlieg
can . . . be read with some pleasure," but he also warns
that it "is not great poetry, hardly poetry at all" (277),
and finally invokes Chapman’s 1600 lament for the loss of
spirit in translation: "They failed to search his deep and
treasurous heart."

Many of the reviews of Smith & Miller are far more
positive, but it remains clear that the hexameter in English
is a tricky business indeed, and a successful translation
will require both an engineer’s mind and a poet’s heart.

The Comparison section examines two English hexameter
translations with very different effects. The Closer Look
section examines three partial translations that are short

but successful, and the most recent complete translation in

English hexameters.18

Comparison of Herschel (1862) and Hartling (1877)

The purpose of this comparison is not so much to show a
good example of hexameters versus a bad, but to examine two
different sorts of hexameter, their effects, and the ways
they can be read. Because English hexameters are still

relatively unfamiliar to most readers, the question of how

 

18For brief information and comments regarding hexameter
translations not covered in this chapter, see Appendix.

160
best to read them (metrically speaking) is still open, and

therefore should be addressed.

Soon as the mother of dawn, the rosy-fingered Aurora,

Tinted the eastern sky, for the Grecian camp they
departed.

Fair was the wind and strong, which the bright, far-
darting Apollo

Sent: and they hoisted the mast, and the white sails
spread, which received it

Full in the midst of their swell:--and they bounded
along; and the waters

Roared round the keel as it ploughed the dark blue wave
in its progress.

(Herschel, Qornhill’s)

But when Dawning appeared, rose-fingered, Daughter of
Morning,

Even at once they returned to the mighty camp of the
Grecians.

And Apollo the Archer sent them a favoring stern-wind;

And they stationed their mast, and their snowy canvas

unfolded,

Into the sail-swell puffed the breeze; and the billow
surrounding,

Purpling under the keel, sang loud, as glided the
galley.

Ran she over the wave till she came to the end of her
voyage.

(Martling)

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(1.477-83)

(and as soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered,
then they set sail for the wide camp of the Achaeans.
And Apollo, that worketh afar, sent them a favouring
wind, and they set up the mast and spread the white sail.
So the wind filled the belly of the sail, and the dark
wave sang loudly about the stem of the ship, as she went,
and she sped over the wave, accomplishing
her way.) (literal prose of A. T. Murray)

161

Sir John F. W. Herschel published the first book of the
Iliad in Cornhill’s Magazine in 1862 and subsequently
published a complete translation in 1866. In his
"Preliminary Remarks" he argues that the English hexameter
need not "gallop" along with five dactyls in the first five
feet, nor must it be "exchanged for a monotony the heaviest
and most wearisome" possible--with lines full of so-called
spondees (gornhill's 592). With its ability to shift from
dactyl to spondee and back, the hexameter, he argues, "will
be found to afford an amount of variety such as none of the
English metres in use possess" (593).

Herschel’s lines here "read themselves" at all points; no
reader should stumble on them. The accents, beginning with
a strong one at the head of each line, fall clearly and
naturally at the appointed places in the dactylic hexameter
scheme. The unaccented syllables, whether singly or in
pairs, are usually quite short and light. Occasionally the
second syllable of a Spondee is long enough to make the foot
seem almost like a true spondee, as in "eastern" and "dark
blue," but Herschel apparently saw no need to make all his
Spondees in this way. One reviewer in fact praises
Herschel's short Spondees, as being more likable to the
"popular reader" (Whewell 304). Regarding dactyls, of all
the unaccented pairs only one syllable in these lines is
dangerously long or heavy: "round" in the last line. But

even here the foot is saved by the unusually long and heavy

162

initial syllable, "roared," than which "round" is just a bit
lighter.19

The principle caesura in these lines falls always in the
masculine position of the third foot, except possibly the
last line, where there is no obvious pause; but sense allows
the hint of a pause after "keel" (second foot). The
caesural pauses in the other lines are palpable yet variable
in strength, complementing the line endings (of which
several here are runovers) in a way that recalls the
original Greek while also working comfortably in the present
English poetry.

Herschel’s is the most poetic of the two versions
compared here, especially in the last line--

Roared round the keel as it ploughed the dark blue wave
in its progress

--where the imagery is striking, simple, and true.

James A. Martling published book 1 in 1877. Although he
intended to publish the whole Iliad later (Preface iv), no
such work exists, to my knowledge.

While each of these lines by Martling can be scanned to
conform to the scheme of the dactylic hexameter, they do not
"read themselves" so easily as Herschel’s. Having mentioned
Southey in his preface, Martling may in fact have been

following the earlier poet's example, where the first four

 

19Not every line of the rest of Herschel’s work reads so
easily. Line 24 of book 1--"But Agamemnon, Atreus’ son, such
compromise brooked not"--can be scanned, but not on the fly.

163
feet can be of any sort with two or three syllables,
including iambs and anapests. Thus, similar to Southey's
yigign_gfi_lugggmgnt, several lines here do not begin with an
obvious accent: "But when Dawning . . ." "And Apollo . . ."
and "And they stationed . . ." If a reader simply sets
himself to accent the first syllable of each line, they work
without great awkwardness but also not perfectly. If the
reader does not make this choice, the result is more
comfortable, but also more ambiguous, and certainly less
metrical. Questions also arise in the middle of Martling's
lines. In the first, "rose" is ambiguous; if read according
to a strict hexameter scheme, it should be the second
syllable of a Spondee, with a secondary accent at most,
dipping in force and tone (though not in length) slightly
below the second syllable of "appeared" and the first of
"fingered." Read naturally, however, "rose" is likely to
take the accent, with "fingered" completing the dactyl. The
line as a whole, then, read naturally, has only five beats:

But when Dawning appeared, rose-fingered, Daughter of
Morning.

Is it a bad line?

In the sixth line, the word "sang," according to the
dactylic scheme, is the second half of a Spondee. If read
naturally, though, it takes a strong accent, overshadowing
its predecessor and matching almost exactly the force of the
first syllable of the next foot, "loud." This, in effect,

turns the line into a heptameter. Is it, then, a bad line?

164

The question remains unanswered so far: are these lines
bad because they do not so easily conform to the dactylic
hexameter scheme? These lines do in fact "read themselves,"
though in a sense different from the way Herschel's do--that
is, if the reader disregards the hexameter scheme, he is not
likely to stumble. Problems arise only if the reader makes
the hexameter a Procrustean bed for these lines, wrenching
them this way and that. The lines can be made to fit, but
not comfortably. If left alone, they are not perfect
hexameters, but they are no more diverse than those of
Lattimore, who uses a "free six-beat line" (55), or Fagles,
who "work[s] from a loose five- or six-beat line . . .
expand[ing] at times to seven beats" (xi).

Are these bad lines? Read as strict hexameters, they are
adequate but awkward. Read naturally but judged by the
classical standard where deviation is considered an error,
they are failures. Read naturally but judged by the
standards of English poetry, where deviation from the meter
is normal, expected, even required, they are quite good--
variable enough to avoid monotony, but not so off-beat as to
lose the meter entirely.

Poetically, though, these lines of Martling’s are not so
good, with such constructions as "glided the galley" and
"ran she over the wave."

Are the lines homeric? They are more so than Lattimore's
or Fagles’, or anything in blank verse, but not so much as

Herschel's, which are not as homeric as Kingsley's.

165
A Closer Look--Three Partial Versions and One Complete in

Accentual Hexameters

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART, books 1 & 24 (1846), and "Hector in
Troy" 6.236-516 (1347)

In March 1846 there appeared "The Twenty-Fourth Book of
Homer’s iiing, Attempted in English Hexameters," in

wood' di u . The author is identified
only as N.N.T. In May 1846 in the same periodical appeared
"The Liing of Homer--Book the First. In English
Hexameters." Although the author suggests that "Should this
experiment be received with any favor, . . . he would not be
reluctant to attempt the completion of an Iliad in English
Hexameters" (259), the only other portion of the Iliad he
published was a part of book six, in English Hexamete;
Translations, a collection of translations from Greek,
Latin, and German, by several professors from Cambridge (P.
Scott 6) that also includes the two passages by E. C.
Hawtrey examined later in this chapter.

N. N. T. turn out to be "initials" for John Gibson
Lockhart, a friend of John Wilson and fellow frequent
contributor to giackwgod’s, though he was not often writing
for that periodical by 1846 (Hildyard 155-56); the two books
of the liing, in fact, were his last contributions to
filngkggggig. Wilson, of course, had published several
essays in ginganQQL§ fifteen years earlier on Sotheby's and

other translations of Homer up to that time. One wonders

166

how his friend’s verses would have fared under Wilson's
fire, and whether Wilson did in fact offer some criticism
away from public print.20

Lockhart's verses are terribly regular-~almost completely
dactylic, with Spondees (excluding, of course, the last
foot) rare enough to be surprising when they appear. The
lines are almost always end-stopped. Even the principle
caesura is fairly regular; each of the first four lines in
Book 24, for example, is punctuated directly after the third
stress. The principal caesura does vary somewhat, though--
sometimes non-existent, sometimes landing after the second
beat, sometimes after the third beat but lighter (no
punctuation), and occasionally falling between two
unaccented syllables in the third or even the second foot.

With Spondees so rare, Lockhart’s lines cannot be
considered perfectly homeric. Matthew Arnold, in fact,
pointed to Lockhart's contribution to English Hexameter
Translations as an example of "the lumbering effect of most
English hexameters [that] is caused by their being much too
dactylic" (151). "Lumbering" is not the appropriate term
for Lockhart's lines, though; they are light and rapid--
possibly too light and too rapid. At any rate, the few

Spondees Lockhart does use make good examples of how English

 

20Wilson himself included several passages of his own in
his essays, under the name of Christopher North, slyly
explaining "MSS. penes ne."

167
can make two-syllable feet that, to paraphrase Arnold,
reproduce somewhat the effect of Homer.
Although their regularity is a fault, still Lockhart's
lines read rapidly, easily, rhythmically, and--aside from a
miscast or two of diction--poetically:

Sing, 0 Goddess! the wrath unblest of Peleian
Achilleus,

Whence the uncountable woes that were heapt on the host
of Achaia;

Whence many valorous spirits of heroes, untimely
dissever’d

Down unto Hades were sent, and themselves to the dogs
were a plunder

And all fowls of the air; but the counsel of Zeus was
accomplished:

Even from the hour when at first were in fierceness of
rivalry sunder'd

Atreus’ son, the Commander of Men, and the noble
Achilleus.

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(1.1-7)

(The wrath do thou sing, O goddess, of Peleus' son,
Achilles, that baneful wrath which brought countless woes
upon the Achaeans, and sent forth to Hades many valiant
souls of warriors, and made themselves to be a spoil for
dogs and all manner of birds; and thus the will of Zeus
was being brought to fulfillment;--sing thou thereof from
the time when at first there parted in strife Atreus'
son, king of men, and goodly Achilles.) (literal prose
of Murray)

"Wrath" is fine, of course, but "unblest" carries not
one-tenth the strength of 001006»n» or "ruinous wrath." The
second line is adequate but unremarkable. In the third,

"whence many valorous spirits of heroes," although a bit

168
heavy on the sibilants, is both rapid and noble. Two half-
lines--

. . . and themselves to the dogs were a plunder
And all fowls of the air;

--capture the original in letter, sense, and spirit--exactly
where Smith 6 Miller, as we will see, falls apart.

In the following passage, the absolutely dactylic
movement of the lines carries the action along swiftly. In
the last three lines, where the embarkation of the various
sea-goers forms a small parade, the regular meter is
effective, even if not especially homeric. The biggest
problem here seems to be one of diction:

They, when at last they arrived in the spacious recess
of the harbour,

Furl'd with alertness their sail, and bestow'd in the
depth of the galley,

Loosen’d the ropes from the mast, and depress'd it to
fix in the mast-hold,

Push'd with their oars to the landing, and anchor'd and
fasten'd the hausers;

Then with the hecatomb laden, the mariners stept on the
sea-beach.

Lastly, Chryseis was led by Odysseus himself from the
galley,

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(1.432-39)

(When they were now got within the deep harbour, they
furled the sail, and stowed it in the black ship, and the
mast they lowered by the forestays and brought it to the
crutch with speed, and rowed her with oars to the place
of anchorage. Then they cast out the mooring-stones and
made fast the stern cables, and themselves went forth
upon the shore of the sea. Forth they brought the

169

hecatomb for Apollo, that smiteth afar, and forth stepped

also the daughter of Chryses from the sea-faring ship.)

(literal prose of Murray)
Several words seem to be slightly off-base. "Spacious"
stands for 00A006»06oc ("very deep"), not quite the same
thing. "With alertness" stands for 06006Ai0wc ("swiftly");
it captures the general sense, but is laden with several
associations that do not apply here--especially "danger" and
"unexpected happenings," whereas here all is routine.
"Bestow’d" stands for 0606» ("put," "placed," or "stowed"),
but the prefix na-, added no doubt for the sake of meter,
appears to change the meaning from "put away" to "give to,"
which is not appropriate here. To make matters worse, he
(again gausa metri) drops the direct object iE- "Depress’d"
for 0¢6»16¢ is incorrect not because of the difference in
grammatical form, but because dengess connotes a lowering by
pressure from above, whereas the action here involves a
release of support. Finally, "push'd" stands for 000606006»
("rowed forward"). One nniia an oar to drive a boat
forward.

On the other hand, Lockhart may not be as far off as he
seems. "Spacious," while not perfectly accurate, at least
conveys the spirit of the original, in that the harbor is
safe, with room to move freely, without danger or obstacle.
For "alertness," the Oxford English Dictionary (QED) gives
among other possibilities "briskness, activity, nimbleness";
although the term can have connotations of danger or

unexpectedness, the connotations, as in this case, can be

170
more positive. "Bestow'd," according to the QEQ, can also
be used as Lockhart has. The relevant definition, "to stow
away; to place or deposit for storage," is labeled azgnaig,
but the last example sentence given is dated 1853, seven
years after the publication of Lockhart's book 1. Even his
use of "depress’d" falls within the QEQ's definitions; one
example sentence parallels the usage closely: "The spines
can be erected or depressed at the will of the fish" (1880).
There is no way to make "push'd" fall within the letter of
the original; it is simply not technically correct. But it
does fall within the spirit of the original, using the
metaphorical "push ahead," and leaving off the second word
by poetic license. The argument is strengthened by the
prefix to 000606006».

Lockhart pushes the limits of his words, it is true, but
that in itself is no sin. A slightly different problem of
diction shows itself in another boat-passage:

Till as the roseate Eos, the daughter of morning,
ascended,

Back was their voyage ordain’d to the wide-spread host
of Achaia.

Fair was the breeze that attended their going from

Phoebus Apollo;

Upward they hoisted the mast, and the white sail spread
to receive it;

Full on the canvass it smote, and the dark-blue swell
of the waters

Echo’d around at their coming, and groan’d to the
plunge of the galley,

Onward advancing apace, as it sever’d the path of the
billows.

But when the course had been run, and the galley
arrived at the leaguer . . .

171

"Smote" does not seem quite accurate at first, if compared
with other translations that say, for instance, "the wind
.fiiliag the belly of the sail" (Murray). The original verb
is much stronger, though: npfiae» (from npfi0w, "blow out,
swell out by blowing" and also "spout" and "blow into a
flame" [Liddell & Scott]).“ "Smote" is not perfect, but
the strength of its image starts to look better. The bigger
problem of diction, though, is in the next line, as "swells"
do not gang or gngan around a ship, as Lockhart would have
them do. Regardless of dictionary definitions or metaphors,
the two images simply are not true to life. Even here,
though, Lockhart might twist free of censure, as at least
one of the verbs is true to Homer--"echo’d" is indeed
associated with Homer’s verb 16x6.22 In the next line, the
clause "as it sever'd the path of the billows" is not a
literal rendering of the Greek, but it captures the sense
and spirit of the original, it is true to life, and it is
poetic.

A small problem of syntax is evident in the third line of
this passage; Lockhart mimics the original line in placing
"Apollo" at the end, but according to English rules of

syntax, the line tells us not that the breeze was sent by

 

21One wonders if the range of meanings is connected by
sound--the rippling sound of a sputtering flame, and the quick
ripple of a sail catching a stiff wind.

22As for "groan'd," the Greek 1000111; is rendered by Murray
”as she went," i.e. gging, but maybe Lockhart saw it as some
participial form of the interjection 106.

172
the god, as the original does, but that the voyagers are
running away from him.

The best line of the passage is the first, where Lockhart
relaxes 006066010106 from the usual, more literal "rosy-
fingered" to the more empirically accurate and perfectly
poetic "roseate."23 He also relaxes the verb ¢6»n (”showed"
or "appeared") to the more visually true "ascended."

As we can see from the last two passages, to the same
extent that Lockhart's meter is regular and predictable, his
diction is surprising and challenging, never routine. As he
stretches the possibilities of his words, only rarely does
he fall over the line into error.

At Hector’s prayer, Lockhart is again thoroughly
dactylic, except for two effective Spondees:

"Zeus! and ye Deities all! may your blessing descend
on mine offspring!

Grant estimation to him, as to me, in the land of the

Trojan!

Gallant in arms may he be, and his reign over Ilion

mighty.

Let it be spoken of him, when they see him returning

from battle,

Bearing the blood-stain'd spoils, having slaughter'd

his enemy fairly;--

‘This is the first of his lineage, more excellent far

than his father.’

Such be the cry--and in him let the heart of his mother

be gladden'd!"

"260 6AA01 16 0601, 6616 66 061 16»66 76»60061

 

23While 006066010106 and its English equivalent "rosy-
fingered" should in no way be condemned, as they are true to
our conception of early dawn as color that rises and spreads,
I submit that their truth is more metaphorical than natural,
that the color actually spreads evenly. I cannot speak with
absolute authority, however, having never seen the 'Héc of
Homer’s place or time.

173

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(6.476-81)

("Zeus and ye other gods, grant that this my child may

likewise prove, even as I, pre-eminent amid the Trojans,

and as valiant in might, and that he rule mightily over

Ilios. .And some day may some man say of him as he cometh

back from war, ‘He is better far than his father'; and

may he bear the blood-stained spoils of the foeman he

hath slain, and may his mother's heart wax glad.")

(literal prose of Murray)
In the fourth line a Spondee spans the principle caesura,
and in the fifth we find "blood-stained." Both are nearly
genuine spondees, with fairly long and weighty second
syllables. Lockhart's Spondees are certainly rare, but when
they occur they are good, similar to Kingsley's in type if
not in frequency.

For example, in a survey of the first fifty lines of Book

24, we find only one line with two spondees:

Nor of the Blue-eyed Maid, nor of Earth-disturbing
Poseidon.

The first is close to genuine, although the second is less
so. Only eight other lines occur with even a single
Spondee. In seven of those lines, the Spondee spans a
caesura in the third foot, e.g.:

And of the manifold days // they two had been toilfully
comrades.

The remaining one is in the first foot:

Whom thus, dead as he lies, ye will neither admit to be
ransom'd.

174
In the following passage we see how Lockhart, while not
always perfect, can occasionally bring rhythm and diction
together with a grace and strength that is entirely
homeric:“

"Ah, unhappy! thy spirit in truth has been burdened
with evils.

How could the daring be thine to come forth to the
ships of Achaia

singly, to stand in the eyes of the man by whose weapon
thy children,

Many and gallant, have died? full surely thy heart is
of iron."

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(24.518-21)

("Ah, woe is me, whither now is gone the wisdom for the

which of old thou wast famed among stranger folk and

among them thou rulest? How art thou fain to go alone to

the ships of the Achaeans to meet the eyes of the man who

hath slain.thy sons, many and valiant?’ Of iron verily is

thy heart.") (literal prose of Murray)
The first of these lines in Homer is honest yet understated;
the same line in Lockhart risks too much understatement,
without even the 00116--yet better to err on that side than
to fall into bathos.

The convolution of "how could the daring be thine to come

forth" makes it less strong than H6; 61106 610606»--the

moment asks for clear and direct syntax--but Lockhart cannot

 

24The lines, as illustrated in the previous chapter, are
repeated from earlier in the 24th book, where Hecabe questions
Priam's need to cross enemy lines. Lockhart changes the
wording slightly in moving them from Hecabe’s mouth to
Achilles', as did Homer.

175
quite deliver in the face of the hexameter’s requirements.
It is close enough, though, not to break the moment apart.

Homer puts the important word 0106 (now it is Priam
alone, where Achilles had been, and still is) in a strong
position, at the end of the line; Lockhart renders it
"singly" and gives it an equally strong position at the
beginning of the next line, with the strong initial stress
following the previous line without pause.

The last half-line could not be better. Here Lockhart
uses the hexameter to his best advantage; having been used
sparingly, the Spondee bridging the principal caesura is
just surprising enough to lend extra weight to the three
consecutive stressed syllables--died, full, sure(ly)--so
that the weight of those syllables intensifies the weight of
Achilles’ recognition of Priam's grief and strength.

This is a fully charged moment in the original, and it is
a highly charged moment in Lockhart as well. If Lockhart's
is not quite as good as Homer's--well, no one expects it to
be.

Lockhart’s hexameters certainly "read themselves," more
so than most. With so few deviations from the dactylic
pattern, the reader need only apply a good tnnnp to the
first syllable of the line and every third syllable
thereafter, with no fear of losing the intended rhythm.

Of course the meter will seem thumpingly bad if one
actually reads in this way, just as a freshman might search

for and exaggerate the iambic beat of "Tintern Abbey."

176
Without a doubt, much of the criticism of the English
hexameter’s over-regularity is the result of just such
reading. This tendency exists because we are not accustomed
to this strange meter. To make sure we are getting it right
(like the freshman trying to make sense of blank verse for
the first time) we concentrate on it. The irony is, though,
that if one turns a blind eye to the meter and begins to
read as if the lines were prose, then the dactylic rhythm
comes through more subtly. No one will mistake Lockhart's
verse--or most other hexameter verse-~for prose, no matter
how casually it is read, whereas some varieties of blank
verse and other freer meters do run that danger. This meter
is always felt, and if we only avert our eyes, as one is
advised not to look directly at the sun, the meter relaxes
comfortably, and one can indeed settle in for the long ride
of epic narrative.

These ana good English hexameters. If the reader is
willing to suspend any prejudice against the form, and to
read freely and slowly, he will find in Lockhart’s lines a
poem with a clear yet slightly variable rhythm, comfortable
sentences and diction that are rarely if ever awkward or
stumbling, and a rendering of Homer that always maintains
the sense of the original, often the letter, and usually

most of the spirit.

177
E. C. HAWTREY, "Helen from the Walls of Troy Looking for Her
Brothers" 3.234-44, and "The Parting of Hector and
Andromache" 6.394-502 in Engiisn fiexametar Translations
(1847)
Matthew Arnold says of the eleven-line passage below:
Dr. Hawtrey’s version of it is suffused with a pensive
grace which is, perhaps, rather more Virgilian than
Homeric; still it is the one version of any part of the
Iliad which in some degree reproduces for me the
original effect of Homer: it is the best, and it is in
hexameters. (149-50)
Little, on the other hand, is not especially impressed,
saying only that Hawtrey "has succeeded in imitating one
aspect, viz. the tripping effect of Homer’s dactylic verse"
(207).
Hawtrey’s hexameters are more Spondaic than most,
contrasting dramatically with Lockhart’s, which explains in
part Arnold’s preference for them. The last line of the

following passage has three Spondees in a row:

"Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-ey’d sons of

Achaia,

Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I
remember;

Two--two only remain, whom I see not among the
Commanders,

Kastor fleet in the Car--Po1ydeykes brave with the
Cestus--

Own dear brethren of mine--one parent lov’d us as
infants.

Are they not here in the host, from the shores of lov’d
Lakedaimon,

Or, tho’ they came with the rest in ships that bound
thro’ the waters,

Dare they not enter the fight or stand in the council
of Heroes,

All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has
awaken’d?"

So said she;--long since they in Earth’s soft arms

were reposing,

178

There, in their own dear land, their Father-land,
Lakedaimon.

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(3.234-44)

("And now all the rest of the bright-eyed Achaeans do I
see, whom I could well note, and tell their names; but
two marshallers of the host can I not see, Castor, tamer
of horses, and the goodly boxer, Polydeuces, even mine
own brethren, whom the same mother bare. Either they
followed not with the host from lovely Lacedaemon, or
though they followed hither in their seafaring ships,
they have now no heart to enter into the battle of
warriors for fear of the words of shame and the many
revilings that are mine."

So said she; but they ere now were fast holden of
the life-giving earth there in Lacedaemon, in their dear
native land.) (literal prose of Murray)

The passage is notable for its lack of blemishes.
In Hector’s prayer for his son, Spondees are fewer but
effective:
"Jove and ye other Gods, oh grant that this child may

be honour’d
E’en as I honour’d have been among all the Dardanian

heroes,

Brave like me in the fight, and to rule over Ilion with
valour!

So shall some gazer exclaim, ‘Far braver is he than his
father,’

When he returns from the fight with blood-stain’d
trophies adornéd,

Freshly ta’en off from the slain, while the heart of
his mother rejoices."

#— (H‘—

179
The fourth line is very good;” in the third foot, several
factors of meter and sense come together: a Spondee with
two genuinely long syllables, a strong caesura, and the
transition from Hector’s primary words to a secondary
quotation. A strong emphasis on "far" launches the all-
important quotation soaring with emotion. The last two
lines are also especially strong, as image and rhythm
combine, moving quickly until the Spondees of "fight with
blood-stained," then speeding up again for the remainder, as
the violent image transforms into the mother’s smiling face.
The passage’s greatest faults are minor: "gazer" in the
fourth line is odd though not inaccurate, much like some of
Lockhart’s diction; and "ta’en" in the last line is rather
long for an unaccented syllable.
A passage at the end of "The Parting of Hector and
Andromache" shows strengths and weaknesses:
. . . but his wife was now on her way to the palace,
Turning again and again, while tears flow’d fast from
her eyelids.
Soon did she reach the abode of Hector, the hero-
destroyer,
Fair to behold; and there did she find her numerous
handmaids
All in attendance within; and their grief was arous’d
at her coming.
Sorely for Hector they griev’d, yet alive, at his
palace of Ilion.
"Never," they said, "will he come back again from the
din of the battle

Safe to his home from the hands of the Grecians in fury
assailing."

 

25There is only one better version of that line, as we
will see in the next section.

180

610x0; 66 ¢11n 0106»66 BEBfiKEL
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(6.495b-502)
(and his dear wife went forthwith to her house, oft
turning back, and shedding big tears. IPresently she came
to the well-built palace of man-slaying Hector and found
therein her many handmaidens; and among them all she
roused lamentation. So in his own house they made lament
for Hector while yet he lived; for they deemed that he
should never more come back from battle, escaped from the
might and the hands of the Achaeans.) (literal prose of
Murray)

The second line is a marvel of the joining of rhythm and
sense. It is perfectly modulated throughout--at first
whirling dactylically ("Turning again and again"), then
slowing (by use of Spondees) in sadness ("while tears
flow’d"), then picking up speed again ("fast from her
eyelids").

A serious problem arises in the fourth line; does "Fair
to behold" refer to Hector or to his "abode"? The original
has 66 »616160»16;--difficult to translate exactly (Murray
has "well-built," which is not quite literal), it must refer
to the "abode." The English syntax, though, makes "Fair to
behold" appear to modify Hector, however silly it might
sound.

The last two lines of the passage are transformed by
Hawtrey from an indirect quote (6¢6»1o 06 1560061) to a
direct, which potentially strengthens, in English, the

emotional impact. The syntax of the final line, however,

181
even though not ambiguous, weakens that effect, especially
when compared with the perfect syntax of the original
(000¢076»16 06»0; 061 x6106; 'Ax616»).

Hawtrey’s lines are more Spondaic, therefore more
modulated, than Lockhart’s. The Spondees themselves are
good strong ones, whose second syllables are truly long by
classical rules, even if not accented. Hawtrey mixes rhythm
and sense beautifully, an important homeric feature. Of the
three passages examined here, the first two are very nearly
faultless. The third has problems but still shows great

skill and poetry.

WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON, excerpts in "Womanhood in the
Iliad" (1893)

William Cranston Lawton wrote over several years a series
of four articles on Homer’s works for Atlantig_ugnthlx- In
the first, his translated passages (used for illustration)
were in blank verse. The remaining three, however, used
English hexameters. Only one of those three articles
concerned the Iliad, and the passages shown here are taken

from it. He also used hexameters in Tna §ncce§soga gf Hana;

(1898) to translate passages from Hesiod, the "Homeric
Hymns" and others. In Introduggign t9 Qiaasicai Graek
Litarature (1903) Lawton makes clear his opinion on
translating Homer:

The only dignified unrhymed English verse long enough

to match Homer’s line is the "accentual hexameter."
Until a great master of metre like Mr. Swinburne has

182

exhausted the possibilities of dactylic rhythm, this
last of our Homeric problems will remain unsolved (44).

All in all, it is surprising that Lawton never published
separately his own Iliad or Odyssey, unless he did not
consider himself to be a "great master" worthy of the deed.
Lawton’s lines read themselves nicely. They are still
heavily dactylic, as English hexameters tend to be, but he
'makes good use of Spondees often enough to give some variety
and control to his lines, closer in this respect to Hawtrey
than to Lockhart. At Hector’s prayer for his son, though,
we find mostly dactyls:
"Zeus, and ye other immortals, I pray you that even as
I am
So this boy may become preeminent over the Trojans,
Mighty and fearless as I, and in Ilios rule by his
prowess!
May it hereafter be said, ‘He is better by far than his
father!’
When he returns from the fray with the blood-stained
armor of heroes,
When he has smitten the foe, and gladdened the heart of
his mother."
In this passage several of the lines are completely
dactylic. One of those is the fourth, which is absolutely
the best English version of a very important line in Homer--
full of emotion, spirit, and irony, a climactic point in an
important scene. Being completely dactylic, the line rolls
along unimpeded, bearing Hector’s voice and hopes aloft
nobly. The next line is almost identical to Hawtrey’s

through the first four feet, changing only "fight” to "fray"

and adding "and," but the solid Spondee "blood-stained"

183
works just as well here. The last line is less inventive
than Hawtrey’s, and more literal.

In the second line of this next passage, Lawton again
uses some of Hawtrey’s diction, but handles the line much
differently:

. . . The faithful wife had homeward departed,

Turning ever about, and fast were her tears down
dropping.

Presently now to her palace she came, that so fairly
was builded,

Home of Hector, destroyer of heroes: many a servant

Found she within, and among them all she aroused
lamentation.

They in his home over Hector lamented, while yet he was
living,

Since they believed he would come no more from the
battle returning,

Nor would escape from the hands and might of the
valiant Achaians.

Lawton makes "turning" a Spondee, instead of Hawtrey’s
dactyl (together with "again"). The difference is not a
matter of whim, though, because Lawton’s second word "ever"
is accented on the first syllable. Of course this requires
the start of a new foot, but it also lengthens perceptibly
the ing of "turning," as it takes the voice just a bit
longer to get from ing to accented, syllabically long a,
than from ing to (schwa). In Lawton’s hexameters, as in
Lockhart’s and Hawtrey’s, two-syllable feet are something
more than mere trochees.

This same line shows us a phenomenon that has not

appeared in any demonstration passage thus far--a fifth-foot

184
Spondee. While Lawton uses Hawtrey’s "fast" in the fourth
foot,26 the spondaic rhythm of the last two feet shows that
tears never move that way.

Lawton’s solution for 66 »616160»16; avoids the confusion
of Hawtrey’s, but instead it is awkward—-"so fairly was
builded." Other small problems arise in this passage: in
the sixth line, the pronoun comes before its "antecedent”;
and in the seventh, redundant expressions overlap--"come
from the battle" and "from the battle returning." Both
lines, as a result, are interesting but not homeric,
violating Arnold’s dictum of plainness of diction and
syntax. The last line, though, captures perfectly both the
letter and placement of the original line.

In a quieter scene, where emotions lie under the surface,
the movement is slowed a bit, with every line having at
least one Spondee in the first four feet:

She was weaving a web, in the inmost room of her
palace,

Twofold, purple, and many a flower she broidered upon
it.

Unto the serving-maids in her hall she had given
commandment

Over the fire to set a mighty tripod, that Hector

Might have water, to bathe, when homeward he came from
the battle.

Hapless one! for she knew not that he, far, far from
the bathing,

Under Achilles’ hands by keen-eyed Pallas was

vanquished.

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26The word has no direct correlate in the original. The
closest is 061606», which Murray renders as "big," although
that is not literal.

185

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x6001» 'Ax11100; 660606 71600601; 'A00»0.

(22.440-46)

(but she was weaving a web in the innermost part of the

lofty house, a purple web of double fold, and therein was

broidering flowers of varied hue. And she called to her

fair-tressed handmaids through the house to set a great

tripod on the fire, to the end that there should be a hot

bath for Hector whenso he returned from out the battle--

unwitting one, neither wist she anywise that far from‘all

baths flashing-eyed Athene had laid him low by the hand

of Achilles.) (literal prose of Murray)
The translation is close throughout this scene, and Lawton
carefully modulates the flow of the lines and uses simple
but dignified language. At the sixth line, where unhappy
reality invades the quiet scene, Lawton’s rhythm is
uncharacteristically ambiguous. The line has eleven
monosyllables in a row, flanked at each end by a disyllable.
Several of the monosyllables are important enough to the
sense of the passage to carry emphases, so the author’s
intention (regarding rhythm) is not clear. The reader can
turn it into a strong line with any of several choices, but
the line hardly reads itself.

Where Lockhart sometimes stretches the boundaries of
English usage in order to meet the needs of the hexameter,
and Hawtrey can be seen to stretch the limits of English
syntax, Lawton’s hexameters, while not without minor faults,

have no particular vice. His lines are as homeric as any,

both in meter and spirit.

186
WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH & WALTER MILLER, Ina_lliag_9fi_flgmgz
(1944)

The most recently published hexameter translation of the
Iliad is Smith & Miller’s, now nearly fifty years old. It
was translated both line-for-line and very close to the
letter of the original. As a translation "in dactylic
hexameters" it was also intended, of course, to be very
close to the original in form. As mentioned above, some
reviewers saw the work as impressive but ultimately
disappointing.

Many others, however, were more wholly enthusiastic. "I
am inclined to believe that this is the best translation of
the liiag to date," says C. A. Robinson. "It seems to me
that Smith & Miller have caught the meaning and spirit of
Homer, the vigor and noble majesty and simplicity of his
language." According to E. P. Richardson, "It recaptures
the feeling . . . and has something of the primitive
wildness that lingers in the ‘Iliad’" (178). An anonymous
reviewer (New Yorker) praises the meter itself, as the work
shows "real feeling for and skill with the hexameter line"
(88). The sources of its praise span from the middle—brow
(Tina): "The newest translation of the Liiag stands among
the best ever made" ("First Great War Book")--to the
highbrow (Yale Review): "This Smith-Miller version deserves
to be ranked far above Pope’s; it comes about as near Homer

as could be hoped" (Keller 365).

187
In the invocation, the first two lines are about as good
as they could be, the third is fascinating but lacking in
nobility, and the fourth begins and ends in absurdity:

Sing, O Goddess, the wrath of Achilles, scion of

Peleus,

Ruinous wrath, that afflicted with numberless woes the
Achaeans,

Hurling headlong to Hades souls many and brave ones--of
heroes

Slain--ay, gave unto dogs, unto all birds lonelily
(sic) flying
Them as a prey;
This version doesn’t begin with the key word to the story as
does the original, but it does begin with the next best

choice ("Sing"); it has wrath, a strong choice for 00»1»,

 

and generally mirrors the original first line admirably.
The second line is even better perhaps--again mirroring the
original second line. "Ruinous wrath" builds on the first
"wrath" in the same way that 061006»0» builds on 00»1», and
the rest finishes the sense accurately. In the third line
the breathful alliteration and the downbeat rhythm capture
the sense of falling--falling hard and fast--with a sense of
violence. At the same time, however, triple alliteration,
especially of the n sound, rides on the edge of comedy--and
unintended comedy at this early point could be enough to
ruin the work for good--no matter what level of nobility is
maintained thereafter. In the second half of the line, the
pleonasmus of "souls many and brave ones" is unhomeric and
ill-timed, as Homer generally and the moment specifically

call for directness and simplicity. In the fourth line two

syllables--"ay" and the middle syllable of "lonelily"--are

188
so clearly out of place, so clearly thrown in for the sake
of meter, that the edifice of fiction--the place we hope to
enter with disbelief willingly suspended, the building
constructed so new and marvelous in the first two lines--has
exploded and is now drifting down in flimsy floating pieces.
It must now be rebuilt under more difficult circumstances,
as it will be re-entered less willingly.

An interesting difference between the version of Smith &
Miller and those previously examined becomes apparent in
this next passage:

Soon as they entered the haven, with shores deep-

dented, the rowers
Furled the sail and laid it down in the hull of the

darksome

Ship; then lowered the mast with the forestays into the
masthold

Speedily; lastly with oars rowed onward the galley to
moorage.

Forth then casting the anchors, they fixed down firmly
the cables;
Forth then issued themselves, on the strand of the sea

disembarking;

Forth then drave th’ hecatomb for the god, far-darting
Apollo;

Forth then out from the sea-borne ship came lastly
Chryseis.

The hexameters of Lockhart, Hawtrey and Lawton are all
regularly end-stopped. Three runovers in a row, as in the
first four lines of this passage, is a phenomenon not seen
in the others. Also not seen previously, in any form, is
the closely followed anaphora of the last four lines. Here
the rhetorical device works nicely to create the effect of a
procession out of the ship.

The next passage is quite typical of this translation:

189

Soon as the dawn appeared, rosy-fingered daughter of
morning,

All for the high seas launched and the wide war-camp of
the Argives

Under a favoring breeze far-working Apollo had sent
them.

Quickly they hoisted the mast and unfurled to the wind
the white canvas;

Mid on the sail wide-swelling the wind blew; foaming, a

billow

Loudly plashed all along the keel; and the ship of
Odysseus

Scudded along on the surge; and her sea-course soon was
accomplished.

Two lines do not read themselves easily-~the first and the
sixth. As with Martling’s version (examined in the
Comparison section), here "rosy" must remain unaccented,
even though there is a strong tendency to accent it—-and so
the line holds a potential stumbling block. In the sixth,
"all" likewise is unaccented according to the meter, even
though syllable length and sense work together to make it
seem to demand an accent as one is reading. This sort of
line can be found throughout Smith & Miller.

The passage is also typical in its ordinariness. There
are no grave errors of image or diction, but there are no
memorable lines or images, either. The first line, in its
parts, can be found in any number of translations, and are
here pieced together to form a hexameter line. This is
indeed a work of competence but not poetry.

In Hector’s prayer for his son, we see all the sense of
Homer’s original, but the spirit is lost somewhere along the
way:

"Vouchsafe, Zeus and ye other immortals, that even
as I am,

190

This, my son, may prove in the eyes of the Trojans
outstanding,

Even as valiant in might, o’er Ilium mightily reigning.

Then may someone say ‘Far better this man than his

father,’

As he returneth from war; may he bring home trophies
encrimsoned,

Harness of enemy slain, and gladden the heart of his
mother."

The virtues of this translation are its literal closeness to
the words of the original, and its line-by-line
correspondence to the original. The structure of the lines
is half a virtue, as they approximate the original hexameter
to a moderate degree. The percentage of Spondees is higher
than in many English hexameters, but lower than in Homer.
The Spondees themselves, however, are usually mere trochees
in length and weight, and so their effect is far less
homeric.

These characteristics carried along for the entire
twenty-four books of the Iliad, without genuine poetry or
fire or strength to go with them, become a great burden. No
line of any form is homeric without some part of Homer’s
spirit.

The hexameter translations by Lockhart, Hawtrey, and
Lawton are good, but they are after all only partial
versions. The complete translation by Smith & Miller is
disappointing enough to leave open the field for a new
version in accentual hexameters, should anyone be willing to
try. But there is another way to write hexameters, and it

may show promise as well.

191
A Closer Look--Two Partial Versions in Quantitative

Hexameters

ROBERT BRIDGES, "Priam and Achilles" 24.339-660 in Inan;
Qhagnni; an Expenimen; in tna glasaigal Hexameter (1916)

The wording of Bridges’ sub-title is significant, because
this is not just another accentual English hexameter. It is
instead the first published rendering of the Iliad in
quantitative hexameters.27 The rules Bridges used to
determine quantity were of course based on classical rules,
but were actually formulated in their specifics by William
Johnstone Stone, and were published in 1899 as "On the Use
of Classical Metres in English."28

A.E. Housman reviewed Stone’s work, and had this to say
about the attempt to put quantity first and to subordinate

stress:

 

27Except possibly for Cayley’s 1877 Iliad "homometrically
translated." Bridges, however, claims it is more accentual
than quantitative.

28A summary of those rules is appended to Ibant Obscuri.
Bridges stated there that "Stone died in 1901, leaving me
bound by a promise that I would give his system a trial"
(154). Hence, Bridges’ translations in Ibant Qnsgnni. One
wonders whether the work was undertaken reluctantly or
enthusiastically, given his use of the word "bound." It seems
significant that Bridges does not take pains to defend the
merits of the quantitative hexameter in English (and in fact
criticizes the accentual hexameter) or to advocate its use by
others. He does state the following: "All methodical
experiments are of value, and . . . a competent experiment is
of value even though it may not please" (142). My previous
question is answered, perhaps, when we realize that this is
one of many metrical experiments undertaken by Bridges over
the years.

192
Mr. Stone proposes that we should put the weak to the
work of the strong, and subject the strong to the
predominance of the weak. . . . If Mr. Stone will
accost the next eleven [cricket players] he sees in the
field, and advise them to run after the ball on their
hands and pick it up with their feet, he will hear some
very good criticism of his quantitative hexameters.
(488)
Bridges was apparently undaunted by Housman’s witty
assessment of Stone’s system, though, and produced a little
over 300 lines of quantitative hexameter from the last book
of the Iiiag. Bridges explains that he was trying not so
much to translate these great works as simply to use them as
appropriate vehicles for his experiments in quantitative
meter.

In a technical introduction Bridges explains the
relationship (as he sees it) between accent and quantity in
Virgil’s meter. He also examines some uncommon patterns of
accentuation found in Virgil, defending the unusual-seeming
patterns in the last two feet of some of his own lines.

One anonymous reviewer ("An Experiment in Quantity")
either did not read the introduction or at least was not
convinced, because he complains about lines that end in
monosyllables or in spondees accented on the second
syllable. But this reviewer sees no need for any more
hexameters anyway--neither quantitative nor accentual; one
senses that his negative assessment has little to do with
the particulars of Bridges’ work, and more to do with a

general dislike for hexameters. This attitude is not, of

course, unique.

193
Another anonymous reviewer ("Quantitative Hexameters in

English") is also fairly negative, but from a standpoint of
knowledge rather than from one of prejudice. He sees some
of Bridges’ background theory as wrong, and sees his rules
of prosody as "hopelessly wrong." Bridges says in a
footnote:

Now the inventors of the Greek system agreed to be

contented with two lengths, and made artificial rules

for all rhythmic composition, by which every syllable

was pronounced as either long (= 2) or short (= 1):

and this distinction had to be learned. . . . (2)
But the reviewer says otherwise. The system wasn’t
10220360:

When the heroic hexameter was taking shape, Greek

vocables were so spoken by ordinary people as to

produce often a dactylic movement. Sentences were

readily so composed as to be spoken, without artifice

and without distortion, in the hexameter rhythm.

(148)29
In the reviewer’s final assessment, he grudgingly allows
that a knowledgeable reader might find "some--not all--of
the ‘quantitative’ hexameters agreeable" (148).

Another reviewer ("Hexameters in English") refers to

quantity as "an artifice even with the Greeks," agreeing

with--or possibly relying on--Bridges. He is more positive

 

29This rhythm in the everyday language of Athens slowly
evolved into an iambic trimeter by the fifth century,
according to the anonymous reviewer, who cautions that accent
(pitch-accent) had nothing to do with these rhythms. He also
says that "the Latin nitgn-accent (italics mine) was
accompanied by a slight stress, not so strong but that it
could be subordinated to quantity. . ." (148). This is the
only mention I have encountered of a Latin pitch-accent.
Unfortunately, the reviewer is not identified, nor is any of
this interesting but questionable information documented.

194
than the others; future translators may improve on Bridges’
meter, he says, but Bridges’ ganga will be hard to surpass.

A reviewer in Tne Qiassicai Review, identified
cryptically as "Oxoniensis," censures Bridges harshly,
claiming that his hexameters do not "keep to their classical
rules" (82). But his entire case is built on a confusion
between syllable length and accent, or possibly a mistaken
notion that they must agree at all points (that is, long
syllables accented, short syllables not). This kind of
confusion becomes a problem in many discussions of hexameter
verse, but rarely to this degree. Oxoniensis’ confusion is
laid bare by two separate replies in the next issue
(Sargeaunt and Brodribb), and the latter, in fact, attacks
all accentual hexameters, claiming it is "they [that] do not
‘keep to the (sic) classical rules’" (125).

Two names more famous than most also entered the
discussion of Bridges’ work. Robert Frost made no public
comment, but discusses Bridges’ ideas about syllable length
in a 1914 letter to Sidney Cox, after having met Bridges "by
an accident." Frost dislikes the notion that "syllables in
English have fixed quantity." Instead, accent, which is
governed by sense, takes precedent, pushing and pulling at
syllable length according to the moment:

I will find you the word "come" variously used in
various passages as a whole, half, third, fourth,
fifth, and sixth note. It is as long as the sense
makes it. When men no longer know the intonation on
which we string our words they will fall back on what I

may call the absolute length of our syllables which is
the length we would give them in passages that meant

195
nothing. . . . English poetry would then be read as
Latin poetry is now read and as of course Latin poetry
was never read by Romans. Bridges would like it read
so now for the sake of scientific exactness. Because
our poetry must sometime be as dead as our language
must, Bridges would like it treated as if it were dead
already. (61-62)

W. H. D. Rouse, who later published his own prose Iliad
(discussed in the previous chapter), reviewed Lban; Qbscnni
for Ine Ciassigal Reviaw in 1917. In it, he decries the
practice of reading ancient hexameters in 3/4 time ("as a
valse"), as "this habit spoils the rhythm of the hexameter
altogether, because it makes it monotonous" (144). He also
disfavors modern hexameters that have a similar beat. Of
Bridges’ work, he concludes:

[T]he hexameter experiment is worthy of serious
consideration; and those who cannot see what he is
driving at, as some have already said, might well
ponder whether the fault lies in themselves and not in
the verses. (146)

One of the puzzles of Bridges’ verses is just exactly how
they should be read in order to be best appreciated. I have
argued that most English accentual hexameters should be read
casually, without direct attention to the meter, because the
accentual pattern is so regular as to make itself felt even
without direct attention. One could argue that Bridges’
verses should be read in the same way, so as to let the
accents and carefully arranged syllable lengths interact
naturally. On the other hand, one might argue that our
English-tuned ears will not pick up any sense of rhythm that

way, that the differences in syllable lengths will be too

vague, and we will be left with nothing more than prose. We

196

will not even have the old reliable, regularly accented,
"strawberry jampot" ending of each line, given Bridges’
inclination toward unusual patterns of accent. So, it might
be argued, we should attend to and even exaggerate the long
and short syllables, to make audible the quantitative
rhythm.30 But this sort of reading will stretch and pull
the English language in ways to which it is not accustomed,
and might sound terribly strange (even absurd) to the
passerby uninitiated in the mysteries of quantitative meter.

Or a third possibility is to read with strict mental
attention to syllable length but without audible
exaggeration, so as to pick up a purely intellectual sense
of the rhythm; but with such effort and concentration
directed at accent and length, one is likely to miss the
poetry altogether. The only solution is really no solution:
read it over and over again, trying each of the above in
turn, and any other way one can imagine.

Bridges’ poetry is very good, and worth the rereading.
One line that is successful in Lockhart is perhaps even
better in Bridges:

661»6; 6»600¢6»00;, 61 01 00166; 016»0» 016;.
(24.479)

"Terrible, murderous hands, by which son upon son had
been slaughter’d" (Lockhart).

 

30Stone’s rules for syllable length and Bridges’ comments
can be found in the corresponding publication of either Stone
or Bridges, but anyone with.a basic knowledge of the classical
hexameter and rules for length can figure out the longs and
shorts of Bridges’ lines.

197

"These dread murderous hands which his sons so many had
slain" (Bridges).

The same line in the version by Smith & Miller, for
comparison, "reads itself" easily, but has none of the
poetry:

"Terrible, man-slaying hands that had slain of his
children so many.”

Bridges himself calls his work a paraphrase. While it is
actually close enough to the original to be called a
translation, it is not always strictly literal. For

example, here Bridges allows himself a small addition:

". . . nor doth his flesh rot nor the corrupt worms
Touch him, that fatten on mankind nor spare the
illustrious."

"0666 11 01 x06; 0006161, 0666 01» 66161
600000', 61 06 16 ¢616; 6001¢6100; 0616600010."
(24.414b-15)

("yet his flesh decayeth not at all, neither do worms
consume it, such as devour men that be slain in fight.")
(literal prose of Murray)
The last half-line has no correlation in the original. It
is an embellishment that Arnold might not have approved of,
making the idea less simple, but-~additions of this sort
being the exception rather than the rule with Bridges--it

works well. In another line we find a curiosity:

And each brooded apart; Priam o’er victorious Hector
Groan’d . . .

16 66 0»00606»w, 6 06» 'E01000; 6»600¢6»010
0161'
(24.509-10a)

(So the twain bethought them of their dead, and wept; the

one for' man-slaying' Hector ‘wept) (literal prose of
Murray)

198
The epithet for Hector used by Homer is 6»600¢6»010, which
is terribly ironic in that Hector lies dead at this point--
but the irony for Homer was unintentional; he simply
inserted an epithet for Hector that was appropriate to its
metrical place in the line. Bridges uses "murderous"
elsewhere (as mentioned above), but that does not fit
metrically. But "Priam o’er yigngzigna Hector / Groan’d"?
The irony is marvelous, but must also be intentional, and
seems not quite homeric. Having already allowed an
exception for a rare added idea, should we also allow an
exception for a rare bit of irony? Perhaps, but the former
case is one the reader appreciates while moving on at the
same time; in the latter case the reader is stopped short--
scratching his head, if only for a moment--and that,
according to Matthew Arnold, is even less homeric.
In the following passage Bridges’ high-flown diction lets
the intensity of the moment slip away:
"Unhappy man! what mighty sorrows must thy spirit
endure!
Nay, how durst thou come thus alone to the ships of
Achaia,
Into the sight of him who thy sons so many and good
Spoil’d and sent to the grave? Verilie thy heart is of
iron."
From the first phrase, "unhappy man" for 6 66116;, Bridges’
version lacks the directness of the original. Where Homer
has 00116 0606 ("many evils"), Bridges has "mighty sorrows,"
a phrase too elevated to have genuine emotional impact here.

The use of terms such as "nay," "durst" for 6110; (from

110»61, of which "dare" is one possible meaning, but not the

199
strongest), and "verilie," and the phrase "spoil’d and sent
to the grave" for éfevéptsa (Bridges’ phrase has the literal
meaning but not the violent spirit) fails to evoke the same
strength of emotion that the original does.
Bridges’ diction seems better suited to a less emotional,
more dryly philosophical passage, as Achilles continues:

"Two jars, say-they, await God’s hand at th’ entry of
his court,

Stor’d ready with free gifts, of good things one, one
of evil.

If mingling from both heav’n’s thunderer equaly
dispense,

Then will a man’s fortune be chequer’d with both sorrow
and joy;

But to’ whom Zeus giveth only of evil that man is
outcast,

Hunger houndeth him on disconsolate over the brave
earth,

Unrespected alike whether of mortals or immortals."

"60Loi &p 16 flifioc xaraxeiafat év Atbc Ob6€t
6épwv oaa 656w0L, xaxéu, Erepoq 6E éhwv'

b uév x' duueiéaq Séu Zebc prflLKépavvoc,

d11ore uéu 16 xaxQ 6 76 xéperac, d11ore 6' €001Q'
& 6E x6 rbv 1v7p&v 660, 1anrbv EOnxe,

Kai é xaxfi fiofifipwarcc énl xfléva 62a» é1a6vec,
¢o¢r§ 6' 0516 06020; fertpévoc 0516 BporoiO¢v."
(24.527-33)

("For two urns are set upon the floor of Zeus of gifts
that he giveth, the one of ills, the other of blessings.
To whomsoever Zeus, that hurleth the thunderbolt, giveth
a mingled lot, that man meeteth now with evil, now with
good; but to whomsoever he giveth but of the baneful, him
he maketh to be reviled of man, and direful madness
driveth him over the face of the sacred earth, and he
wandreth honoured neither of gods nor mortals.") (literal
prose of Murray)

Here, although the passage occurs only a few lines after the
one detailed above, the tone in the original has changed
dramatically, and so Bridges’ version, which has not changed

in tone, is now more appropriate.

200

Throughout the three hundred lines or so of "Priam and
Achilles," Bridges compresses and stretches his words to fit
the necessities of syllable length in this strict classical
meter. Elision is frequent: "th’ entry" (line 527), "th’
old" (527), "th’ high" (547), "1' the" (558), and "alsoabf"
(563), to mention just a few; there is also contraction:
"o’erstrain’d" (568), "heav’n’s" (529), "dow’r’d" (534),
”an’ ev’n" (538), and "evn" (540). Occasionally the
contraction is one of spelling only, not affecting the
sound--presumab1y to make short syllables lggk short:

"tho’" (537), and."cfl" (566). Lengthenings are less common,
but still noticeable: "bathed" and "healed" (420),
"senteries" (566), and "anigh" (624). Other orthographic
curiosities abound, including one in the first line--"sed-
he"--and one in the second--"shoon" (shoes). Often the
extra markings are signals to the reader not so much to
change syllable length as to clarify it: "m9" (354), "be"
(494), and "thou" (592).

What is the effect of these emendations? Most likely,
some readers are put off by them, claiming that Bridges is
torturing the language for his own misguided ends. In the
late twentieth century, when so much verse is written freely
and without need for such pushing and pulling of words, we
are unused to seeing it. But the strict metrics of the
Greek hexameter required that even Homer stretch and shorten
his syllables on occasion--so that all the "rules" for

syllable length (which were derived, after all, inductively)

201
are fraught with exceptions and refinements. In this way,
Bridges’ lines seem quite homeric. Matthew Arnold has
decreed that the words of a translation should not draw
attention to themselves and away from the image. At first,
many of these orthographic irregularities of Bridges might
do just that, but as they become more familiar to the reader
they fade into the background.

If Bridges’ lines are homeric in this way, are they
homeric in other ways? Certainly a meter based on syllable
length becomes immediately more homeric in that one respect,
bridging a gap that always exists for accentual hexameters,
no matter how good they be. Furthermore, Bridges’ use of
the caesura is roughly equivalent to Homer’s in that he
always has a caesura in the third or fourth foot. The pause
in sense is sometimes faint or nonexistent, and so some of
Bridges’ lines do not divide into halves as neatly as they
might, but the same can be said for some lines of Homer.
(Overregularity in the caesura is to be avoided, just as
with any other feature.) Bridges’ use of spondees” in the
first four feet is more frequent than Homer’s--four spondaic
feet (for Bridges) is rare, but three is common, and at
least two is almost a rule. The numbers are high, then
(where they are low for accentual hexameters), but the

effect is still much the same as in Homer.

 

31Referring here to syllable length, spondee needs no
capital letter.

202
The biggest problem, then, as Rouse suggests, is not with
the lines themselves, but with readers’ acceptance of them.
And the greatest obstacle to acceptance, I suggest, is not
with the reader’s competency, but with the reader’s own
anxiety over being able to identify syllable length. This
problem can, perhaps, be overcome, as will be explained in

the final chapter of this dissertation.

GEORGE ERNLE, The Wrath of Achilles 1.1-536, 9.1-713, 16.1-
277, 18.1-242, and 19.1—424 (1922)

Not long after Bridges’ work appeared, George Ernle
published a quantitative hexameter version of his own (five
sizable excerpts from the lligg, approximately 2000 lines
total). In a prefatory defense of quantitative hexameters,
however, he never mentions Bridges or Stone. He expresses a
dissatisfaction (even stronger, apparently, than Bridges’)
with the accentual hexameter, which he characterizes as
"clumsy, monotonous, and unworthy of its classical
prototype" (5).

Ernle decided on quantitative hexameters for reasons much
different from those of Bridges, who wanted only to
experiment with quantitative meter and chose the great epics
as his medium. Ernle, on the other hand, wanted to
translate the Iliad and decided on hexameters as the best
way "to reproduce the spirit of the original" (6).
Furthermore, Ernle explains in his preface, while he chose

the hexameter because of its resemblance to Homer’s work, he

203
chose the quantitative variety not because of its classical
origins, but because of its possibility for interplay
between natural and scanned rhythms, similar to the way good
blank verse works (and very dissimilar to the way most
accentual hexameters work). Where blank verse plays the
natural pattern of stresses against the strict iambic meter,
moving into and out of agreement, quantitative hexameters
play the natural pattern of stresses against the metrical
pattern of long and short syllables.32 From these ideas, we
can assume that Ernle would prefer that his lines be read
with their natural stresses, letting the sound of the long
and short syllables work its effect without undue attention
or exaggeration.

I found only one review ("Music of Homer") of Ernle’s
work, and it is almost wholly positive: "We never find Mr.
Ernle’s [translation] unworthy. He often comes as near to
the actual sound and rhythm of Homer as we have yet attained
in English." Little, however, is less positive--"This is
not great poetry" (225)--but she does allow that Ernle "has
achieved a . . . measure of success with a difficult metre"
and that "his work will be a useful guide for a better poet
to come."

The movement of Ernle’s lines is much the same as

Bridges’. The greatest difference is that Ernle’s lines

 

32Ernle’s rules for syllable length, explained in the
preface, are reasonably close to Bridges’, but not identical.

204
"read themselves" more easily, in the sense that accent
corresponds to syllable length more often:
Sing me that Anger, Goddess, which blinding royal
Achilleus
Balefully, brought sufferings untold to the army of
Argos,
Sent many souls of mighty Achaeans into the darkness
And flung abroad the bodies to the wild dogs and to the
vultures
And to the fowls of Heaven, till Zeus had duly
accomplished
All he decreed. Sing of it from where Agamemnon
Atrides
And the gallant Achileus first fought and parted
asunder.
In the invocation a clever pattern appears in three of the
seven lines (1, 3, & 5), with alternating dactyls and
spondees through all six feet, creating in effect a five-
syllable dipody three times over. But in general, Ernle
varies the pattern of the first four feet enough to remain
interesting, having almost exactly the same number of
spondees as Homer.

The other difference Ernle shows from Bridges is that he
maintains a consistent "strawberry jampot" ending in the
last two feet. This phenomenon can be comforting while
tackling an otherwise unfamiliar meter; if one stumbles
through the first four feet, the ending at least is clear.
On the other hand, the unvarying repetition of that pattern
eventually becomes annoying.

Regarding the diction and style of Ernle’s verse, Little
may have been right ("This is not great poetry"). The

phrase "blinding royal Achilleus / Balefully, bright" is

awkward; the meaning tries to go awry more than once, only

205

to be wrenched back into line again. "Fowls of Heaven" does
not suggest carrion-birds, as it should; and at the end of
the passage, "parted asunder" weakens the climactic moment
with its redundancy.

The poetry is better in this next passage, where the
needs of the original are less demanding, requiring less
nobility, which Ernle often seems short on:

His galley there sail’d into the deep-bay’d sheltering

haven:

Whereupon his mariners struck sail and stow’d it
amidships,

Lower’d their mast down by forestays on to the mast-
crutch

Easily, and running out their oars back’d water to
beach her.

They cast their stones forth, they made both hawsers
abaft her

Fast to the beach, sprang ashore themselves on watery
shingles,

Hoisted ashore the cattle they brought for Phoebos
Apollon,

And stepping off the galley Chryseis landed amongst
them.

Even here, though, some points are simply too ignoble, in
sound more than image--e.g., "back’d water to beach her,"
and "hawsers abaft her." Furthermore, "hoisted ashore the
cattle" destroys the image of a procession that we get from
Homer, and "Chryseis landed amongst them" sounds as though
she jumps out with a whoop and a holler. Whereas Bridges’
style is too high at some points, Ernle’s is too low at
others.

This passage is better than the previous two:

"I never wish to cherish such proud and moody

resentment,
Magnificent but deadly! What unborn nation await you,

206

Champion, if you cannot keep back shame from the
Achaeans!

Ah, savage heart! Peleus was not your father,
Achilleus,

Your mother lady Thetis: but grey sea water begat you

On the rugged sea-cliffs. Your soul is cruel as
either."

"pfi éué 7' 00v 0016; 76 1680: x610;, by ab ¢v1éaoeac,
aivapérn' 1i aeu d11oc bvfiaeraa bwiyovéc nap,

a1 K6 ufi VApyeIOLacv becxéa 10:76» cuévuc;

vn1eéc, obx dpa 006 76 narfip h» lunéralfln166c,

006% eértc ufirnp' 71avxfi 6t 06 15x16 0&1aaaa

nérpaz r' fi1iBaroc, 61! TO! véoc éoriv dnnvfic."
(16.30-35)

("Never upon me let such wrath lay hold, as that thou
dost cherish, O thou whose valour is but a bane! Wherein
shall any other even yet to be born have profit of thee,
if thou ward not off shameful ruin from the Argives?
Pitiless one, thy father, meseems, was not the knight
Peleus, nor was Thetis thy mother, but the grey sea bare

thee, and the beetling cliffs, for that thy heart is
unbending.") (literal prose of Murray)

The first line reads easily, and its diction is authentic
and strong. The second line must be read slowly for any
success with "magnificent but deadly," which unfortunately
lacks the sense of divapérn. In the fourth, "ah, savage
heart!" is great for vn1eéc, keeping all the force of the
original epithet. The last line and a half are as good as
any version of that spot--concise yet clear.

Ernle’s translation does show signs of genuine poetry at
some points, although that is still its weakest feature.
The lines themselves are homeric and interesting, although
the strawberry jampot ending can become bothersome without
any variation. Ernle’s line endings would benefit from an
occasional spondee in the fifth foot, and an occasional

difference of accent from syllable length in either foot.

207

The accentual hexameter in English has proved itself a
worthy medium for translating Homer, and the field is still
open for a newer and better one. But the movement in the
twentieth century in original poetry and in verse
translation is away from regular meters, as will be
illustrated in the next chapter. The likelihood, then, of
critical and popular acceptance of a work in accentual
hexameters is slimmer than ever, no matter how good it may
be according to the views and criteria expressed here.

The quantitative hexameter in English has a regular
rhythm of its own, but that rhythm is disguised. If well-
constructed lines can be combined with words and images
suitable to both the spirit of Homer and the tastes of the
late twentieth century, this meter could prove to be the

best possible medium.

*Chapter Six*
Almost Prose and Mostly Prose:

Translations in the Late Twentieth Century

The twentieth century has seen many translations of the
Iliad, in several different forms. Some have been discussed
in earlier chapters, namely the prose works of Rouse, Rieu,
and Hammond, and the hexameter works of Bridges, Ernle, and
Smith & Miller.

The versions by Rouse and Rieu display a tendency toward
colloquial diction, in an effort to make the Iliad more
accessible--an easier and supposedly more enjoyable read.
Hammond has backpedaled a bit and written a work stronger
than theirs, but Robert Graves, discussed in this chapter,
takes colloquialism in a new direction.

The quantitative hexameters of Bridges are an experiment,
while Ernle’s are an attempt to find the perfect medium for
translating Homer; but the idea has not caught fire.

Smith & Miller have written what might seem to be the
consummate accentual hexameter version, managing to make it
both literal and line-by-line, but the result is
disappointing. There is nothing more to be done in that
direction, unless by a better poet. Two more works have
been written--by Richmond Lattimore and by Robert Fagles--
that are sometimes identified as "hexameter," but they step
to a beat far different from that of Smith & Miller and

their predecessors. Lattimore claims to have a "free six-

208

209
beat line" (55), but to read the work "with its natural
stress, not forced into any system" (55) more often yields
four or five beats. The lines are controlled more by
Lattimore’s literalness than by any sort of meter. The
result, delivered in "the plain English of today,” is
indistinguishable from prose except in the last two feet,
where he often has a "strawberry jampot" ending. Fagles is
no more metrical than Lattimore, but he uses a poetic
diction that distinguishes his work from plain prose.

Blank verse translations in the early part of this
century1 had started to loosen up their rhythms, reflecting
the trends of their age, but another translation in blank
verse, by Robert Fitzgerald, has proved that a much looser
blank verse is capable of the most purely poetic translation
since Pope.

Free, imagistic verse, the great innovation of the
twentieth century, has become the vehicle of one of the most
powerful versions of the Iliad ever written, by Christopher
Logue.

There are no notable rhyming versions from the twentieth
century, but we will see that the spirit of some of those
early rhyming versions still exists, now to be found in
other forms.

Several different movements are contained in these many

versions, toward colloquialism with some of the prose,

 

lE.g., Marris, Hewlett--covered briefly in the Appendix.

210
toward dull exactness with Lattimore, toward playful
innovation with Graves. The works of verse, however, all
share one characteristic, reflecting the poetry of its time:
a tendency toward less regular rhythms as the verse becomes
more like prose. The better specimens still retain
something of poetic diction, but the cadences are faint or
nonexistent.

Six works are covered in this chapter, all from the
second half of the twentieth century. First to be discussed
are three partial versions, in ascending order of length: a
fourteen-line blank verse piece by Robert Lowell; an excerpt
of one hundred lines or so by Ian Fletcher, in free verse;
and the free verse works of Christopher Logue, spanning
several books. Three complete versions are also discussed:
prose and verse by Robert Graves; blank verse by Robert

Fitzgerald; and a variable-line version by Robert Fagles.

What kind of criteria are needed for these new
translations? Each work, it seems, needs its own criteria.
Lowell’s blank verse poem does not have much in common with
the complete translation by Fitzgerald. The free verse
narrative by Fletcher bears little or no resemblance to the
imagistic works of Logue. Fagles’ lines show some
resemblance to those of Lattimore, but the latter is not
discussed here. Graves’ work is more different in concept
and attitude than in form--how does that affect the

criteria?

211

Regarding Lowell’s "Achilles to the dying Lykaon," we can
dispense with any requirements of accuracy, because he is
not claiming to translate; Lowell is only using Homer as
material for his poem. In that regard, the criteria for
quality must have primarily to do with its success as a
short blank verse poem, and only secondarily regarding what
it can manage to show us about the Iliad. Fortunately, it
succeeds at both levels.

Fletcher, as we will see, is clearly working for humor.
There is some precedent for finding humor in Homer—-at least
as early as an 1892 lecture by Samuel Butlefifi and more
recently with the translation by Robert Graves. Presumably
other scholars and readers have found the Iliad to be funny
at some points, but there is a great tendency to hold Homer
in a reverential awe that precludes any reaction so vulgar
as laughter. How should Fletcher be judged? His work must
still be readable, regarding sound and rhythm; it must be
witty and bawdy, because these qualities are implied in the
title, The Milesian Intrusion: a Restoration comedy version
of Iliad xiv. It must show something of Homer, because that
too is in the title. It need not be a close translation,
though, as long as it keeps most of the sense. It need not
be noble, or rapid, or necessarily even plain and direct
(although it might be any of those things), because Fletcher

is offering humor and wit in their place. It need not carry

 

2See "How to Vulgarize Homer."

212
great power or emotion, because they are not important to
the story. We would hope that it carries some of the spirit
of the Iliad, and we will see that it does indeed.

Logue must show us something of Homer, even if in a new
way, and it must make good on its promise of "a sequence of
sharp, disjunct poetic images" (Foreword to Eatzgglgia 6).
The literal word and even the general sense of any specific
passage are not required here, although again we hope that
something of the spirit remains. The power and emotion of
the original--those Logue must provide above all.

Graves’ Anger of Achilles must give us the story of the
Iliad in a clear and entertaining manner, because those
claims are implied in his introduction (33-34). He can
leave behind the literal word wherever he chooses, but he
must stick to the general sense of the original, and he must
maintain the spirit, because these, too, are implied in his
approach.

Regarding Fitzgerald’s Iliad, most of the usual criteria
apply--especially those for blank verse--because he has no
special angle that would allow him to leave them behind.

His first responsibility, then, is to make good blank verse
poetry--not with the regular beat of old, perhaps, but still
something identifiable as blank verse.

And Fagles, what criteria for his Iliad, wrought with
lines that now have six beats, now five, now seven? We
ought to be able to get some sense of rhythm in the line,

because it is not presented as prose. We ought to feel that

213
the line and its rhythm is somewhat homeric but also good
English poetry, because that, he says, is the reason for the
choice of his variable line. Fagles must also be judged by
Arnold’s and Wilson’s and most of the other criteria,
because he has written a work claiming to be a complete

translation of the Iliad.

A Closer Look: Three Partial Versions

ROBERT LOWELL, "Achilles to the dying Lykaon" 21.122-35 in
filfiEQEX (1973)

This sonnet-length poem is, in a way, a throwback to the
partial versions of Denham and Congreve, in that an
accomplished poet uses Homer as the material for a good poem
in its own right, in this case a short blank verse poem,
while also illuminating Homer for us. This poem is
characterized by a freer rhythm than that of traditional
blank verse, but it is still a rhythm that works effectively
to emphasize important words and ideas. At times Lowell’s
lines imitate Homer’s in that meaning is reflected in rhythm
and sound. Most importantly, Lowell’s poem has great
strength of emotion; a powerful passage from the original
becomes a powerful poem in English:

Float with the fish, they’ll clean your wounds, and
away $33: blood, and have no care of you;

nor will your mother wail beside your pyre
as you swirl down the Skamander to the sea,

214

but the dark shadows of the fish will shiver,

lunge and snap Lykaon’s silver fat.

Trojans, you will perish till I reach Troy--

you’ll run in front, I’ll scythe you down behind;

nor will your Skamander, though whirling and silver,
save you

though you kill sheep and bulls, and drown a thousand

one-hoofed horse, still living. You must die

and die and die and die and die--

till the blood of my Patroklos is avenged,

killed by the wooden ships while I was gone.

"'Evravaoi vb» xeiao uer' 1x06acv, 01 a’ orec1hv
aIp' éno1cxufiaov1ac dxnaéec' abaé ae ufirnp
év06uévn 1exé600¢ yofioerac, 0110 Exdpavaoc
0106: 6cvfi€¢¢ claw d1bc ebpta x61nov.

Opéaxwv TLC xarb xbua ué1atvau ¢pix' bna?£et
ix06c, 6; x6 ¢éyyaa Avxéovoc dpyéra dnuév.
¢06£p600’, 61; 6 xev darn xnxeiouev 'I1iov lpfiq,
bueic uév ¢eflyov16¢, éyb 6' EHLOEV xepa?{wv.
006' buiv norauéq Hep éfibpoog épyvpo6ivnc
épxéoec, & 6h 6n0& no1éa¢ lepefiere rafipovc,
{wobc 6’ év 6£vuOL xa0£ere uévvxac Innovc.

0110 Kai 0c b1é6006 xaxbv uépov, eiq 6 x6 nhurec
150616 Harp6x1oco ¢6vov Kai 10:760 'Axacau,

obc éni unvoi Oobaav éné¢vere v60¢cv éueio."
(21.122-35)

("Lie there now among the fishes that shall lick the
blood from thy wound, nor reck aught of thee, neither
shall thy mother lay thee on a bier and make lament; nay,
eddying Scamander shall bear thee into the broad gulf of
the sea. Many a fish as he leapeth amid the waves, shall
dart up beneath the black ripple to eat the white fat of
Lycaon. So perish ye, till we be come to the city of
sacred Ilios, ye in flight, and I making havoc in your
rear. Not even the fair-flowing river with his silver
eddies shall aught avail you, albeit to him, I ween, ye
have long time been wont to sacrifice bulls full many,
and to cast single-hooved horses while yet they lived,
into his eddies. Howbeit even so shall ye perish by an
evil fate, till ye have all paid the price for the
slaying of Patroclus and for the woe of the Achaeans,
whom by the swift ships ye slew while I tarried afar.")
(literal prose of Murray)

"Float with the fish" he starts, a marvelously succinct
rendering of 'Evravfloi vbv x6200 per' 1x060!» ("there now

lie with the fishes"). It is not literal, but Lowell does

215
not have to be, and the phrase captures well the vaunting
attitude of Achilles. The accented first syllable starts
the passage off homerically, although many of the subsequent
lines begin without an accent. That first foot is the only
irregularity of the first three lines--each runs ten
syllables that read iambically without strain, establishing
solidly the meter. For the rest of the poem, the rhythm of
each line plays off that meter in interesting and
significant ways. The fourth line--"as you swirl down the
Skamander to the sea"--changes 6Lvfiecc from a minor modifier
to the main verb "swirl," and the anapestic movement of the
line reinforces the verb.

This relation between meaning and sound is continued in
the next two lines. The long and open vowels of "dark
shadows" suggest a stillness, while "fish will shiver" does
indeed shiver with repeated short 1 sounds, and "lunge" and
"snap" are highly onomatopoeiac. "Silver fat" sits in open
contrast to the "dark shadows" of the previous line.

The seventh line is interesting rhythmically. Scanned
conventionally, the five-foot line has three trochees
followed by two iambs; as actually read, though, the weight
of the line is in the second half, as "you" is accented
lightly or not at all, and "reach" receives weight (and
time) equal to the words on either side. The certainty
implied in those three heavy words, "I reach Troy," leads to
the frightening certainty implied in the mechanical

regularity of the eighth line: "you’ll run in front, I’ll

216
scythe you down behind." Like a fighting machine he’ll do
it--no idle boast. The eighth line is very close to the
original, matching the bueic uéu / £70 6' construction
perfectly. But as impressive as Lowell’s line is, it can
hardly be said to outdo Homer, whose line ends with the verb
rendered aptly by Lowell as "scythe," that is, xepaifwv.

The middle of the ninth line has an interesting rhythm
that again reinforces the diction in suggesting water in
motion. The tenth and eleventh lines are just irregular
enough to emphasize the terrible iambic regularity of the
twelfth. One either likes a line such as "and die and die
and die and die" or one does not, but its perfect lack of
subtlety is appropriate here if anywhere, as Achilles makes
his point absolutely clear. The original b1é6006 xaxbv
pépov, especially when preceded by three throwaways (axxa
Kai be), seems almost diffuse by comparison.

The poem ends strongly. The thirteenth line translates
the sense of the original accurately, but clarified,
distilled, simplified, in a fairly regular meter that can be
reined in to accent strongly only the three key words--
"blood," "Patroklos," "avenged." The final line is regular
except in the first foot, where "killed" takes the accent
and the spotlight.

Lowell’s poem is so good it needs no comparison with the
original to be appreciated, but our appreciation of it
deepens as we see how the poet imitates Homer here, and

rivals him in intensity there. In turn, the translation

217

deepens our appreciation of this passage in the original

Iliad.
IAN FLETCHER, e les a t sio : estora
ygzsign of Iliad xix 14.153-362 (1968)

Fletcher’s poem is confined to a discreet narrative
portion concerning only gods, not men. This is highly
unusual in that almost every other translation of a short
excerpt of the Iliad deals with mortals, presumably more
important or more interesting to readers today. Fletcher’s
rendering of Hera’s deception of Zeus is unlike any other,
though, and is certainly worth a closer look.

The term "Milesian" can be explained by an entry in
Lgmpriere’s Classical Dictionary: "The words Milesiag
fiabulag, or Milesiaca, were used to express wanton and
ludicrous plays" (412). "Intrusion" is a double entendre--
Hera’s manipulations and Zeus’s love-making. It is a
"Restoration comedy version" in that the story itself is a
bit of a farce, told with wit and style and a wink or two by
Fletcher, while still containing a large measure of truth.

The meter is more-or-less iambic, with long lines of
(usually) more than ten syllables and fewer than fifteen,
but it is not regular enough to be called anything but free
verse. Having no rhyme or regular meter, then, the poetry
depends on richness of detail and surprising turns of

phrase:

218

Now at the tip of Mount Olympos Hera was standing

And scanning the distance she saw the God Poseidon

Both her own brother and her husband’s, bustling about

On the battlefield and she smiled approvingly.

Zeus too she caught sight of, brooding on the windiest
fork of Ida,

Ida, veined with fountains, and she thought how odious
he was!

Then Hera debated with herself

How best she might baffle the gnawing mind of Zeus

And decided the luringest trick of all was:

Rogue herself up in her best and go off to Mount Ida,

Might not Zeus be blandished away by her beauty

And want to gentleman her then and there? Once brought
to

A certainty he would fold asleep in her arms.

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(14.153-65)

(Now Hera of the golden throne, standing on a peak of
Olympus, therefrom had sight of him, and forthwith knew
him as he went busily about in the battle where men win
glory, her own brother and.her lord’s withal; and she‘was
glad at heart. .And Zeus she marked seated on the topmost
peak of many-fountained Ida, and hateful was he to her
heart. Then she took thought, the ox-eyed, queenly Hera,
how she might beguile the mind of Zeus that beareth the
aegis. And this plan seemed to her mind the best--to go
to Ida, when she had beauteously adorned her person, if
so be he might desire to lie by her side and embrace her
body in love, and she might shed a warm and gentle sleep
upon his eyelids and his cunning mind.) (literal prose of
Murray)

In this first paragraph of Fletcher’s we are quickly
given several examples of his interesting and apt way with

words: "windiest fork," "veined with fountains," "gnawing

219
mind," "luringest trick," "rogue herself up," "be blandished
away." Best of all, though, in place of Hera’s already
euphemistic words 0000600066!» 01161011 (also 60000000!
01161011 at line 331) we find the hyper-euphemistic and
hilarious verb tg_g§gtlgm§n, as well as the phrase "brought
to a certainty" (no direct correlation in the original).

Fletcher’s story of Hera is characterized throughout by
his humor and wit--his refusal to be daunted by Homer’s
immense reputation. Fletcher often plays free with the
literal word at points, then in one surprising way or
another manages to be right on the money regarding the
sense. As for spirit, Fletcher may stretch the boundaries,
but he will be found to hold to a spirit not unlike Homer’s,
at least for passages such as this. Fletcher’s version
helps reveal, in fact, this side of Homer’s spirit.

When the translation leaves the literal word behind, it
sometimes illuminates the sense with an unusual verb or
other construction. For example, as Hera addresses Sleep,
the original reads 6v 1' 000 01 0% X610} (line 232). 00 is
a bit of a mystery; Autenreich gives us "clasped," but this
is only in some figurative sense, whose connection to the
main definition, "grow," is not clear. But Fletcher renders
it "And coquetting a bit with his hand," and we immediately
know that is exactly what she was doing, whatever ¢0
originally meant. Fletcher’s rendering, though not literal,

has the unmistakable ring of truth.

220

Fletcher’s "restoration" wit shows itself in
understatement, in neologism, and in other interesting
choices of diction, always with a light and careless air
combined with dead-on accuracy. Where the original gives us
this:

"00011 10 016 x6iv0¢ 006000006 A106 vibc
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(14.250-51)
("on the day when the glorious son of Zeus, high of
heart, sailed forth from Ilios, when he had laid waste
the city of the Trojans.") (literal prose of Murray)
Fletcher gives us this:
". . . when clusterfisting Hercules
Ramped off from Troy having thoroughly malgraced the
city."
"Clusterfisting" is in no way literal for b0ép0vuoc yet
seems perfectly Homeric and accurate for Hercules. "Ramped
off," though denoting violence, also implies a carelessness
that is especially apt in describing an insultingly easy
sack of Troy, further emphasized by the witty understatement
of "malgraced" for the original 6&01000506.

Other examples of Fletcher’s interesting diction abound
in this work: "bluenosed sea" for 010 uapuapénv; "Hera
thrilled loose her rondured arms" (no direct correlation in
original); and for aln 66 xpat0uac HpOOEBfiOGTO Papyapov
0x00», "Hera rustled on to the tips of Gargaros."

A teacher presenting the Iliad to students for the first
time would do well to make use of this entertaining excerpt,

to show them that Homer was not such a drudge as Lang, Leaf

& Myers or Lattimore would make him out to be.

221
CHRISTOPHER LOGUE, fl;§_fl2§i§ books 16-19 (1981) & Kingfi
books 1 8 2 (1990)

Christopher Logue has produced versions of several parts
of the Iliad, and they should not be missed. To the same
degree that Fletcher’s piece is light-hearted, so Logue’s
pieces are deadly serious--packing an emotional wallop
straight to the gut. Logue published ngrgglgia (book 16)
in 1963, Bax (book 19) in 1967, fla;_ug§ig (consisting of the
two previous works plus a conflation of books 17 & 18,
called "GBH" for "great bodily harm") in 1981, and Kings
(books 1 & 2) in 1990. He also published an excerpt from
book 21 in his volume of poetry goggg in 1959.

These versions cannot truly be called translation; they
stand with at least one foot in the realm of adaptation.
Logue’s willingness to stray from the letter of the original
is troubling to some critics, but I include his works here
because a) they are homeric in some way--in spirit, if not
always in literal word or even in general sense, and b) they
are illuminating. One cannot help but read the original
Homer and close translations differently after having read
Logue. His highly impressionistic lines bring to the reader
the sense of immediacy that is often lamentably missing in
other versions.

Logue’s reviewers differ in their Opinions, of course,
but he has gained quite a bit of attention. Many of the
comments remind one of Bentley’s famous line: "It is a very

pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer."

222
Even Logue’s admirers, though, would not actually call it a
pretty poem; it is instead a powerful one. Frederick M.
Combellack, speaking of Egtzgglgia, says it "is not a
version of the 16th book of Homer’s Iliad," but is quick to
add that "this poem can stand on its own merits; it does not
need to run for safety under Homer’s mighty shields." Louis
MacNeice says (of the Eatrgglgig), "it is not a translation"
but in fact "it brings out more vividly than most
translations what both the Greeks and Trojans are up
against: blood and sweat on the one hand and fate (the
gods) on the other." David McDuff dismisses Logue’s work
entirely. For example, regarding one anachronistic passage
from Wa Mu 'c, he says: "This kind of licence seems . . .
both inadmissable and unforgivable: what possible
justification can there be for this kind of liberty with
Homer’s poem?" (64). An anonymous reviewer grants only a
small bit of success (regarding Patroclgia):
Logue’s work cannot be judged as a translation. What
virtues it has are those of an independent poem, based
on a reading of Homer--in translation. As such it does
have a clean and bitter quality which is attractive
and, in its way, not unhomeric. Only this quality is
mostly spoiled for the reader by the poet’s
exhibitionistic mannerisms." (Yale Review xvi)
These "exhibitionistic mannerisms" are explained at least in
part by another reviewer, Warren Anderson:
Some of Logue’ s difficulties have been caused by his
sense of poetry as a thing that must be heard . . .
Thus when he prints APOLLO! in letters quite literally
an inch high, he is not playing games with typography.
. . . [H]e is demanding a triple-forte shout to

signalize the god’s climactic epiphany, bringing death
to Patroclus." (341)

223
Anderson and many others give Logue’s work enthusiastic
praise: "the Eagngcleig is an astonishing work, heavy with
death and instinct with fierce life" (Anderson 342); and
"En: Musig is at once an ancient and a modern poem, a
triumph of virtuoso rhetoric" (Brien); and (regarding
(Engzgglgig) "In only a few pages we realize that Mr. Logue
is a master of dialogue . . . [of] description . . . of the
clear modulations of pace that make Homer so sure-footed, so
generous of perfectly coordinated design. . . . Mr. Logue
has managed to incorporate more of Homer’s sense of action
than any other English translator" (Davenport 418-19).
Jaspar Griffin, commenting on Kings, says that Logue’s
poetry has several positive characteristics, including the
single most elusive characteristic of Homer:
[One great difficulty] is what Matthew Arnold called
the nobility of Homer. The Greek epic is in the high
style, it deals with gods, heroes, lions, storms at
sea, forest fires on mountains. It is not, however, in
the self-consciously elevated style of Virgil or
Milton. Is Logue noble? He does not aim at the
pseudo-sublime, all too easily accessible; for this
relief, much thanks. . . . Shifts of pace and of tone,
the choice of vivid and unexpected images, controlled
eloquence: these give to Logue’s version its distance
from the hackneyed, and a war-torn and knowledgeable

distinction, capable at will of coarseness, humour, and
- yes - nobility.

According to William Logan, "Logue has attempted an
English equivalent of register and force, of Homer’s effect
if not his simple meaning. This has required translation
not just by approximation but by addition and subtraction,

and by gross rearrangement" (166-67). If you open up

224
Logue’s Kings looking for the invocation ("Sing, goddess,
the wrath . . .") you’ll be disappointed; it is not there, a
victim of "subtraction." The "gross rearrangement" is
evident as Kings opens with Achilles on the beach praying,
and then works back to the arrival of Cryzez (Chryses), and
subsequent events. An example of Logue’s "addition" is his
description of the effects of the plague sent down by
Apollo:

Busy in his delirium, see Tek
(A carpenter from Mykonos) as he comes forward, hit--
It seems--by a stray stone, yet still comes on,
Though coming now as if he walked a plank,
Then falling off it into nothingness.

Occasionally Logue covers the same ground as the
original, but in a startling new way, such as where Apollo
comes xwéuevoc «00:

Taking a corner of the sky
Between his finger and his thumb,
Out of its blue, as boys do towels, he cracked,
Then zephyr ferried in among the hulls
A generation of infected mice.

Such fleas . . .
Such lumps . . .
Watch Greece begin to die:

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(1.44-52)

(Down from the peaks of Olympus he strode, wroth at
heart, bearing on his shoulders his bow and covered
quiveru The arrows rattled on the shoulders of the angry
god, as he moved; and his coming was like the night.

W

225
Then he sate him down apart from the ships and let fly a
shaft: terrible was the twang of the silver bow. The
mules he assailed first and the swift dogs, but
thereafter on the men themselves he let fly his stinging
arrows, and smote; and ever did the pyres of the dead
burn thick.) (literal prose of Murray)
Logue’s plausible emphasis on mice as carriers of the plague
makes clearer Chryses’ address of Apollo as Eu1v060 ("mouse-
god") in the original (line 1.39); Logue makes it
Apollo, Lord of Light and Mice.

Quite often Logue takes a passage that in the original is
direct, simple, and objective, full of detail, and renders
it with images and impressions--he makes the objective
subjective--and immediate. For example, in place of

01 6' 016 60 1106v0¢ 0010860060c 6010; 1xov10 (1.432)
("When they came into the very-deep harbor"),
Logue gives us impressions:
Water, white water, blue-black here, without--
Us hearing our bow wave--
Our animals hearing those closest ashore.
Swell-water, black-water--

The wind in the cliff pines, their hairpins, their
resin.

Greatly expanded, this; and then he condenses three lines--

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(they furled the sail, and stowed it in the black ship,
and the mast they lowered by the forestays and brought it

to the crutch with speed, and rowed her with cars to the
place of anchorage) (literal prose of Murray)

--into one:

"As we lower, lose way, set, stroke, and regain it--."

226
Logue handles the rituals of sacrifice in similar
fashion. For example, Homer provides the mechanics of how
the sacrifice is accomplished:

00100 6061 0' 6050010 x01 0010x0106 0003010010,
00600000 060 00010 x01 60¢0£0v x01 6661000, . . .
(1.458-59 . . . )

(Then, when they had prayed, and had sprinkled the barley
grains, they first drew back the victims’ heads, and cut
their throats, and flayed them . . .) (literal prose of
Murray)

But Logue gives us something different:

Now the lustral water is on their hands,
And the barley sprinkled on the beast’s wide head.
"Bring the axe."
"Pae’an!"
"Lord of Mice!"
"Lord of Light! Light! Light!"
As the axe swings up, and stays,
"Pae’an!"
Stays poised, still poised, and--
As it roars down:
"PLEASE GOD!"
"PLEASE GOD!"
Covers the terrible thock that parts the ox from its
voice

"Pae’an!"

As the knife goes in, goes down

And the dewlap parts like glue,

And the great thing kneels,

And its breath hoses out,

And the authorized butchers grope for its heart,
And the choir sings:

"Pour the oil and balm--"
And Cryzez prays:

" ord L' ht

W ose reach make t c t

In Whgse abundant ysnntn

The headlands 9f Csns Iollomon bask,"

"Over the dead--"

"As all y lifis l dnssssg Yon; leafy snrins,"

"Fire the cedar, fire the clove--"

227

"Vougnsafe ne this;"
"That the reek may lie--"

"Absolvs the Greeks,"
"And the savour lift--"

" et e a ' "
"To Heaven, and to yourself."

II amen II

"Amen."

When I say that one will read Homer differently having
read Logue, I mean that Logue, with his modern techniques of
subjective imagery, reminds us how much in other
circumstances we must use our imaginations to bring Homer
alive, to drag him back from remoteness. Logue does the
work of imagination for us; the challenge for the reader is
instead merely to follow the story-line, which is made less
obvious by the modern techniques. When we return to the
original, or a close translation, following the story-line
is a snap, but our imaginations must go to work again. No
wonder it is difficult for the freshman of today to
penetrate or even take an interest in a work such as the
Iliad. With television (and even modern poetry, for those
who read it) providing the necessary images, the freshman
(even the scholar?) of today is not prepared to supply them
internally. Logue serves as a reminder and an example, and
read in tandem with a more traditional translation, might
just be the key to unlocking Homer for many students.

One more example will help to show Logue’s technique and
its effect. At the end of book 16, Logue (in "Patrocleia,"

Wgz Mnsic) renders the moment of the fatal wounding of

228

Patroclus by Hector with little more than a whisper, but not
without emotional impact:

Putting his spear through ... ach.3
The next line--

Why tears, Patroclus?--
echoes (in a way that the original does not) Achilles’ words
at the opening of the book. In the last lines of
"Patrocleia," Logue omits some material and puts a twist on
the rest, but the result rings true:

"Did you hope to melt Troy down

And make our women fetch the ingots home?
I can imagine it!

You and your marvelous Achilles;

Him with an upright finger, saying:
Don’t snow your face sgain, Patnoclus,

gnless it’s ned with Hector’s blond."
And Patroclus,

Shaking the voice out of his body, says:

"Big mouth.
Remember it took three of you to kill me.
A God, a boy, and last and least, a hero.

I can hear Death pronounce my name, and yet
Somehow it sounds like EEQEQE-

And as I close my eyes I see Achilles’ face
With Death’s voice coming out of it."

Saying these things Patroclus died.
And as his soul went through the sand
Hector withdrew his spear and said:
"Perhaps."

 

3The ellipsis is Logue’s, not an indication of a
truncated quotation.

229

A Closer Look: Three Complete Translations

ROBERT GRAVES, Ihs Anger g: Acnilles (1959)

Graves’ work is a breed apart from all other translations
of the Iliad. It is a fairly close translation, never
losing sight of the sense of the original, so the difference
is not there. The most obvious difference is its mix of
prose and verse--mostly prose with patches of verse here and
there, wherever the context seems, to Graves, to call for
it. Even so, the difference runs deeper. Graves has a
controversial theory about the formation of the Iliad: that
"The fiomeridae (‘Sons of Homer’), a family guild of Ionian
bards based on Chios, enlarged their ancestor’s first short
draft of the llisg to twenty-four books, and became
comprehensively known as ‘Homer’" (13). But this theory,
even if outlandish in its specifics (which Graves outlines
further), is in its generalities not so very far from
current theories of the oral-formulaic construction of two
epics, and so cannot account for the different nature of
Graves’ version.

Instead, the real difference springs from an stnituge;
Graves simply refuses to be awed or cowed before this
venerable work:

The llisg, and its later companion-piece, the Od sse ,
deserve to be rescued from the classroom curse which
has lain heavily on them throughout the past twenty-six

centuries, and become entertainment once more; which is
what I have attempted here." (13)

230
He has a good story to tell and he tells it in his own
fashion, much as Spedding advocated many years earlier (see
Chapter One). The resulting style is informal, often
humorous, sometimes farcical, but rarely ordinary. It may
never be counted among the great translations of the Iliad--
Chapman, Pope, etc.--but it is one of those capable of both
captivating the Greekless reader and changing the way the
scholar views and reads Homer’s original.

The measure of Graves’ success, then, is the degree to
which he can tell the story clearly and entertainingly,
while also showing us a different side of the Iliad, and
without violating its spirit.

This possibility of violating the spirit has troubled
Graves’ critics most. According to Niall Rudd: "That
astringent irony [of Graves] has deprived Homer of his most
essential characteristic--his nobility." Ben Ray Redman
sounds a similar note: "In his translation he has given us
the speed and clarity that Matthew Arnold demanded of any
translator of Homer, but he has not given us the nobility."
Phoebe Adams laments: "And how about the poetry, since
Homer is remembered as a poet? It is not there. It has
vanished, leaving not a rack behind. Hector’s farewell to
Andromache is spoken in the same sharp style as his battle
orders."

Others, though, praise the work wholeheartedly, and with
a sigh of relief, it seems; but that praise comes mostly

from popular magazines, not from journals. Julian Symons

231

(Ennsn) says "that it can be read with almost constant

pleasure." An anonymous reviewer (Time) calls it "the most

charming translation in English since Pope’s, and [it] may

also be the best." The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the

middle. It is not the best ever, but it is worth a look.

from

The invocation is in verse, effectively separating it
the beginning of the narrative:

Sing, MOUNTAIN GODDESS, sing through me
That anger which most ruinously
Inflamed Achilles, Peleus’ son,

And which, before the tale was done,
Had glutted Hell with champions--bold,
Stern spirits by the thousandfold;
Ravens and dogs their corpses ate.

For thus did ZEUS, who watched their fate,
See his resolve, first taken when

Proud Agamemnon, King of men,

An insult on Achilles cast,

Achieve accomplishment at last.

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(1.1-7)

(The wrath do thou sing, O goddess, of Peleus’ son,
Achilles, that baneful wrath which brought countless woes
upon the Achaeans, and sent forth to Hades many valiant
souls of warriors, and made themselves to be a spoil for
dogs and all manner of birds; and thus the will of Zeus
was being brought to fulfillment;--sing thou thereof from
the time when at first there parted in strife Atreus’
son, king of men, and goodly Achilles.) (literal prose
of Murray)

The difference is apparent right from the first line, with

"MOUNTAIN GODDESS" and especially the last three words,

232
which lay bare the nature of Homer’s invocation. No other
version says anything like "sing through me."

The poetry, though, here and elsewhere, seems foolish.
One might think that by separating these passages from the
rest of the text Graves is taking them more seriously,
especially as many of the verse passages are prayers. But
no, Graves continues to have fun with Homer even here; the
short couplets of the invocation and shorter quatrains of
Chryses’ prayer (the next verse passage) are typical of the
rest--often closer to doggerel than to high poetry:

‘God with the bow of silver,
You that take your stand

At Chryse and holy Cilla,
Protector of our land,

‘Great Lord of Mice, whose sceptre
Holds Tenedos in fee:

Listen to my petition,
Consider well my plea!

‘If ever I built a temple
Agreeable to your eyes,

Or cut from goats or bullocks
The fat about their thighs,

‘To burn as a costly offering
At KING APOLLO’s shrine:

Let the Greeks pay with your arrows
These burning tears of mine!’

"01001 060, 007006102', 0c X00000 00¢1B6an0¢
K11100 16 {00600 T6066010 16 1¢1 00000616,
2010060, 61 0016 101 x001601' 601 0000 60600,
0 61 60 0016 101 «010 01000 0001' 6000

100000 06' 01700, 1066 001 xpfin000 661600'
1106100 A00001 600 60x000 00101 36160010."
(1.37-42)

("Hear me, thou of the silver bow, who dost stand over
Chryse and holy Cilla, and dost rule mightily over
Tenedos, thou Sminthian, if ever I roofed over a shrine
to thy pleasing, or if ever I burned to thee fat thigh-
pieces of bulls or goats, fulfil thou for me this prayer:

233

let the Danaans pay for my tear by thy shafts.") (literal
prose of Murray)

That, apparently, is the way Graves wants it.

With his prose Graves often surprises anyone used to the
more careful versions--those that tiptoe around Homer so as
not to upset him. At Achilles’ first insult of Agamemnon,
Graves renders a full line of Greek--

0 001, 000166100 601610606, K6060166¢000 (1.149),

("Ah me, thou clothed in shamelessness, thou of crafty
mind,") (literal prose of Murray)

--with just two words:

"Shameless schemer!"
The insult is simple and effective, and not without
emotional impact. Graves’ version of the triple-insult is,
unfortunately, rather ordinary, a rare lapse:

"Drunkard, with the face of a dog and the heart of a
deer!"

"01006006c, x000; 00001' 6x00, x006100 6' 610¢010,"
(1.225)

("Thou heavy with wine, thou with the front of a dog but
the heart of a deer,") (literal prose of Murray)

In the following passage Graves is plain and direct,
concise yet reasonably close to the original, without any
hint of the awkwardness that makes a close translation sound
ordinary:

On entering the deep harbour, his crew furled and
stowed away their sails, lowered the mast by the
forestays, hastily fitted it into its crotch, and rowed
to the anchorage. There, having thrown out the
mooring-stones, they tied their vessel up and
disembarked the victims. Chryseis too went ashore, and
Odysseus led her towards the altar, where Chryses
stood.

234

01 6' 016 60 1106006 0010360060; 6010c 1x0010,
10110 060 016110010, 06000 6' 60 00? #610100,
10100 6' 10106600 0610000 00016001010 0¢6016C
x000011uwc, 100 6' 61; 00000 0006060000 60610016.
6x 6' 60006 630100, x010 66‘00000001' 660000'

6x 66 x01 00101 801000 601 0070101 00100006,

6x 6' 6x016uBn0 30000 6x06610 'A0611w01'

6x 66 X00001c 000C 60 00010060010.

(1.432-39)

(When they were now got within the deep harbour, they
furled the sail, and stowed it in the black ship, and the
mast they lowered by the forestays and brought it to the
crutch with speed, and rowed her with oars to the place
of anchorage. Then they cast out the mooring-stones and
made fast the stern cables, and themselves went forth
upon the shore of the sea. Forth they brought the
hecatomb>for.Apollo, that smiteth.afar, and forth stepped
also the daughter of Chryses from the sea-faring ship.)
(literal prose of Murray)

The passages of ritual and the subsequent voyage carry a
similar comfortable tone--interrupted, however, by three
lines of verse:

DAWN, DAY’s daughter bright,

Drew back the curtain of NIGHT

With her fingers of rosy light.

0006 6'001760610 0000 006060x1010c 'Héc,
(1.477)

(and as soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered,)
(literal prose of Murray)

Here is Graves’ answer to the convention of the rosy-
fingered dawn. I leave to the reader to decide whether it
is a success or not.
Hector’s prayer is, of course, rendered in verse, loosely

translated, expanded, and rearranged:

O ZEUS, Sole Ruler of the Sky,

And all you other gods on high,

Grant that my infant son may live

To gather fame superlative.

Reserve, I beg you, for this boy
A bold, strong heart to govern Troy

235

And shine as once his father shone.
May the whole city muse upon

His feats, as often as the car

Brings him spoil-laden home from war
(Spoil reddened with the owner’s gore)
To cheer his mother’s heart once more;
Then let all say, if say they can:
"His father was the lesser man!"

"260 01101 16 0601, 6616 60 x01 10066 76060001
0016' 6000, 06 x01 670 060, 001006060 T0060010,
066 3100 1' 070060, x01 '11100 101 00000610'

K01 0016 11; 61001 ‘00100c 7’ 066 001100 0061000’
6x 0016000 0016010' ¢6001 6' 60000 300166010
0161006 66100 00600, x0061» 66 00600 00100."
(6.476-81)

("Zeus and ye other gods, grant that this my child may
likewise prove, even as I, pre-eminent amid the Trojans,
and as valiant in might, and that he rule mightily over
Ilios. And some day may some man say of him as he cometh
back from war, ‘He is better far than his father’; and
may he bear the blood-stained spoils of the foeman he
hath slain, and may his mother’s heart wax glad.")
(literal prose of Murray)
It is not ordinary by any means, but it reaches no height of
emotion, either. Graves’ chosen verse form does not allow
it to rise, and there is the greatest problem with this
translation. Even if the Iliad is, as Graves suggests,
entertaining and even funny at times, at others it is
powerful and emotional. Graves is still wearing his party
hat at serious and emotional passages such as this, and the
work suffers as a result.

In the passage where Patroclus pleads with Achilles,
Graves’ unusual style provides a wonderful simplicity and
clarity:

"Oh, how can I persuade you to relent? May I never be
the victim of so disastrous a grudge! What thanks will
future generations give you when your fame rests mainly

on a refusal to intervene while their fathers were being
massacred? Must we still believe that you are a child of

236

noble Peleus and the gentle Thetis? You seem hard-
hearted enough to have been sired by the stony cliffs on
the tempestuous sea."

"uh 606 7' 000 0016c 76 10601 x610c, 60 00 ¢v100061c,
0100061n' 15 06v 0110; 00006101 0¢i700éc ”5p,

01 x6 uh 'A076601010 061x60 101700 0ufi0uc;

0n1666, 00x 000 005 76 00100 00 1006101Hn160c,

0066 66110 pfirnp' 710000 66 06 1ix16 0010000

061001 1' 01530101, 011 101 060g 60110 0nn0fic."
(16.30-35)

("but with thee may no man deal, Achilles. Never upon me
let such wrath lay hold, as that thou dost cherish, O
thou whose valour is but a bane! Wherein shall any other
even yet to be born have profit of thee, if thou ward not
off shameful ruin from the Argives? Pitiless one, thy
father, meseems, was not the knight Peleus, nor was
Thetis thy mother, but the grey sea bare thee, and the
beetling cliffs, for that thy heart is unbending.")
(literal prose of Murray)

Graves’ sidesteps such pitfalls as 0100061n and delivers the

speech naturally, without losing Homer’s nobility. Later in

the same paragraph, though, this casualness goes too far--

Please put [the Myrmidons] under my orders and, while you
are about it, lend me your arms

--as though Patroclus were asking for twenty bucks.

The Anger of Achilles does indeed entertain, and it does
show us a different Homer, one which has some basis in the
original. But in his enthusiasm for iconoclasm, Graves has
at times made Homer’s great story seem absurd. The Iliad is
many things, and Graves’ version is no more a complete
picture than any of the stuffy versions he ridicules. The

Angg;_gj_Aghillg§ is most successful, then, not by itself,

but as one among many translations.

237
ROBERT FITZGERALD, IQ§_1113Q (1974)

Fitzgerald’s translation is in a loose blank verse,
rendered less closely than most others of the second half of
the twentieth century, though still never far from the
general sense of the original. It is probably the most
poetic of all recent versions, and is often mentioned as one
of the two great translations of the Iliad (Richmond
Lattimore’s is the other) to appear in the last few
decades--possibly good enough and popular enough to join the
ranks of those few that continue to be printed and read
after their times. Not everyone shares this view of
Fitzgerald’s work (or of Lattimore’s), but only time will
tell.

Fitzgerald’s lines are no more like Homer’s lines than
those of any other blank verse translation, but they are far
more poetic than their predecessors without leaving behind
the sense and spirit of the original.

In fact, the most notable characteristic of Fitzgerald’s
version is its beautiful poetry; as we will see, it includes
some truly memorable lines and phrases, although the work is
not as consistent as some other contemporary versions. In
places it is merely prosaic, as indicated by Charles Rowan
Beye, who says that "in the long stretches of battlefield
scenes, Fitzgerald’s lines do not have any more shape or
necessity than what the typesetter has given them" (141).

In places the work falls flat, as demonstrated by Vernon

Young: "Fitzgerald has [great difficulty] when attempting

238
to describe accurately those broken tendons of Aeneas, as if
Gray’s Ahatgmy were the object of translation" (431).
Fitzgerald’s Iliad has more often been accorded great
praise, though. Phoebe Adams says: "Mr. Fitzgerald has
solved virtually every problem that has plagued translators
of Homer. The narrative runs, the dialogue speaks, the
military action is clear, and the repetitive epithets become
useful text rather than exotic relics.” Paul Merchant says:
"Fitzgerald’s is the first Iligg since Pope to respond to
the poetic exuberance and virtuosity of the original. In
the iron age of English poetry Fitzgerald’s Homer was more
than we had any right to expect" (618).
Thomas N. Winter points out another important
characteristic of this translation, its ability to reveal
bits of Homer that otherwise would remain hidden to the rest
of us. In this case the reviewer discusses Fitzgerald’s
rendering of 611xén160 xofipnu,
a common phrase for any pretty feminine face in the
accusative. For the first word the elements of meaning
are our words "helix" and "face." Or "eyes," "sight,"
or "vision." This has always been a bumblesome thing
for translators, and has been rendered "with rolling
eyes," "of darting eyes," "quick-glancing." Phoo.
Fitzgerald externalized its motor aspect and produced a
plum: "The girl who turns the eyes of men"! Once you
see it, you can suspect that this is what it meant all
along: a turn-face girl. (81)

This knack for revelation shows up time and time again in

Fitzgerald’s Iliad.

This translation by Fitzgerald has little in common with

Robert Graves’ version, The Ange; Q: Achilles, but it does

 

239
share one attribute: it is not ordinary. Fitzgerald chose
a relatively common meter: a blank verse that sometimes
shows a steady beat but just as often reads like prose. But
the diction, without being radically free from the original,
is different from the crowd’s.

In the first lines of the invocation, we find the old
idea said in a new way, with an interesting and wholly
appropriate emphasis:

Anger be now your song, immortal one,

Akhilleus’ anger, doomed and ruinous,

that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss

and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,

leaving so many dead men--carrion

for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.

Begin it when the two men first contending

broke with one another--

the Lord Marshal

Agamemnon, Atreus’ son, and Prince Akhilleus.
"Anger" is the first word, and the whole first line is
devoted to it. "Akhilleus’ anger" begins the second line,
to emphasize and clarify. "Doomed and ruinous" intensifies
the anger further--beyond even the 001006000 of the
original. Fitzgerald has omitted the patronymic for
Achilles, and delayed mention of woes or "loss," so that the
first two lines can be devoted entirely to gng r. The point
is well worth the space of two lines.

Where Apollo descends in anger, Fitzgerald is as good as
any has ever been:

. . . Phoibos Apollo
walked with storm in his heart from Olympos’ crest,
quiver and bow at his back, and the bundled arrows
clanged on the sky behind as he rocked in his anger,

descending like night itself. Apart from the ships
he halted and let fly, and the bowstring slammed

 

240

as the silver bow sprang, rolling in thunder away.

Pack animals were his target first, and dogs,

but soldiers, too, soon felt transfixing pain

from his hard shots, and pyres burned night and day.
The four lines in the middle of the action are magnificent,
moving rapidly, simply, and, yes, nobly--with verbs that are
dynamic without being overblown: ”clanged," "rocked,"
"halted," "slammed," "sprang." The phrase "descending like
night itself" is finally the simple perfection of the image
John Wilson looked for in 1831 (see Chapter One). "Rolling
in thunder away" is wholly Fitzgerald’s invention, but it
has that rare mingling of sound and rhythm with sense that
is so essentially homeric.

With Achilles’ insults of Agamemnon, Fitzgerald is in the
first case marvelously revealing, and in the second case
inventively apt.

In the first--

"You thick-skinned, shameless, greedy fool!
Can any Akhaian care for you, or obey you,
after this on marches or in battle?"
"0 001, 000166500 601610606, x6060166¢000,
00¢ 15; 101 006¢0w0 606010 06500101 'Ax0100
0 0600 610606001 0 00600010 101 00x60001;"
(1.149-51)
("Ah me, thou clothed in shamelessness, thou of crafty
mind, how shall any man of the Achaeans hearken to thy
bidding with a ready heart either to go on a journey or
to fight amain with warriors?")
--"thick-skinned" is a specific and plausible interpretation
of 000166£n0 601610606. The usual literal renderings,

"armored" or "clothed in shamelessness," are interesting and

even revealing in their own way, but not so clear as "thick-

 

241
skinned." Fitzgerald’s use of "after this" reveals what is
usually only implied--or ignored--in other versions.
In the second--

"Sack of wine,
you with your cur’s eyes and your antelope heart!"

--"Sack of wine" reveals nothing new but has just the right
sound for the cutting insult intended here. "Cur’s eyes"
puts a slightly different nuance on the second part of the
triple insult. The most common rendering, some variation of
gQg-face, is clearly an insult, but is not very specific in
its connotations (in contemporary American culture at any
rate) except perhaps regarding ugliness. In a few versions
it is used to connote a fierce aspect that belies the
cowardice within. Here, not a clear match for Homer but an
interesting possibility nonetheless, the use of "cur"
suggests cowardice right away, which is then intensified by
"antelope heart." The double image presented by
Fitzgerald’s line is very striking.

In the passage where Khryseis is returned to her father,
Fitzgerald’s lines are not so immediately striking; one is
tempted to call them ordinary. Read aloud, this passage
could be mistaken for prose, and none of the images are
attention-grabbers. But this is a quiet scene--not
unimportant, but having none of the ring and clamor of
battle, or even the fierce emotions of verbal conflict, so
the need for spirited rhythms and violent images is absent.

With a closer look, though, we can see that Fitzgerald, even

242
in this quiet passage, is doing some interesting things
poetically:
Entering the deep harbor there
they furled the sails and stowed them, and unbent
forestays to ease the mast down quickly aft
into its rest; then rowed her to a mooring.
Bow-stones were dropped, and they tied up astern,
and all stepped out into the wash and ebb,
then disembarked their cattle for the Archer,
and Khryseis, from the deepsea ship . . . .

The phrase "unbent / forestays" is puzzling; it appears
to be technically incorrect. At any rate, we find
"forestays" at the beginning of that line, and "aft" at the
end. Two lines later, although "Bow-stones were dropped"
might offend the sensibilities of English teachers and
others trained to shun the passive voice in prominent
places, the line turns out to be not so bad. The
interesting noun "bow-stones" is, by this construction,
allowed to stand at the front of the line, a place both
prominent and appropriate. The reader’s voice must strongly
drop on or after "dropped," following as it does two
relatively unaccented syllables and falling in the middle of
the line, immediately before the caesura. And "astern"
falls, of course, at the end of the line, so that this line
mimics and intensifies the fore-and-aft construction two
lines above. In the next line, "stepped out" is a perfect
verb phrase for leaving a boat, even though the original
reads only 602000 ("went"). The phrase may or may not be

physically accurate for Greek ships, but it rings true

psychologically (regardless of the type or size of the

243
vessel), as anyone with boat experience knows. fihgppihg_gh;
is always the way it feels at the moment of disembarkation,
regardless of the specific physical action required. "Wash
and ebb" is an interesting rendition of 0070(01 00100000,
and "cattle for the Archer" is more explanatory and more
visual than hgghhgmh, even though 6x0160600 is the word used
there. One might worry that the novice reader will lose out
on the delight of an interesting new word like hggggghh, but
Fitzgerald does use the word eleven lines later in the
phrase "to give god his hekatomb." Aside from
considerations of meter, there is a certain cleverness to
Fitzgerald’s non-use and use of the word; as the beasts walk
off the boat their primary essence, so to speak, is still
their cattle-ness. In the second case, though, the Greek
word refers to the sacrificial ritual as a whole; the usage
is more exact, and literal translation is more appropriate.
In the subsequent scene of the ritual feast, the most

interesting part comes at the end, with the singing of the
paeans:

Propitiatory songs rose clear and strong

until day’s end, to praise the god, Apollo,

as One Who Keeps the Plague Afar; and listening

the god took joy . . .

01 66 0000060101 00100 0600 1100x0010,

x0100 065600160 0010000, x00001 'Ax01é0,

061000160 6x060700' 0 66 ¢0600 160061' 0xofiw0.

(1.472-74)

(So the whole day long they sought to appease the god

with song, singing the beautiful paean, the sons of the

Achaeans, hymning the god that worketh afar; and his
heart was glad, as he heard.) (literal prose of Murray)

244
A word like "propitiatory" is always dicey in a line of
poetry, but here the difficult-to-pronounce initial word
resolves into monosyllables that are, in fact, clear and
strong. Fitzgerald takes some liberties here, rearranging
the matter as needed. The verb "rose" is nowhere in Homer’s
lines of this passage, but it is certainly appropriate. Is
it possible, too, that some faint echo of this use of "rose"
still lingers a few lines later at dawn?

Fitzgerald pulls another revealing expansion two lines
later, where the always-slightly-puzzling epithet 6x060700
becomes "One Who Keeps the Plague Afar." It is a bit of a
stretch to say that all of the sense of Fitzgerald’s phrase
is implied in the original, but it works beautifully here,
as we are reminded of the specific purpose of these rites.

When dawn arrives, Fitzgerald’s variation on the theme of

:st-fiingered dawn is as good as any:

When Dawn spread out her finger tips of rose
they put to sea for the main camp of Akhaians,
and the Archer God sent them a following wind.
Stepping the mast they shook their canvas out,
and wind caught, bellying the sail. A foaming
dark blue wave sang backward from the bow

as the running ship made way against the sea,
until they came offshore of the encampment.

0000 6'001760610 ¢000 006060x10100 'H00,

«01 101' 60611' 00070010 0610 0100100 60000 ’Ax0100'
102010 6' 1x06000 00000 161 6x060700 'A0611w0'

01 6' 10100 0100001' 000 0' 20150 160x0 06100000,

60 6’ 006000 000060 06000 101500, 00¢} 66 «000
016500 000000600 06701' 10x6 0000 100000'

0 6' 60660 x010 x000 610000000000 K6160000.
(1.477-83)

(and as soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered,
then they set sail for the wide camp of the Achaeans.
And Apollo, that worketh afar, sent them a favouring

245
wind, and they set up the mast and spread the‘white sail.
So the wind filled the belly of the sail, and the dark
wave sang loudly about the stem of the ship, as she went,
and she sped over the wave, accomplishing her way.)
(literal prose of Murray)

The other line most worth noting here is truly a gem: "A
foaming / dark blue wave sang backward from the bow." This
is one of those rare lines of poetry that make the reading
of poetry such a joy, as it works in two mutually enriching
directions. Not only does the line present a clear and
accurate image to fulfill the needs of the poem, but it is
also memorable enough to change forever what a reader will
see whenever he or she stands in the bow of a fast-running
boat.

In the following passage, where Helen addresses Hector,
Fitzgerald’s first line carries some degree of nobility in
the self-directed insults, but the words lack efficacy

because they seem too impersonal:

"Brother dear--
dear to a whore, a nightmare of a woman!"

With the repetition of the word "dear," Fitzgerald cleverly
ties the initial address to the following line (and ties the
insults to Helen herself) while also recalling the first
word of Homer’s line: 6060 ("brother-in-law"). But perhaps
he is too clever, thereby missing the direct impact of the
original. In Homer’s line--

6060 60620 x0000 x0x000x0000 0x00060000 (6.344)

("brother-in-law of me, dog, evil-doer, horrible-one")

246
--the pronoun is in the genitive, and all three insulting
words that follow are also in the genitive--tying them
directly back to 60620 with a clarity that is possible only
in an inflected language such as Greek. Fitzgerald, working
in uninflected English, makes no attempt at an equivalent,
and leaves the line sounding impersonal and therefore
weakened.
In Hector’s prayer for his son Fitzgerald has mixed
success:
"0 Zeus

and all immortals, may this child, my son,

become like me a prince among the Trojans.

Let him be strong and brave and rule in power

at Ilion; then someday men will say

‘This fellow is far better than his father!’

seeing him home from war, and in his arms

the bloodstained gear of some tall warrior slain--

making his mother proud."
One line here is perfect: "Let him be strong and brave and
rule in power"--if, that is, it is read properly. The line
consists entirely of monosyllables (except "power," which is
almost one); this might seem unhomeric, but the strength of
the English language often lies in its monosyllables. The
line is simple and direct, noble, and rapid enough. The
initial pseudo-dactyl starts the line moving quickly, and
the remaining rapid feet, effectively trochees, keep moving.
The line should not be too swift, however, because there is
a risk of false parallelism here. "Strong" and "brave" are
adjectives, and so work together, but the verb "rule" must

be separated from them. A good reading of the line will

provide a brief caesura after "brave." It is not indicated

247
in the text, as a comma would be too heavy a stop; but the
hesitation must be heard or felt, nonetheless.

The secondary quote is not so good. "This fellow" sounds
like it should refer to a school-chum, not a Trojan prince.
And the triple alliteration on E hardly lends nobility to
the line. The last two lines are also less than superb.
"Some tall warrior slain" completely misses the effect of
x165000 60200 00600. 60100 has several possible
connotations, but certainly "tall" is not one of them. And
if not in the Greek, what can a word such as "tall" possibly
add to the translation? In the last line, "making his
mother proud" is reasonably equivalent in sense, but lacks
all the spirit of X00650 66 ¢0600 00100.

Success is only partial again near the opening of book
16, where Patroclus pleads with Achilles:

". . . God forbid this rage you nurse

should master me. You and your fearsome pride!

What good will come of it to anyone, later,

unless you keep disaster from the Argives?

Have you no pity?

Peleus, master of horse, was not your father,

Thetis was not your mother! Cold grey sea

and sea-cliffs bore you, making a mind so harsh."
"You and your fearsome pride!" is not bad in itself, but it
captures none of the fascinating nuance of the oxymoronic
02000610 ("woful-valourous" [sic], according to Autenreich).

The next two lines lose a great deal of their force at
the word "it." Nestled in the midst of a string of two-

letter words, the antecedent of "it" is not immediately

apparent. A moment’s reflection finds "pride" in the

248
previous line, although "it" could also be "rage," from the
line before that. Either way, the sentence has missed the
point, because no one could expect to benefit from Achilles’
pride or rage. In the original, the question is: "How
shall some other one benefit 060" ("from you")--referring to
Achilles the man, not his pride or his rage. To make things
just a bit worse, "anyone, later" is a weak substitute for
01100 00570000 ("born afterward" or "posterity").

On the other hand, the half-line "Have you no pity?" is
superb for the Greek 001660 ("pitiless one"). As much as
02000610 is complicated, so this term is simple and direct,
and so Fitzgerald’s question, direct and noble, and
highlighted by the half-line construction, is perfectly
appropriate.

Where Hector fatally wounds Patroclus, Fitzgerald’s
rendition is able, but one line especially bears mention:

But Hektor, seeing that his brave adversary

tried to retire, hurt by the spear wound, charged
straight at him through the ranks and lunged for him
low in the flank, driving the spearhead through.

He crashed, and all Akhaian troops turned pale.

”50100 6' 00 626601H0100x100 067000000

00 000x0§606000, 6661006000 0&6? x01x0,

07x500160 00 02 0106 x010 015x00, 0010 66 60002

0650100 60 x606000, 610000 66 x01x00 610006'

60000060 66 06060, 0670 6' 0x0x6 1000 'Ax0100'
(16.818-22)

(But Hector, when he beheld great-souled Patroclus
drawing back, smitten with the sharp bronze, came nigh
him through the ranks, and smote him‘with.a thrust of his
spear in the nethermost belly, and.drave the bronze.clean

through; and he fell with a thud, and sorely grieved the
host of the Achaeans.) (literal prose of Murray)

249
This last line, not literal but maintaining the sense, is
clearly the best version of all. There are many interesting
possibilities with literal translations of these words, but
all of them are blind alleys, ultimately unsatisfying.
Fitzgerald allows himself just enough room to cut through to
the essence in the first half of the line, and to find a
clear and reflective image for the second part. The line
reverberates with significance in this context, but one also
easily imagines it being used, after being put to memory, to
comment on other situations literary and non-literary.

After one reads enough different Iliads, a difference
seems to become more and more apparent, between translations
written by scholars and those written by poets. More and
more, one appreciates the poets. Their translations are by
no means better in all respects, but they are a greater joy
to read. The better versions by scholars tend to be
"solid," and "accurate"--important virtues, to be sure. But
the better versions by poets are the ones that remind us how
great Homer was, and how wonderful poetry can be.

Fitzgerald is a poet, and it shows. His translation of the
Iliad may be erratic, but it often speaks to the heart in

unexpected and exciting ways.

ROBERT EAGLES, The Iliad (1990)
Fagles’ is the most recent complete translation of the
Iliad. This work sits comfortably in the middle path in

several respects. It is freer than Lattimore’s--regarding

250
epithets and repetitions, and in general--but not so free as
Fitzgerald’s. Its meter is a loose six-beat, similar in
that way to Lattimore’s, but it sometimes varies to five
beats--moving toward Fitzgerald’s--or sometimes three or
seven. It is more poetic than Lattimore’s, but not so
poetic as Fitzgerald’s. It simplifies and clarifies more
than either Lattimore’s or Fitzgerald’s, but not so much as
earlier annotated prose versions.

Fagles himself, in his preface, says he has found "a
middle ground" (x) between the oral style of Homer and the
literary style of Virgil, and also between the literal words
of the Greek original and the literary possibilities of an
English translation. His metrics, too, he calls "a flexible
middle ground."

A middle ground is often found even in the reviews of
this work--neither total enthusiasm nor terrible criticism.
"His version is undeniably rapid," says Hugh Lloyd-Jones.
"It is also plain and direct; but . . . both its thought and
language are sometimes £99 plain. . . . [H]e is deficient
in nobility" (31). Some comments focus on the violence of
the work, e.g.: "Men die more horribly in the new
translation. Guts uncoil and spill: brains splatter inside
helmets. The deaths themselves are the same . . . but
Fagles’ diction more often carries the awful sounds of
hacking, screaming and clawing the earth" (D. Mason 173).
Another says: "War may become possible again. When it

does, we shall need this Iliad very much. . . . [Fagles]

 

251
conveys, far better than either Lattimore or Fitzgerald, the
psychological experience of combat and war" (Pearcy). Susan
Kristol offers perhaps the most insightful criticism. Like
many reviewers, she is not completely satisfied: "The
results are mixed." But, she adds, "Perhaps the fault lies
not in the translator but in ourselves, a generation that
shies away from nobility. Fagles has given us a translation
appropriate to an unheroic age. It tastes great, but it’s
less filling" (36).

This translation, then, is characterized by compromise
and evenness--it rarely falls flat, and it rarely soars.‘
All in all, Fagles’ is not a bad translation; over the long
haul, I probably enjoy it more than Lattimore, Fitzgerald,
or Hammond. It may indeed turn out to be very successful--
poetic enough to show readers that the Iliad is indeed a
poem, yet prosaic enough to remain accessible to novice
readers. But with so many compromises involved, with the
safety of the middle ground so often chosen, it is hard to
conceive of the work as destined for greatness. It has
closed the door, perhaps, on the middle ground; but there is
still room for a new translation somewhere in the outer

reaches.

 

‘One possible exception to evenness is a tendency toward
goriness, which is an excess of a sort, though not inherently
positive or negative.

252
In the invocation Fagles carefully arranges his lines to

reflect something of Homer’s:

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.

Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,

Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.
At times his placement of words is as strong as the
original’s: "Rage" leads off the first line; "murderous"
the second, reflecting Homer closely. These lines end
strongly, usually on the most important words of each line--
Achilles (second to rage, of course), losses, so many sturdy
souls, carrion, end, clashed. These line endings do not
match Homer’s, but they help make the English stronger in
its own right. The lines, although rearranged for English,
still manage to correspond closely to the line units of
Homer. Does the movement of Fagles’ lines suggest Homer?
Only faintly, having to do with length more than anything
else. At best, they do not immediately suggest something
that is not Homer. This opening, then, is hardly a failure;
it has several good points, as demonstrated above. But who
will remember it?

Where Apollo descends to deliver the plague, Fagles’

passage is close to the literal word, and always within the

sense, always perfectly clear:

E—r-r

253
Down he strode from Olympus’ peaks, storming at heart
with his bow and hooded quiver slung across his
shoulders.
The arrows clanged at his back as the god quaked with
rage,
the god himself on the march and down he came like
night.
Over against the ships he dropped to a knee, let fly a
shaft
and a terrifying clash rang out from the great silver
bow.
First he went for the mules and circling dogs but then,
launching a piercing shaft at the men themselves,
he cut them down in droves--
and the corpse-fires burned on, night and day, no end
in sight.
It seems like a competent rendering of the original, yet it
is not what it should be. The passage reads more like the
descent of a man than of a god. It does not have the
directness and the power that Apollo’s descent requires. In
the third line, the pronoun his precedes its "antecedent"
ggg, and the effect is vaguely disturbing. Then the middle
clause of that sentence--"the god himself on the march"--is
jammed in with awkward grammar. Even though the sense is
clear, the effect is again faintly disconcerting, where all
should be plain and direct and full of power and awe. In
the next line, Fagles transforms the original’s 60610
("sat") into "dropped to a knee." What a clever strategy it
might seem, making the action more specific and more

realistic for an archer. The problem is that Apollo, the

archer-god, must remain larger than life,‘ and "dropped to a

 

’One might argue that the gods of Homer’s world seem
surprisingly human. But where the gods touch the lives of
humans, especially at a terrible moment such as this, the
sense of "larger than life" is still important.

254
knee" is so specific and realistic that he is suddenly
reduced to the scale of mortal man. Furthermore, Fagles’
"meter," if we can call it that, fails him here. Some kind
of cadence would help this descent, even if it did not
remain regular throughout the passage. But Fagles’ beats
are just beats, neither on nor off the meter, and as a
result we do not feel Apollo’s coming; we are only told
about it.

The following three passages are better suited to Fagles’
style; the lack of a solid meter is no problem, as the
variable line handles the actions of sailors and others:

And once they had entered the harbor deep in bays

they furled and stowed their sails in the black ship,

they lowered the mast by the forestays, smoothly,

quickly let it down on the forked mast-crutch

and rowed her into a mooring under oars.

Out went the bow-stones--cables fast astern--

and the crew themselves climbed out in the breaking

leadiigrgfit the sacrifice for the archer god Apollo,

and out of the deep-sea ship Chryseis stepped too.
Fagles’ narrative is clear at all points, except the phrase
"deep in bays" for 00106600600. The phrase "climbed out in
the breaking surf" for 605000 602 0070201 00100000 is
particularly good; it is not quite literal but certainly
follows the general sense, and it provides a good visual
image, a human touch that is perfectly appropriate here, as
opposed to Apollo’s descent. Fagles uses "sacrifice" for
6x0160600, better perhaps than Rouse’s "offering," but

still a compromise choice, neither as clear as Fitzgerald’s

"cattle," nor as precise as "hecatomb."

255
Fagles’ prose-like lines are comfortable throughout the
explanation of the ritual, never awkward or obscure, even in

potential troublespots:

The work done, the feast laid out, they ate well
and no man’s hunger lacked a share of the banquet.
When they had put aside desire for food and drink,
the young men brimmed the mixing bowls with wine
and tipping first drops for the god in every cup
they poured full rounds for all. . . .

00100 6062 00000010 06000 1610x0016 16 60210,
6050001', 0066 11 00000 6660610 601100 60000.
00100 6062 060100 x02 6601000 65 6000 6010,
£00001 060 x0010000 6fl6016¢0010 001020,
0000000 6' 000 00010 60008006001 660060010'
(1.457-71)

(Then, when they had ceased from their labour and had
made ready the meal, they feasted, nor did their hearts
lack aught of the equal feast. But when they had put
from them the desire of food and.drink, the youths filled
the bowls brim full of drink and served out to all, first

pouring drops for libation into the cups.) (literal prose
of Murray)

For 601100 61000 Fagles says smoothly "no man’s hunger
lacked a share of the banquet." Three lines later, "tipping
first drops for the god in every cup" for 60005006001
660060010 is clear enough not to seem to need further
explanation, as so many other versions do.

In the wind and water of the last of these three
passages, Fagles is solidly competent, plain and direct at

all points:

The Archer sent them a bracing following wind,
they stepped the mast, spread white sails wide,
the wind hit full and the canvas bellied out
and a dark blue wave, foaming up at the bow,
sang out loud and strong as the ship made way,
skimming the whitecaps, cutting toward her goal.

H

256
He inserts a word or phrase of his own here and there, such
as "bracing" and "the wind hit full," and narrows x000
("wave") to "whitecaps," but these changes are minor and
helpful, and do not depart from the general sense of the
original. "Sang out loud and strong" is good solid writing.
There is no stumbling here, nothing disconcerting--but there
are no great heights, either.
At Hector’s prayer for his son Fagles is again solid:

"Zeus, all you immortals! Grant this boy, my son,

may be like me, first in glory among the Trojans,

strong and brave like me, and rule all Troy in power

and one day let them say, ‘He is a better man than his

father!’--

when he comes home from battle bearing the bloody gear

of the mortal enemy he has killed in war--

a joy to his mother’s heart."
Some lines are very good, such as "Strong and brave like me,
and rule all Troy in power," which captures the sense and
spirit of the original, and the secondary quote, "He is a
better man than his father!", which leaves out 001100 in
order to make a stronger clause. Both of these lines have a
more distinct rhythm than Fagles usually provides, and in
these highly emotional spots, the rhythm helps. "Of the
mortal enemy he has killed in war" works less well; the
rhythm is gone, and the swift movement; "mortal" and "in
war" are unnecessary, and all the poetry is lost. "A joy to
his mother’s heart" regains some of the poetry, but the
damage is done.

Fagles renders the killing of Patroclus with more

immediate violence than we are used to:

257
Hector waiting, watching

the greathearted Patroclus trying to stagger free,

seeing him wounded there with the sharp bronze

came rushing into him right across the lines

and rammed his spearshaft home,

stabbing deep in the guts, and the brazen point

went jutting straight out through Patroclus’ back.

Down he crashed--horror gripped the Achaean armies.
This might be tame stuff to a reader of slasher novels, but
Fagles is certainly headed in that bloody direction. He
uses strong verbs and participles throughout this passage to
portray Hector’s decisive action, the violence of his spear,
and the results. This is not subtle, nor is it noble--but
one wonders if moments of violence should ever be noble. It
certainly is plain and direct in its diction and ideas.

The greatest strength of Fagles’ Iliad, in fact, lies in

a constant plainness and directness. It has problems: it
is not as noble as it could be; it often does not have the
power and emotion of the original; its rhythm is not
especially rapid or homeric in any way except the general
length of the line. But its diction is never pretentious,
and the presentation of ideas and images is always clear.
In this way it is readable without seeming to pander--
through an overly colloquial diction--to the lowest tastes.

Its series of compromises do keep the work from greatness,

but they allow for a satisfying read.

*Chapter Seven*

Repetition of Parts of Iliad 5.720-67 at 8.381-96

One way to judge a translation of Homer is to examine how
the repetitions are handled. The importance of this
question is evident in the fact that, according to Carl
Eduard Schmidt’s Parallel-home; (1885), over eighteen
hundred lines in the Iliad and Odyssey are repeated without
change (Whallon 74). Where Homer uses entire lines and even
groups of lines in more than one place, does the translator
preserve these to the same degree, or does he change them
(for whatever reason, be it metrical necessity, reader
interest, or carelessness)? Is the change from one passage
to the next a condensation, an omission, a difference in
diction or syntax, or merely different punctuation?

Opinions will differ on the best way to handle
repetitions, but the importance of preserving them depends
in part on the intentions of the translator.

"Retrospective" translations (see Chapter One) should
preserve the repetitions as exactly as possible, while
"Prospective" translations have less obligation to do so.

In other words, any translator who makes claims about
literalness or usefulness for teaching Homer should preserve
the repetitions so as to illustrate this important aspect of
the Iliad. Someone like Pope, on the other hand, who, while

reflecting some of Homer, was also making a work of art that

258

259
stands on its own merits, might not be expected to preserve
repetitions perfectly.

In fact any poetic translations with requirements of
rhyme and meter might be allowed some leeway in making the
transition from non-repeated passage to repeated, and back
again, but prose translations certainly have no such
restrictions.

Early translators can be forgiven for treating
repetitions as faults that needed to be repaired or
obscured. But by the late nineteenth century the idea of
the homeric formula was widely known, and by the 19208 the
integral importance of formulas in the construction of the
Iliad had been made quite clear. Contemporary translators
may still puzzle over how best to handle repetitions, but

certainly the negative cast has been removed.

We can get some idea of how repetitions have been handled
by a survey of translations focusing on one example of a
sizable repetition. It happens that four groups of lines
from Iliad 5.720-67, ranging in size from one to eight
lines, were placed one after another and repeated line-for-

line at 3.381-96:l

 

‘The repetition in the original is not completely
straightforward. The last of the lines from Book 5 shown
here, that is 5.767, becomes the first line of the repetition
in Book 8, that is 8.381. Then the first line from Book 5
(720) becomes the second line (382) of the repetition, and the
rest follows in order.

It should also be noted that while 5.767 and 8.381 are
identical in letter, they differ slightly in meaning; the

260

0 060 6001x00600 x0000000x00 601060 200000
2H00, 006060 060, 0070100 06701010 K060010.
(5.720-21)

.A0100 'A000050, x0600 A100 02716x010,

060100 060 x016x6060 60000 001000 60' 00661,
00115100, 00 0' 0010 00100010 x02 x006 x60050'
0 66 x1100’ 606000 A100 06¢6107606100

166x6010 60 0616000 000000610 60x0066010.
(5.733-37)

60 6' 0x60 016760 0002 600610, 10(610 6' 67x00

60100 0670 01160060, 10 6000001 015x00 006000
00000, 01050 16 x016006101 06010000100.

5H00 66 0001171 0000 60600561' 00' 200000'
001600101 66 00101 00x00 0000000, 00 6x00 0001,
100 601161000101 06700 0000000 00100060 16,
0060 000x12001 0vx1000 06000 06' 601062001.

10 00 61' 001000 x6010006x600 6x00 200000'

(5. 745-52)

“00 6001', 006' 0050006 060 160x0160o0 2H00,
(5.767)

“Q0 6001', 006' 0050006 060 160x016000 2H00,

0 060 6001x00600 x0000000x00 601060 200000
2H00, 006060 060, 0070100 06701010 K060010.
00100 'A000050, x0600 A100 02716x010

060100 060 x016x6060 60000 001000 60' 00661
001x5100, 00 0' 0010 00100010 x02 x006 X60050,
0 66 x1100’ 606000 A100 0606107606100

160x6010 60 0616000 000000610 60x0066010.

60 6' 0x60 016760 0002 600610, 100610 6' 67x00
60100 0670 01160060, 10 6000001 015x00 006000
00000, 01050 16 x016006101 06010000100.

1H00 66 0001171 0000 60600561' 00' 200000'
001600101 66 00101 00x00 0000000, 00 6x00 '0001,
100 601161000101 06700 0000000 00100060 16,
0060 000x12001 00x1000 06000 06' 601062001.

10 00 61' 001000 K6010006x600 6x00 200000.
(8.381-96)

(Then Hera, the queenly goddess, daughter of great
Cronos, went to and fro harnessing the horses of golden
frontlets, [literal prose of Murray 5.720-21]

But Athene, daughter of Zeus that beareth the aegis,
let fall upon her father’s floor her soft robe, richly

 

unspoken pronoun for 60010 changes gender, from masculine at
5.767 to feminine at 8.381--i.e. from "he spoke" to "she
spoke."

261

broidered, that herself had wrought and her hands had
fashioned, and put on her the tunic of Zeus, the cloud-
gatherer, and arrayed her in armour for tearful war.
[5.733-37]

Then she stepped upon the flaming car and grasped her
spear, heavy and huge and strong, wherewith she
vanquisheth the ranks of men--of warriors with whom she
is wroth, she, the daughter of the mighty sire. And Hera
swiftly touched the horses with the lash, and self-hidden
groaned upon their hinges the gates of heaven which the
Hours had in their keeping, to whom are entrusted great
heaven and Olympus, whether to throw open the thick cloud
or shut it to. There through the gate they drave their
horses patient of the goad; [5.745-52]

So spake he, and the goddess, white-armed Hera, failed
not to harken, . . . [5.767]

So spake she, and the goddess, white-armed Hera,
failed not to hearken. She then went to and fro
harnessing the horses of golden frontlets, even Hera, the
queenly goddess, daughter of great Cronos; ***2 but
Athene, daughter of Zeus that beareth.the aegis, let fall
upon her father's floor her soft robe, richly broidered,
that herself had wrought and her hands had fashioned, and
put on her the tunic of Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, and
arrayed her in armour for tearful war. *** Then she
stepped.upon the flaming car and grasped her spear, heavy
and huge and strong, wherewith she vanquisheth the ranks
of men, of warriors with whom she is wroth, she the
daughter of the mighty sire. And Hera swiftly touched
the horses with the lash, and self-hidden groaned upon
their hinges the gates of heaven which the Hours had in
their keeping, to whom are entrusted great heaven and
Olympus, whether to throw open the thick cloud or shut it
to. There through the gate they drave their horses
patient of the goad. [8.381-96])

 

2I have used a triple asterisk-~here and in every other
translation guoted--to mark off the three parts of the passage
from Book 8 that correspond to the three groups of lines from
Book 5. Line 8.381 of course corresponds to 5.767, which is
actually a fourth group of its own. For the sake of
simplicity, however, 8.381 is not marked separately but is
instead considered to belong to the first part.

262
Twenty-two translations are examined below; They are grouped
according to the chapter plan of this dissertation, and are

arranged chronologically within each group.

Heroic Couplot and Ballad-Honour. Translations
GEORGE CHAPMAN (1612)

. . . Her golden-bridled steeds
Then Saturn's daughter brought abroad; . . .

Minerva wrapt her in the robe, that curiously she

wove,

With glorious colours, as she sate on th' azure floor
of Jove,

And wore the arms that he puts on, bent to the tearful
field.

Then to her shining chariot her vig’rous feet ascend;

And in her violent hand she takes his grave, huge,
solid lance,

With which the conquests of her wrath she useth to
advance,

And overturn whole fields of men, to show she was the
Seed

Of him that thunders. Then heav'n's Queen, to urge her
horses’ speed,

Takes up the scourge, and forth they fly. The ample
gates of heav’n

Rung, and flew open of themselves; the charge whereof
is giv’n,

With all Olympus, and the sky, to the distinguish'd
Hours,

That clear, or hide it all in clouds, or pour it down
in show'rs.

This way their scourge-obeying horse made haste . . .

This grace she slack'd not . . .
Juno prepar'd her horse, whose manes ribands of gold

enlac’d. ***

Pallas her party-colour'd robe on her bright shoulders
cast,

Divinely wrought with her own hands, in th’ entry of
her sire.

Then put she on her ample breast her under-arming tire,

And on it her celestial arms. *** The chariot straight
she takes,

263

With her huge heavy violent lance, with which she
slaughter makes

Of armies fatal to her wrath. Saturnia whipp'd her
horse,

And heav'n-gates, guarded by the Hours, op'd by their
proper force.

Through which they flew. . . .

In this case, there is no exact repetition at all. The
general sense is the same throughout, but never the words

themselves.

THOMAS HOBBES (1675)

And Juno ready made herself to go,
Pallas threw off her robe, and took Jove’s coat,
And with the same she there herself array'd.
And then her breast with armour covered,
And to the chariot up she went, and sat,
And her great heavy spear takes in her hands
The spear wherewith, when she displeased is,
She scatters of proud kings the armed bands.
Then Juno with the whip was not remiss,
And of itself flew open heaven-gate,
Though to the Seasons, Jove the power gave
Alone to judge of early and of late.
And out the Goddesses their horses drave.

Juno took this commission willingly.

Then Juno to her car the horses brought. ***
To Jove’s house Pallas went, and on the floor

Threw down her long robe, and put on Jove's coat.
And then her breast with armour covered.

[And on her shoulder hung her fearful shield.) ***
Then took her heavy spear with brazen head,

Wherewith she breaketh squadrons in the field.
Then open of itself flew heaven-gate,

(Though to the Seasons Jove the power gave
Alone to judge of early and of late)

And out the Goddesses the horses drave.

264
There is no repetition in the first set.3 In the second
Hobbes repeats one line where Homer does--"And then her
breast with armour covered"--but then he also repeats the
next line where Homer doesn’t--"And on her shoulder hung her
fearful shield.W' In the third set the last three lines of

passages A & B are identical except for punctuation.

ALEXANDER POPE (1715)

And now heaven's empress calls her blazing car.

At her command rush forth the steeds divine;

Rich with immortal gold their trappings shine.
Pallas disrobes; her radiant veil untied,

With flowers adorn’d, with art diversified

(The labor'd veil her heavenly fingers wove),

Flows on the pavement of the court of Jove.

Now heaven's dread arms her mighty limbs invest,

Jove’s cuirass blazes on her ample breast:

Deck’d in sad triumph for the mournful field,

The goddess thus the imperial car ascends;

Shook by her arm the mighty javelin bends,

Ponderous and huge; that when her fury burns,

Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o'erturns.
Swift at the scourge the ethereal coursers fly,

While the smooth chariot cuts the liquid sky.

Heaven's gates spontaneous open to the powers,

Heaven's golden gates, kept by the winged Hours;

Commission’d in alternate watch they stand,

The sun’s bright portals and the skies command,

Involve in clouds the eternal gates of day,

Or the dark barrier roll with ease away.

The sounding hinges ring: on either side

 

3The phrase "the first set" refers--here and elsewhere--
to the portions of the translation that correspond to lines
5.767 & 720-21 gag 8.381-83 of the original; likewise "the
second set" refers to 5.733-37 and 8.384-88; and "the third
set" tO 5.745-52 and 8.389-96.

The relevant lines from Book 5 will be referred to as
"passage A," the lines from Book 8 as "passage B."

‘In other words, the equivalent in the original is found
at 5.738-39a, but is nowhere in 8.381-97.

265

The gloomy volumes, pierced with light, divide.
The chariot mounts, . . .

He said; Saturnia, ardent to obey,

She ceased, and Juno rein’d the steeds with care:
(Heaven’s awful empress, Saturn’s other heir:) ***
Pallas, meanwhile, her various veil unbound,

With flowers adorn'd, with art immortal crown’d;

The radiant robe her sacred fingers wove

Floats in rich waves, and spreads the court of Jove.
Her father's arms her mighty limbs invest,

His cuirass blazes on her ample breast. ***

The vigorous power the trembling car ascends:

Shook by her arm, the massy javelin bends:

Huge, ponderous, strong! that when her fury burns
Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o'erturns.

Saturnia lends the lash; the coursers fly;
Smooth glides the chariot through the liquid sky.
Heaven's gates spontaneous open to the powers,
Heaven’s golden gates, kept by the winged Hours.
Commission’d in alternate watch they stand,

The sun’s bright portals and the skies command;

Close, or unfold, the eternal gates of day,

Bar heaven with clouds, or roll those clouds away.

The sounding hinges ring, the clouds divide:

Prone down the steep of heaven their course they guide.

Pope repeats just one phrase in the first set: "Heaven's
(awful) empress." In the second, again just one phrase:
"with flowers adorn'd." In the third set, however, a group
of four lines is repeated exactly--starting at "Heaven's
gates" and ending at "skies command"--and several single
lines are either identical or similar between the two

passages.

FRANCIS w. NEWMAN (1856)

Then Juno, venerable queen, daughter of mighty Saturn,
Mov'd busily, and furbish'd out the golden-trapped
horses.
Meanwhile Athene, maiden-imp of Jove the aegis-
holder,

266

Shower'd her robe of brilliancy down on her father’s
pavement,

Whose tissue she herself had wrought and with her hands
embroider'd;

Then, in a martial tunic clad, address'd her in the
armour

Of cloud-collecting Jupiter, to meet the tearful
battle.

Into the flaming chariot then with her feet she
mounted,

And grasp’d her spear,--vast, weighty, stout; wherewith
the ranks she wasteth

Of heroes, whom for wrath she dooms, child of a direful
Father.

But Juno keenly with the scourge the coursers touch'd.
Before them,

The gates of Heaven boom'd aloud, self-moving; so
commanded

The Hours, who hold beneath their trust great Heaven
and Olympus,

Alike to raise or overspread the closely-shutting
darkness.

Betwixt these gates they guided clear the spur-excited
horses,

He spake; nor uncompliant found the whitearm'd
goddess Juno.
She spake, nor uncompliant found the whitearm'd

goddess Juno.

But Juno, venerable queen, daughter of mighty Saturn

Mov’d busily, and furbish'd out the golden-trapped
horses. ***

Meanwhile Athene, maiden-imp of Jove the aegis-holder,

Down on the pavement of her sire shower’d her robe

resplendent,

Whose tissue she herself had wrought and with her hands
embroider'd:

Then, in a martial tunic clad, address’d her in the
armour

Of cloud-collecting Jupiter to meet the tearful battle.

*** Into the flaming chariot then with her feet she
mounted,

And grasp’d her spear,--vast, weighty, stout,--
wherewith the ranks she wasteth

Of heroes, whom for wrath she dooms, child of a direful
Father.

But Juno keenly with the scourge the coursers touch'd.
Before them

The gates of Heaven boom'd aloud, self-moving: so
commanded

267

The Hours, who hold beneath their trust great Heaven
and Olympus,

Alike to raise or overspread the closely-shutting
darkness:

Betwixt these gates they guided clear the spur-excited
horses.

Newman’s passages are almost identical throughout. In
the first set, only one word changes--"then" to "but." In
the second set the second line is rearranged from passage A
to passage B, but the rest is untouched except for
punctuation. In the third, the only changes are of

punctuation.

JOHN STUART BLACKIE (1866)

. . . and for the field of slaughter
Here, that queen of heaven revered, of mighty Kronos
daughter,
Went to equip the steeds that wear the golden frontlets
rare.
The whiles Athené, daughter of the aegis-bearing
Jove,
Dropt on the threshold of her father’s starry hall
above
The delicate various-broidered stole, which her own
fingers wove.
Then to her breast she bound the cloud-compeller’s mail
of might,
And buckled all her fighting gear, to join the tearful
fight;
Then swift the flaming car she mounts, and seizes in
her hand
The long and ponderous spear, that quells full many a
warlike band,
When with wrath divine the high heart swells of that
strong-fathered maid.
Then Heré swayed the lash; the steeds with nimble foot
obeyed;
Wide open flew on self-moved hinge the sounding gates
of heaven,
Kept by the Hours; for to their hands the lofty charge
was given,

268

Open to fling the azure doors of Jove’s bright hall
above,
Or bar them with black cloud; through these the well-
spurred steeds they drove,
Thus spake the sire. Nor white-armed Heré disobeyed
the god,
She said; and white-armed Heré heard her words with
willing mood.
Then forth went she, goddess revered, of mighty Kronos
daughter,
And busily plied the work to harness, for the field of
slaughter,
Her steeds of high celestial breed, with golden
frontlets rare. ***
Meanwhile Athené, seed of Jove, who rules the
thunderous air,
Dropt on the threshold of her sire's star-paved hall
above,
The delicate various-broidered stole, which her own
fingers wove.
Then to her breast she bound the cloud-compeller’s mail
of might,
And buckled all her fighting gear, to join the tearful
fight; ***
Then swift the flaming car she mounts, and seizes in
her hand,
The long and weighty spear, that quells full many a
bristling band,
When with wrath divine the high heart swells of that
strong-fathered maid.
Then Here swayed the lash; the steeds with nimble foot
obeyed;
Wide open flew on self-moved hinge the sounding gates
of heaven,
Kept by the Hours; for to their hands the lofty charge
was given,
To open clear the azure gates of Jove's bright halls
above,
Or bar them with black clouds; through these the well-
spurred steeds they drove.

In the first set no whole line is repeated, only the
ends of lines. In the second set the first line differs
between the two passages, the second is close, and the next

three lines are identical. All of the third set is very

269
close, with only a handful of words changed, and one small

change in syntax.

Blank Verso Translations
WILLIAM COWPER (1791)

Then Juno, Goddess dread, from Saturn sprung,
Her coursers gold-caparison'd prepared
Impatient. . . .

Meantime, Minerva, progeny of Jove,
On the adamantine floor of his abode
Let fall profuse her variegated robe,
Labor of her own hands. She first put on
The corselet of the cloud-assembler God,
Then arm'd her for the field of wo complete.
Into the flaming chariot, and her spear
Seized ponderous, huge, with which the Goddess sprung
From an Almighty father, levels ranks
Of heroes, against whom her anger burns.
Juno with lifted lash urged quick the steeds;
At her approach, spontaneous roar'd the wide-
Unfolding gates of heaven; the heavenly gates
Kept by the watchful Hours, to whom the charge
Of the Olympian summit appertains,
And of the boundless ether, back to roll,
And to replace the cloudy barrier dense.
Spurr'd through the portal flew the rapid steeds;

He spake, nor white-arm’d Juno not obey'd.
So counsell’d Pallas, nor the daughter dread
Of mighty Saturn, Juno, disapproved,
But busily and with dispatch prepared
The trappings of her coursers golden-rein'd. ***
Meantime, Minerva, progeny of Jove,
On the adamantine floor of his abode
Let fall profuse her variegated robe,
Labor of her own hands. She first put on
The corselet of the cloud-assembler God,
Then arm’d her for the field of wo complete. ***
Mounting the fiery chariot, next she seized
Her ponderous spear, huge, irresistible,
With which Jove’s awful daughter levels ranks
Of heroes against whom her anger burns.
Juno with lifted lash urged on the steeds.
At their approach, spontaneous roar'd the wide-
Unfolding gates of heaven; the heavenly gates

270

Kept by the watchful Hours, to whom the charge
Of the Olympian summit appertains,

And of the boundless ether, back to roll,

And to replace the cloudy barrier dense.

Spurr'd through the portal flew the rapid steeds:

In the first set there is no repetition. In the second
set passages A & B are identical except for punctuation. In
the third set the first three lines differ somewhat; the
rest are identical but for punctuation and one word--"her"

changes to "their."

EDWARD EARL OF DERBY (1864)

Offspring of Saturn, Juno, heav’nly Queen,
Herself th' immortal steeds caparison’d,
Adorn’d with golden frontlets: . . .

Pallas, the child of aegis-bearing Jove,
Within her father’s threshold dropp’d her veil,
Of airy texture, work of her own hands;

The cuirass donn’d of cloud-compelling Jove,

And stood accoutred for the bloody fray.

Her fiery car she mounted: in her hand

A spear she bore, long, weighty, tough; wherewith
The mighty daughter of a mighty sire

Sweeps down the ranks of those her hate pursues.

Then Juno sharply touch’d the flying steeds;
Forthwith the gates of Heav'n their portals wide
Spontaneous open'd, guarded by the Hours,

Who Heav'n and high Olympus have in charge
To roll aside, or draw the veil of cloud.
Through these th' excited horses held their way,

He said: the white-arm'd Queen with joy obey’d:
She said: the white-arm’d Queen her word obey'd.
Juno, great Goddess, royal Saturn's child,
The horses brought, with golden frontlets crown’d; ***
While Pallas, child of aegis-bearing Jove,
Within her father’s threshold dropp’d her veil
Of airy texture, work of her own hands;
The cuirass donn'd of cloud-compelling Jove,
And stood accoutred for the bloody fray. ***
The fiery car she mounted; in her hand
A spear she bore, long, weighty, tough; wherewith

271

The mighty daughter of a mighty sire

Sweeps down the ranks of those her wrath pursues.
Then Juno sharply touch’d the flying steeds;
Forthwith the gates of Heav'n their portals wide
Spontaneous open’d, guarded by the Hours,

Who Heav’n and high Olympus have in charge,

To roll aside or close the veil of cloud.

Through these th’ excited horses held their way.

In the first set the first line is close, but the rest
is not. In the second set the first line is close, and the
rest is identical. In the third set, again, the first line

is close and the rest is identical, except for punctuation.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1870)

. . . Juno the august,
Daughter of mighty Saturn, laid in haste
The harness, with its ornaments of gold,
Upon the horses.
Then Pallas, daughter of the god who bears
The aegis, on her father’s palace-floor
Let fall in dainty folds her flowing robe
Of many colors, wrought by her own hand,
And, putting on the mail of Jupiter
The Cloud-compeller, stood arrayed in arms
For the stern tasks of war. . . .
Then stepped into her shining car, and took
Her massive spear in hand, heavy and huge,
With which whole ranks of heroes are o’erthrown
Before the daughter of the Mighty One
Incensed against them. Juno swung the lash
And swiftly urged the steeds. Before their way,
On sounding hinges, of their own accord,
Flew wide the gates of heaven, which evermore
The Hours are watching,--they who keep the mount
Olympus and the mighty heaven, with power
To open or to close their cloudy veil.
Thus through the gates they drave the obedient steeds,
He spake, and white-armed Juno instantly
Obeyed him. . . .
She ended, and the white-armed deity
Juno obeyed her. Juno the august,
The mighty Saturn's daughter, hastily

272

Caparisoned the golden-bitted steeds. ***
Meanwhile, Minerva on the palace-floor

Of Jupiter let drop the gorgeous robe

Of many hues, which her own hands had wrought,
And, putting on the Cloud-compeller's mail,

Stood armed for cruel war. *** And then she climbed
The glorious car, and took in hand the spear--
Huge, heavy, strong--with which she overthrows
The serried phalanxes of valiant men

Whene’er this daughter of the Almighty One

Is angered. Juno bore the lash, and urged

The coursers to their speed. The gates of heaven
Opened before them of their own accord,--

Gates guarded by the Hours, on whom the care

Of the great heaven and of Olympus rests,

To open or to close the wall of cloud.

Through these they guided their impatient steeds.

Very little is repeated by Bryant here. In the first
set "white-armed," "obeyed," and "Juno the august" are
repeated, but nothing else. In much the same way the second
and third sets repeat here and there a word or short phrase-
-such as "Cloud-compeller" or "gates of heaven"--but little
else. The two passages keep the same general sense and even

similar syntax, but rarely the same words.

Prose Translations
"A GRADUATE OF OXFORD" (1821)

Then Juno, venerable goddess, daughter of mighty Saturn,
proceeding, harnessed her golden-reined horses.

And Minerva, the daughter of aegis bearing Jove, flung
off, upon the floor of her father, the beautiful
embroidered veil,--that, which she had herself made and
worked with her own hands; and, putting on her tunic, in
the armour of cloud collecting Jove she arrayed herself
for tearful battle.

And she stept into the flaming car, and took her spear,
heavy, huge, and strong, with which she overthrows the
ranks of heroes, with whom she is angry--descended from
a potent father. And Juno swiftly urged on the horses
with the lash: and grated of their own accord the gates

273

of heaven, which the Hours kept, to whom are entrusted
the vast heaven and Olympus, both to remove the thick
cloud, and to replace it. 'Then, through them, they drove
the horses on, obedient to the lash;

Thus he spake, nor did the white-armed goddess Juno
refuse,

Thus she spake; nor did the white-armed goddess Juno
refuse. Then Juno, the elder goddess, daughter of the
mighty Saturn, departing, harnessed the golden-reined
horses; *** and Minerva, daughter of aegis-bearing Jove,
upon the floor of her father's mansion, threw off the
beautiful variegated robe, that which she herself had
made, and worked with her own hands; and putting on the
tunic, with the weapons of cloud-collecting JOve, she
armed herself for tearful battle. *** And into the
flaming car she stept, and seized her spear, heavy,
large, and strong, with which she subdues the ranks of
heroes, with whom she, the offspring of a powerful
father, is angry. And Juno quickly urged on the horses
with the lash; and of their own accord grated the gates
of heaven, which the Hours kept, to whom are entrusted
the mighty Heaven and Olympus, both to remove the dark
cloud, and to replace it. 'Then, through these they drove
the flogged horses.

The repetition here is close, but not exact. In the
first set the first sentence is identical in the two
passages (except, of course, for the personal pronoun). The
second sentence is the same in syntax, but differs in
diction. In the second set again the syntax is unvaried,
but the words and even the sense change--e.g. "armour" to
"weapons," and "arranged" to "armed." In the third set, the
sense is not changed, but in one place a different word is
used, in another the same words are used but in different
order. In addition, the word "grated" is flagged with a
different note in each passage. In passage A the note reads

"11g; which creaked as they spontaneously opened." In

 

passage B it reads "i.e. flew open."

 

274
ANDREW LANG, WALTER LEAF & ERNEST MYERS (1883)

So Hera the goddess queen, daughter of great Kronos, went
her way to harness the gold-frontleted steeds;

And Athene, daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus, cast down at
her father's threshold her woven vesture many-coloured,
that.herself had.wrought.and.her'hands.had fashioned, and
put on her the tunic of Zeus the cloud-gatherer, and
arrayed her in her armour for dolorous battle.

Upon the flaming chariot set she her foot, and grasped
her heavy spear, great and stout, wherewith she
vanquished the ranks of men, even of heroes with whom she
of the awful sire is wroth. Then Hera swiftly smote the
horses with the lash; self-moving groaned upon their
hinges the gates of heaven whereof the Hours are warders,
to whom is committed great.heaven and Olympus, whether to
throw open the thick cloud or set it to. There through
the gates guided they their horses patient of the lash.

So spake he, and the white-armed goddess Hera
disregarded not,

So spake she, and the white-armed goddess Hera
disregarded not. So Hera the goddess queen, daughter of
great Kronos, went her way and harnessed the golden-
frontleted steeds; *** and Athene, daughter of aegis-
bearing Zeus, cast down at her father's threshold her
woven vesture many-coloured, that herself had wrought and
her hands had fashioned; and put on her the tunic of Zeus
the cloud-gatherer, and arrayed her in her armour for
dolorous battle. *** Upon the flaming chariot set she her
foot, and grasped her heavy spear great and stout,
wherewith she vanquisheth the ranks of men, even of
heroes with whom she of the awful sire is wroth. Then
Hera swiftly smote the horses with the lash; self-moving
groaned upon their hinges the gates of heaven whereof the
Hours are warders, to whom is committed great heaven and
Olympus, whether to throw open the thick cloud or set it
to. There through the gates guided they their horses
patient of the lash.

In the first set the two passages are almost identical;
"to harness" changes to "and harnessed." In the second set

the repetition is perfect but for one mark of punctuation.

In the third there is one change of tense--"vanquished" goes

275
to "vanquisheth"--and one change in punctuation; all else is

identical.

SAMUEL BUTLER (1898)

Thereon the august goddess, daughter of great Cronus,
began to harness her gold-bedizened steeds.

Meanwhile Athene flung her richly embroidered vesture,
made with her own hands, on to her father’s threshold,
and donned the shirt of Zeus, arming herself for battle.
Then she stepped into her flaming chariot and grasped the
spear, so stout and sturdy and strong, with which she
quells the ranks of heroes who have displeased her» Hera
lashed the horses on, and the gates of heaven bellowed as
they flew open of their own accord--gates over which the
Hours preside, in whose hands are Heaven and Olympus,
either to open the dense cloud that hides them, or to
close it. Through these the goddesses drove their
obedient steeds,

Hera did as he had said.

Thus did she speak and white-armed Hera, daughter of
great Cronus, obeyed her words; she set about harnessing
her gold-bedizened steeds, *** while Athene, daughter of
aegis-bearing Zeus, flung her richly embroidered vesture,
made with her own hands, on to the threshold of her
father, and donned the shirt of Zeus, arming herself for
battle. *** Then she stepped into her flaming chariot,
and.grasped the spear so stout and sturdy and strong'with
which she quells the ranks of heroes who have displeased
her. Hera lashed her horses, and the gates of heaven
bellowed as they flew open of their own accord--gates
over which the Hours preside, in whose hands are heaven
and Olympus, either to open the dense cloud that hides
them or to close it. Through these the goddesses drove
their obedient steeds.

In the first set there is no repetition except the
phrase "her gold-bedizened steeds." In the second set the
repetition is perfect except that the epithet "daughter of

aegis-bearing Zeus" is omitted in passage A. In the third

set the changes are few: "the horses on" becomes "her

 

276

horses" in passage B; "Heaven" loses its capital; and

several commas are moved about.

W.

H.

D. ROUSE (1938)

Then Hera ran about harnessing the horses, and putting on
their golden frontlets--Hera herself the Queen of heaven,
daughter of mighty Cronos!

Then Athena slipped off her soft linen robe, which she
had made and embroidered with her own hands; it fell on
her father's floor, and she put on the tunic of Zeus
Cloudgather, and arrayed herself for the weeping work of
war.

She set her foot in the fiery car, grasping the spear, so
heavy, huge, and strong, with which when she is angry she
vanquishes battalions of fighting men, a true daughter of
her mighty sire. Hera quickly touched up the horses.
The celestial gates opened of themselves, groaning upon
their hinges, those gates which the Seasons used to
guard; for they have a charge of Olympos and high heaven,
to close or unclose the solid cloud. There through the
gates they drove the obedient horses.

Hera lost no time,

So Queen Hera harnessed the horses; *** and Athena
slipt off the robe she had made for herself, and put on
the tunic of Zeus Cloudgatherer for the battle. *** She
took the huge heavy spear which the awful goddess uses to
vanquish the battalions of men, when she is angry, and
mounted the chariot; Hera touched up the obedient horses,
and the celestial gates opened of themselves to let them
through: those gates which the Seasons held in charge,
to open the solid cloud and to close it.

In all three sets here passage B is condensed from

passage A. Some phrases are repeated--"harnessed(ing) the

horses," "the tunic of Zeus Cloudgatherer," "the celestial

gates opened of themselves"--but never whole sentences.

Much of passage A is simply omitted in passage B.

 

277
E. V. RIEU (1950)

So Here, Queen of Heaven and Daughter of mighty Cronos,
went off to put the golden harness on her horses,
Meanwhile, on her Father’s threshold, Athene Daughter
of aegis-bearing Zeus shed her soft embroidered robe,
which she had made with her own hands, put on a tunic in
its place, and equipped herself for the lamentable work
of war with the arms of Zeus the Cloud-compeller.

Then she stepped into the flaming chariot, gripping the
huge long spear with which she breaks the noble warriors’
ranks when she, the almighty Father’s Child, is roused to
anger.

Here lost no time. She flicked the horses with her
whip, and the Gates of Heaven thundered open for them of
their own accord. They are kept by the Hours, the
Wardens of the broad sky and of Olympus, whose task it is
to close the entrance or to roll away the heavy cloud.
Through these gates the goddesses drove their patient
steeds.

The white-armed goddess Here had no fault to find with
this.

To this the white-armed goddess made no demur. So
Here, Queen of Heaven and Daughter of the mighty Cronos,
went to put the golden harness on her horses, *** while,
on her Father’s threshold, Athene Daughter of aegis-
bearing Zeus shed the soft, embroidered robe which she
had made with her own hands, put on a tunic in its place,
and equipped herself for the lamentable work of war with
the arms of Zeus the Cloud-compeller. *** Then she
stepped into the flaming'chariot, gripping the huge, long
spear with which she breaks the noble warriors’ ranks
when she, the almighty Father’s Child, is roused to
anger. And no sooner was she in than Here started the
horses with her whip.

The Gates of Heaven thundered open for them of their
own accord. They are kept by the Hours, the Wardens of
the broad sky and of Olympus, whose task it is to close
the entrance or to roll away the heavy cloud. Through
these gates the goddesses drove their patient steeds.

In the first set the first sentence differs greatly
between the two passages, but the second sentence is

repeated exactly. The second set differs only at the first

word; the rest is repeated exactly. The third set is

278
repeated exactly at both ends, and differs slightly in the
middle.

MARTIN HAMMOND (1987)

Hera then, queenly goddess, daughter of great Kronos,
busied about the harnessing of the horses with their
golden head-pieces.

And.Athene, daughter of Zeus who holds the aegis, let
slip to the floor‘ of ‘her father’s house her soft
embroidered robe, which she herself had made and worked
with her hands. .And she put on Zeus the cloud-gatherer’s
own tunic in its place, then dressed in her armour for
the misery of war.

She stepped into her flaming chariot, and took up her
spear, the huge, heavy, massive spear with which she
brings low the ranks of men, the heroes who stir the
mighty-fathered goddess into anger. Hera quickly touched
the horses with the whip: and of their own accord the
gates of heaven groaned open, the gates kept by the
Seasons, who have been given charge over the vast heaven
and Olympos, both to push aside the heavy cloud and to
close it to. This way, then, they held their whipped
horses through the gates.

So he spoke, and the white-armed goddess Hera did not
fail to obey.

So she spoke, and the white-armed goddess Hera did not
fail to obey. Hera then, queenly goddess, daughter of
great Kronos, busied about the harnessing of the horses
with their golden head-pieces. *** And Athene, daughter
of Zeus who holds the aegis, let slip to the floor of her
father’ s house her soft embroidered robe, which she
herself had made and worked with her hands. And she put
on Zeus the cloud-gatherer’s own tunic in itSIplace, then
dressed in her armour for the misery of war. *** She
stepped into her flaming chariot, and took up her spear,
the huge, heavy, massive spear with which she brings low
the ranks of men, the heroes who stir the mighty-fathered
goddess into anger. Hera quickly touched the horses with
the whip: and of their own accord the gates of heaven
groaned open, the gates kept by the Seasons, who have
been given charge over the vast heaven and Olympos, both
to push aside the heavy cloud and to close it to. This
way, then, they held their whipped horses through the
gates.

279
In this translation the repetition (including
punctuation) is preserved perfectly, with the single
necessary exception of the personal pronoun in the first

set.

Hexameter Translations
JOHN F. W. HERSCHEL (1866)

. . . then imperial Heré, daughter of Kronos,
Braced on th’ immortal coursers their frontlets of gold
and their harness;
Pallas Athené, daughter of Aegis-bearing Kronion,
Then let fall on the floor of her father’s palace the
mantle
Gloriously wrought which the skill of her own fair
hands had embroidered.
Then in the arms of cloud-compelling Zeus she arrayed

her,

Donning his corslet for dreary war and the horrors of
battle.

Armed, on the fiery car she sprang, firm grasping her
jav’lin,

Stubborn and huge, with whose pond’rous force uplifted
in anger,

Child of a mighty sire, she quells the array of her
foemen.

Forthwith Hera the scourge applied and excited the
coursers.

Clanging, self-open’d, the gates of Heav’n flew wide,
by the Horae
Guarded, to whom are entrusted the portals of Heav’n
and Olympus;
Or to roll back their veil of cloud, or wrap them in
darkness.
Urged to their utmost speed through these the celestial
coursers
Bore them . . .
Thus he spake: and Hera, rejoicing to hear the
permission,
Thus she spake, and the white-armed Heré gladly
assented,
And without further delay th’ imperial daughter of
Kronos

280

Braced on th’ immortal coursers their frontlets of gold

and their harness. ***
Pallas Athené, daughter of Aegis-bearing Kronion,

Then let fall on the floor of her father’s palace the
mantle,

Gloriously wrought, which the skill of her own fair
hands had embroidered.

Then in the arms of cloud-compelling Zeus she arrayed

her,

Donning his corslet for dreary war, and the horrors of
battle. ***

Armed, on the fiery car she sprang: firm grasping her
jav’lin,

Stubborn and huge, with whose pond’rous force, uplifted
in anger,

Child of a mighty sire, she quells the array of her
foemen.

Forthwith Hera the scourge applied and excited the
coursers.

Clanging, self-opened, the gates of Heav’n flew wide,
by the Horae

Guarded, to whom are entrusted the portals of Heav’n
and Olympus,

Or to roll back their veil of cloud, or wrap them in
darkness.

Urged to their speed, through these swift dashed the
celestial coursers.

The repetition is here mostly preserved. In the first
set the first line (or two, in passage B) differs, but the
last line is identical in the two passages. In the second
set the repetition is perfect but for punctuation. In the

third the repetition is exact until the last line.

ALEXANDER FALCONER MURISON (1933)

So then Here, the goddess Queen, great Kronos’s
daughter,

Went on her way to get harnessed the horses with
frontlets of gold-work;

Meanwhile the goddess Athene, the daughter of Zeus
aegis-bearer,

Dropt on the floor of her father’s high palace her soft
woollen mantle

Broidered in various wise, which her own hands had
worked and had fashioned,

281

And, having donned in its stead great Zeus the Cloud-
gatherer’s tunic,

All in her armour and arms she arrayed her for dolorous
battle.

Then on the chariot splendid she stept, with her spear
in her hand-grasp,

Huge spear, heavy and stout, wherewith she the ranks of
the warriors

Quells, even such as have stirred up the wrath of the
mighty Sire’s daughter.

Thereupon Here at once laid the lash on the backs of
the horses:

And, self-moving, on hinges a-groaning, the gate of the

heaven

Opened, whereof are the warders the Hours, by Olympos
appointed

Or to set open the thick veil of cloud or to mass it up
closely.

So through the gateway the goddesses drove with the
lash on the horses.

So spake Zeus; and the white-armed Here followed his
bidding.

Thus spake she, and the white-armed goddess Here
demurred not.

So then Here, the goddess Queen, great Kronos’s
daughter,

Went on her way to get harnessed the horses with
frontlets of gold-work. ***

Meanwhile the goddess Athene, the daughter of Zeus
aegis-bearer,

Dropt on the floor of her father’s high palace her soft
woollen mantle

Broidered in various wise, which her own hands had
worked and had fashioned,

And, having donned in its stead great Zeus the Cloud-
gatherer’s tunic,

All in her armour and arms she arrayed her for dolorous
battle. ***

Then on the chariot splendid she stept, with her spear
in her hand-grasp,

Huge spear, heavy and stout, wherewith she the ranks of
the warriors

Quells, even such as have stirred up the wrath of the
mighty Sire’s daughter.

Thereupon Here at once laid the lash on the backs of
the horses,

And, self-moving, on hinges a-groaning, the gates of
the heaven

Opened, whereof are the warders the Hours, by Olympos
appointed

 

282

Or to set open the thick veil of cloud or to mass it up
closely.

So through the gateway the goddesses drove with the
lash on the horses.

The repetition is very close throughout. The first
sentence differs, but all else is repeated exactly but for a
few marks of punctuation and one letter--"gate" becomes

"gates" in passage B.

WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH 0 WALTER MILLER (1944)

Hera, the honored goddess, the daughter of Cronus, the
mighty,

Straightway hastened to harness her golden-frontleted
horses.

Then, too, Athena, the daughter of Zeus who beareth

the aegis,

Shed at her sire’s own portal the fine, light robe she
was wearing,

Richly embroidered, that she with her own hands toiling
had fashioned.

Thereupon, donning the tunic of Zeus, cloud-massing
Cronion,

She in her harness arrayed her, appointed for dolorous
warfare.

. . . On the flame-bright car she mounted and

seized on her javelin,

Ponderous, massive, and strong, the lance wherewith she
subdueth

Heroes’ ranks she is wroth with, the child of a father
puissant.

Now with her whip lashed Hera in eagerness down on

the horses;

Then, self-moving, the gates of heaven creaked that the
Horae

Keep, to whom are committed the heavens immense and
Olympus,

Whether to open the clouds’ dense compact, whether to
close it.

Then through the gates the goad-enduring horses they
guided.

White-armed Hera in naught disregarded his word,

283

So said she; and the white-armed Hera failed not to

obey her.

Straight she departed, to harness her golden-frontleted
horses.

Hera, the honored goddess, the daughter of Cronus, the
mighty. ***

Meanwhile Pallas, the daughter of Zeus who wieldeth
the aegis,

Shed at her sire’s own portal the fine, light robe she
was wearing,

Richly embroidered, that she with her own hands toiling
had fashioned.

Thereupon, donning the tunic of Zeus, cloud-massing
Cronion,

She in her harness arrayed her, appointed for dolorous
warfare; ***

Then on the flame—bright car she mounted and seized on
her javelin,

Ponderous, massive, and strong, the lance wherewith she
subdueth

Heroes’ ranks she is wroth with, the child of a father
puissant.

Now with the whip lashed Hera in eagerness down on

the horses.

Then, self-moving, the gates of heaven creaked that the
Horae

Keep, unto whom are committed the heaven’s immense and
Olympus,

Whether to open the clouds’ dense compact, whether to
close it.

Then through the gates the goad-enduring horses they
guided.

Once again, the repetition is mostly preserved. In the
first set the first line differs and the second and third
lines are reversed from passage A to B, one of the lines
altered slightly. In the second and third sets the first
line of each differs slightly, while the rest is identical

but for punctuation.

284
Almost Prose and Mostly Prose
RICHMOND LATTIMORE (1951)

. . . But Hera, high goddess, daughter of
Kronos
the mighty, went away to harness the gold-bridled
horses.
Now in turn Athene, daughter of Zeus of the aegis,
beside the threshold of her father slipped off her
elaborate
dress which she herself had wrought with her hands’
patience, F
and now assuming the war tunic of Zeus who gathers
the clouds, she armed in her gear for the dismal
fighting.

 

She set her feet in the blazing chariot and took up a i
spear

heavy, huge, thick, wherewith she beats down the
battalions of fighting

men, against whom she of mighty father is angered.

Hera laid the lash swiftly on the horses; and moving

of themselves groaned the gates of the sky that the
Hours guarded,

those Hours to whose charge is given the huge sky and
Olympos,

to open up the dense darkness or again to close it.

Through the way between they held the speed of their
goaded horses.

So he spoke, nor did the goddess of the white arms,

Hera,
disobey, . .
She spoke, nor failed to persuade the goddess Hera

of the white arms.

And she, Hera, exalted goddess, daughter of Kronos

the mighty, went away to harness the gold-bridled
horses. ***

Now in turn Athene, daughter of Zeus of the aegis,

beside the threshold of her father slipped off her
elaborate

dress which she herself had wrought with her hands’
patience,

and now assuming the war tunic of Zeus who gathers

the clouds, she armed in her gear for the dismal
fighting. ***

She set her feet in the blazing chariot, and took up a
spear,

heavy, huge, thick, wherewith she beats down the
battalions of fighting

285

men, against whom she of mighty father is angered.

Hera laid the lash swiftly on the horses; and moving

of themselves groaned the gates of the sky that the
Hours guarded,

those Hours to whose charge is given the huge sky and
Olympos

to open up the dense darkness or again to close it.

Through the way between they held the speed of their
goaded horses.

The repetition is close in this version. In the first
set the first line differs greatly between the two passages,
the second line differs slightly, and the third is
identical. In the second set the repetition is perfect
without exception, and in the third the only differences are

of punctuation.

ROBERT GRAVES (1959)

. . . and Hera went off to harness her gold-frontleted
chariot-team;

. . . while Athene slipped out of her many-coloured robe
(made by herself), letting it fall in a heap on the
Palace threshold, and changed into a tunic borrowed from
Father Zeus.

. . . and finally grasping the long, stout, heavy spear
which she uses to destroy mortals who have fallen under
Zeus’ awesome displeasure, the goddess mounted beside
Hera.

Hera’s whip cracked, the gates of Heaven groaned
open by themselves to admit her exit, and out the chariot
shot--past a pair of janitresses named the Seasons, whom
Zeus entrusts with the task of parting and drawing the
cloud curtain between Heaven and earth.

Hera nodded agreement . . .

Hera went off to harness her golden-frontleted team,
*** and Athene visited the Palace where she slipped out
of a many-coloured robe (which she had made herself)
letting it fall in a heap on the threshold. Instead, she
borrowed a tunic belonging to Father Zeus, and over it
buckled her armour. *** Then, grasping the heavy, long,
stout spear which she used to destroy mortals who have

 

286

fallen under Zeus’ awesome displeasure, Athene mounted
beside Hera on the glowing chariot. Hera cracked her
whip, the gates of Heaven groaned open by themselves to
allow the exit, and they shot through-~past a pair of
janitresses named the Seasons, whom Zeus entrusts with
the task of‘parting and drawing the cloud curtain.between
Heaven and Earth.

In the first set passage B is condensed, but what remains
is repeated from passage A. In the second set passage A is
less complete than passage B, but again some phrases are
found in both. In the third part the two passages are

substantially the same, with only a few words changed.

ENIS REES (1963)

So honored Hera, daughter of mighty Cronos,
Began to harness the horses with bridles of gold.
And Athena, daughter of aegis-great
Zeus, on the floor of her Father’s palace, shed
The soft robe that she herself had made and
embroidered,
Put on instead the tunic of stormy Zeus,
And armed herself for tearful war. . . .
. . . Then she, the child of an almighty
Father, mounted the flaming car, gripping
The heavy huge spear with which she conquers whole
armies
That have enraged her.
Hera gave the horses a flick
With the lash, and the gates of heaven groaned on their

hinges,

The self-opening gates which are kept by the Seasons,
who have

In their keeping Olympus and all the wide sky, and who
open

Or close the thick clouds as they see fit. On
Through the gates they drove their impatient horses,...

He spoke, and the white-armed goddess Hera was glad
To obey. . . .

And the white-armed Queen of the gods was equally
willing.

287

So honored Hera, daughter of mighty Cronos,

Harnessed the gold-bridled horses. *** And Athena,
daughter

Of Zeus, on the floor of her Father’s palace, shed

The soft robe that she herself had made and
embroidered,

Put on instead the tunic of stormy Zeus,

And armed herself for tearful war. *** Then she,

God’s daughter, mounted the flaming car, gripping

The heavy huge spear with which she conquers whole
armies

That have enraged her. Hera gave the horses a flick

With the lash, and the gates of heaven groaned on their

hinges,

The self-opening gates which are kept by the Seasons,
who have

In their keeping Olympus and all the wide sky, and who
open

And close the thick clouds as they see fit. So on
Through the gates they drove their now impatient
horses.

In the first set the first line differs between the two
passages, the second line is identical, and the third is
changed by half. In the second set the first two lines
differ slightly while the last three are identical. In the
third set the first line and a half differs somewhat, the
last two lines differ slightly, and the remainder is

identical.

ROBERT FITZGERALD (1984)

and Hera, eldest daughter of old KrOnos,
harnessed her team, all golden fringes. . . .

As for Athéna, she cast Off and dropped

her great brocaded robe, her handiwork,

in lapping folds across her father’s doorsill,
taking his shirt, the shirt of Zeus, cloud-masser,
with breast armor, and gear of grievous war.

She stepped aboard the glowing car of Héra

and took the great haft of her spear in hand--
the heavy spear this child of Power can use

to break in wrath long battle lines of fighters.

288

Then at the crack of Héra’s whip

over the horses’ backs, the gates of heaven
swung wide of themselves on rumbling hinges--
gates the Hours keep, for they have charge

of entry to wide heaven and Olympos,

by opening or closing massive cloud.

Passing through these and goading on their team,

. . . At this permission,
Hera whose arms are white as ivory
attended to her horses, their heads nodding
in frontlets of pure gold: the eldest goddess,
Héra, daughter of KrOnos, harnessed them. ***
Meanwhile Athéna at her father’s door
let fall the robe her own hands had embroidered
and pulled over her head a shirt of Zeus.
Armor of grievous war she buckled on, ***
stepped in the fiery car, caught up her spear--
that massive spear with which this child of Power
can break in rage long battle lines of fighters.
Héra flicked at the horses with her whip,
and moving of themselves the gates of heaven
grated a rumbling tone. Their keepers are
the Hours by whom great heaven and Olympos
may be disclosed or shut with looming cloud.
Between these gates the goddesses drove on.

Compared to most recent translations, Fitzgerald’s
version repeats very little at this point. In the first
part nothing is repeated. In the second only the phrase
"grievous war" is found in both passages. In the third set
the phrase "this child of Power" is found in both, and the

next line is very close; the remainder differs.

ROBERT FAGLES (1990)

Hera queen of the gods, daughter of giant Cronus,
launched the work, harnessed the golden-bridled team
Then Athena, child of Zeus whose shield is thunder,
letting fall her supple robe at the Father’s
threshold--
rich brocade, stitched with her own hands’ labor--
donned the battle-shirt of the lord of lightning,
buckled her breastplate geared for wrenching war

289

Then onto the flaming chariot Pallas set her feet

and seized her spear-~weighted, heavy, the massive
shaft

she wields to break the battle lines of fighters

the mighty Father’s daughter storms against.

A crack of the whip--

the goddess Hera lashed the team, and all on their own
force

the gates of heaven thundered open, kept by the
Seasons,

guards of the vaulting sky and Olympus heights
empowered

to spread the massing clouds or close them round once
more.

Now straight through the great gates she drove the
team,
So he urged and the white-armed goddess Hera
obeyed at once. . . .
The white-armed goddess Hera could not resist.
Hera queen of the gods, daughter of giant Cronus
launched the work, harnessed the golden-bridled team
*** while Athena, child of Zeus whose shield is
thunder,

letting fall her supple robe at the Father’s
threshold--

rich brocade, stitched with her own hands’ labor--

donned the battle-shirt of the lord of lightning,

buckled her breastplate geared for wrenching war. ***

Then onto the flaming chariot Pallas set her feet

and seized her spear--weighted, heavy, the massive
shaft

she wields to break the battle lines of fighters

the mighty Father’s daughter storms against.

A crack of the whip--

the goddess Hera lashed the team, and all on their own
force

the gates of heaven thundered Open, kept by the
Seasons,

guards of the vaulting sky and Olympus heights
empowered

to spread the massing clouds or close them round once
more,

and straight through the great gates she drove the
team.

In this, the most recent translation, the repetition is
preserved almost exactly. In the first set the first line

differs but the next two are identical. In the second set

290
all but the first word is identical, except for punctuation.
In the third set all but the first word of the last line is

identical, except for punctuation.

Conclusion
The most consistent trend to be found in these examples
is that recent translations are more likely to keep the
repetition close. Even so there are exceptions, such as F
Lang, Leaf & Myers (1883), which is very close, and '

Fitzgerald (1984), which is not.

 

Avowed degree of literalness is not a particularly
reliable predictor, as "the Graduate of Oxford" is not as
close as we might expect (given statements in his preface
defending the literal translation and its usefulness for
teaching), while Butler and Rouse are closer (despite their
claims of freedom from the literal word).

Perhaps the most striking phenomenon revealed here is
that all three hexameter translations are repeated very
closely. The reasons for this, however, are not immediately

clear.

*Chapter Eight*
Part One: Conclusions
A garble of languages, high baying sounds,
beseeching cadences, surges of rage,
screeches and moans and the plash of beating hands
Made pandemonium which does not relent
but keeps that darkened and timeless element
in turbulence, like sand in a whirlwind.

Dante’s Inferno, Canto III,
Seamus Heaney, trans.

No single translation of the Iliad has managed to gain
universal praise, and no single translation in the future is
likely to, because none can accurately show all aspects of
Homer’s original. Every translation is a product of many
difficult choices and compromises, especially decisions
about hierarchy-~about which aspects to grant primary
consideration, which secondary, and which to neglect
altogether.

The fact remains, however, that there are at least 60
complete translations of the Iliad, and around 200 partial
versions. There is a wide range indeed among all these
works. Singly, each falls short of the mark, but
collectively they succeed. The failure of individual
attempts to recreate the Iliad in English has long been
cause for hand-wringing and dismay. The ability of English
translations taken collectively to show many sides of Homer
in many ways, however, is a phenomenon to be celebrated.
This wide range of partly successful translations, with

their different emphases, suggests great benefits for a

291

 

292
reader exposed to as many translations as is reasonably
possible.
The idea is not exactly new. In the preface to his
Iliad, Arthur Gardner Lewis defends his addition to the
already sizable body of translations in this way:

[A]s truth is prismatic and multiform, so are the
possible English versions of a foreign author

innumerable. It is idle to expect any one rendition to
be wholly adequate. The absolutely ideal translation
of Homer will never be written; yet perhaps each new

attempt may contribute a little new truth, a little
added beauty, just a new felicitous touch here and
there. . . . (unnumbered page)

While Lewis’s argument speaks of "truth" and "beauty,’I

the argument of Ian C. Johnston speaks directly to practical

matters of teaching (in no way do I mean to imply that

teaching excludes truth or beauty):

Most professors of Classics I know would readily agree

that the best way to study Homer is to read the
original in conjunction with as wide a variety of
different translations (ancient and modern) as
possible, so that one’s enjoyment of the Greek is

played off against one’s appreciation of the different

interpretive talents which the translators bring to
bear upon a vision of experience and a language so
different from their own. (239)

This wide variety of reading for learning makes good

sense, and the next logical step is to put a variety of

translations within one volume. There is precedent for the

idea--namely, a 1993 edition of Dante’s Inferno edited by

Daniel Halpern. Twenty poets contributed to the
translation, each taking one to three cantos, each

translating in his or her own best way. In the

293
introduction, James Merrill puts the project in a surprising
light:
The problem with most translators is their limited
command of language--their own, I mean; they can always
get help with the other. Hence the bright idea of
asking some of our finest poets to weave this garland.
The value of the present volume is precisely the
variety of solutions arrived at by these twenty voices.
(xii)
An interesting and useful text of the Iliad might be one
with the original on the left-hand pages, possibly even with m

an interlinear gloss. The right-hand pages would hold a

 

translation by several hands consecutively, as with the U
Halpern edition. Instead of new translations, though, an
editor could draw on all the best work of the centuries,’
including many of the works examined in this dissertation.
The simplest plan is to allot one of the twenty-four books
to each of twenty-four translators; but because many of the
best or most interesting translations consist of smaller
portions, some books might include the work of more than one
hand. Or the best short excerpts could be included in
footnotes, for comparison with the primary text. The
possible permutations are endless, of course.

There is even a precedent of sorts for this idea, as
Bridges’ Ibant Obscuri has his own "paraphrase" on the
right, interlined with the original Greek, and "consecutive
examples of previous translations" on the left. Bridges’

"examples" were chosen quickly and more-or-less randomly

 

SAssuming appropriate permission, of course.

294

(141), but a volume chosen and arranged more carefully could
be impressive and valuable.

Instead of different translations arranged consecutively,
a volume could also be produced as the Homeric equivalent of
the Parallel Bible. Four columns of text would be presented
across facing pages, the four columns being, for example:
1) the original; 2) a literal prose version; 3) a more
poetic and less literal verse translation; and 4) one other,
either another verse translation or one designed to show
some other aspect of Homer, such as a new version
illustrating as clearly as possible the formulaic nature of

the Iliad.

The previous ideas have more to do with existing
translations than with new, of course. The concept of the
collective success of Iliad translations does have
importance for new translations, however. It behooves any
new translator to find a mode of translation that will add
something new to the collection--to look for gaps and fill
them, or to find the edges and extend them. What form,
then, should the next translation take? What other
qualities should it have?

Over the years many negative assessments of various Iliad
translations have been based mainly on the reviewer’s
preference for a verse or prose form other than the one used
by the translator under review. In this dissertation I have

set aside the choice of form as a criterion for judgment.

295
Instead, I have shown that each of the more common forms has
valid possibilities, and have shown what each can and cannot
do well; I also have derived different sets of criteria for
different forms, based on the potential of each.

Chapter Two examines rhymed versions, mostly early, where
the tendency is away from the letter and even at times the
sense of the original, toward spirit, invention, and
entertainment. The best example is Denham’s 1668
"Sarpedon’s Speech to Glaucus in the 12th of Homer."

Chapter Three examines blank verse versions, which follow in
time, for the most part, rhymed versions, and which, by
stripping away the stumbling block of rhyme, show a tendency
back toward the letter and sense of the original, although
the best are also interesting rhythmically and poetically.
The best example is the anonymous "Shield of Achilles"
(1875). Chapter Four examines prose versions, the logical
conclusion of a movement away from metrical and other
constraints, where the tendencies are toward the letter of
the original and toward naturalness of diction and syntax.
The best is Hammond’s 1987 Iliad, having those things plus
the best portion of Homer’s spirit. Chapter Five examines
the English hexameter, which, running concurrently with
blank verse and prose, is an attempt to imitate the line of
Homer, whether by accent or quantity. The best are Lawton’s
excerpts (1893) in accentuals, and Bridges’ "Priam and
Achilles" (1916) in quantitatives. Chapter Six examines

recent works of various non-prose types, where the movement

 

296
is toward looser rhythms, approaching but still different
from prose, and in many cases toward looser adherence to the
letter and sense of the original--in this latter respect
coming full circle again to the ways of Chapman and Pope.
The best are Logue’s flg;_nggig (1981) and Kiggg (1991).
What is to be done next, then, and how is it to be handled?
How is it to be judged?

First is a suggestion of what need not be done in the
near future. We do not need another complete prose
translation, unless it be one in a style more informal than
Hammond’s, and more consistently powerful than Rieu’s or
Rouse’s. We do not need nor are we likely to see any
complete versions in ballad-measure or any other rhyming
meter. We can be grateful for the artistry of those that
have been made in previous centuries, but this is not the
age of rhyme, and there is now no compelling reason to press
such an unhomeric feature upon Homer. Even a complete
translation in blank verse seems unnecessary at this point,
as previous centuries have given us plenty of reasonably
literal blank verse, and Fitzgerald has recently given us
one that is freer in both rhythms and words, and which is
often quite beautiful. A complete version in accentual
hexameters, one that combines poetic beauty and technical
proficiency, would be welcomed by some but is not likely to
be forthcoming. We now have two quasi-hexametrical
translations with six or so beats somewhere in the line; one

is very literal (Lattimore), the other moderately so

297
(Fagles). Each has its merits, and there is no need for
another at this time.

There is room, however, for another sort of hexameter. A
complete translation of the Iliad in quantitative hexameters
would be a difficult task, but worthwhile. The movement in
translation and in other poetry, as indicated in Chapter Six
especially, has been toward looser rhythms, away from rigid
meters. Yet Homer’s original hexameter was quite strict in
its metrical requirements, allowing only for certain kinds
of variation within the pattern. A new quantitative
hexameter version in English could, without undue strain,
keep one foot in Homer’s time and one in ours.

The lines will be constructed of feet based on syllable
length, however it be defined. The construction will be as
close to that of Homer’s lines as possible--e.g., similar
ratio of dactyls to spondees, similar placement of principal
caesurae, and so forth. Syllable length will match accent
occasionally but not too often in the first four feet, and
usually but not always in the last two, where Ernle goes
wrong. Those who wish to analyze the lines will find them
highly crafted, interesting equivalents of Homer’s lines.

On the other hand, readers will be encouraged to ignore,
while reading, the metrical construction entirely--to read
the lines naturally, letting emphases fall where they
should. The translation will, then, read much like prose.

It will be prose with a difference, though. Not only

will verse lines appear on the page, but also the flow of

 

298
words will have an underlying sense of control supplied by
the relatively faint rhythms of syllable length (I offer
Bridges’ lines as evidence). The requirements of meter will
force the translation out of common prose diction and
syntax, but in capable hands it will find poetic rather than
tortured alternatives. Though we favor loose rhythms in
this age, the Iliad still is best when it is felt to be
different from ordinary prose.

The question of how the rules of syllable length are to
be made is open. Fairly loose rules that accommodate
variations of the moment6 would yield rhythms of syllable
length that are readily felt but hard to identify with
certainty upon analysis; while strict, inflexible, even
somewhat arbitrary rules (such as those used by Bridges or
Ernle) would yield rhythms less tangible but more certainly
identifiable, providing in that way a solid basis for the
meter and a sense of control.

Another possibility for a complete translation of the
Iliad is rhythmic prose. This would in effect turn the
previous idea upside-down; instead of a work that looks like
verse but reads much like prose, we would have a work that
looks like prose but reads much like verse. Once again, the
idea is hardly new. Macpherson’s eighteenth-century prose
is chopped into lengths by the use of commas, and has a

more-or-less iambic rhythm. In the next century, George

 

6See comment by Robert Frost in Chapter Five.

 

299

Herbert Palmer translated the Odyssey in rhythmic prose. In

an article published a few years later he defends the

practice as a reasonable alternative to the hexameter:
Dactylic rhythms are not obligatory. Why not employ
iambic? May we not abandon rhyme and stanza, just as
the hexameter abandons them; with it employ a structure
capable of the longest or the shortest flights; then,
in order to cast our phrases solid, make use of its
large flexibility in pauses and even in the prevalent
foot; and still retain the rhythmic beat,--a beat
different, however, from that of the hexameter in being
akin instead of alien to the genius of our language?
When we have done all this, we arrive at an iambic
recitative, or free unmetred rhythm, whose cadences
wait upon the pauses of the thought rather than upon
those of any prearranged system. (528)

Rhythmic prose could satisfy the contemporary taste for
prose-ness while still preserving the difference from the
ordinary that Homer demands. A good version will have
enough rhythm to be distinguishable from ordinary prose, but
will also have a greater portion of the spirit and power of
the Iliad than the ordinary prose versions manage. Absolute
fidelity to the letter, or even to the sense at times, will
not be required, as we have plenty of literal prose
versions.

But maybe we do not need another complete translation of
the Iliad in any form, for now at least. If anything is
apparent from the previous chapters, it is that many of the
best verse translations have been relatively short, anywhere
from a few lines to a couple of books. Poems as short as
the 29 lines from Denham, or 14 from Lowell, have proved to

be powerful interpretations of certain passages, and

wonderful additions to the collection of voices.

 

300

Short translations can afford to be experimental; the
complete Iliad is too massive to be used as a vehicle for
probing the boundaries. Logue’s free translations in free
verse have been much appreciated, but a complete version
done in a similar manner might be too much. Likewise,
partial versions of quantitative hexameters or rhythmic
prose might be more appreciated, for now, than complete
ones.

We have no lack of the literal word of Homer rendered
into English, so these new partial translations could, like
Logue’s, be allowed to stray from the original wherever some
compensating virtue can be offered.

There may, on the other hand, be ways to move closer to
the word and construction of Homer. As indicated briefly
earlier in the chapter, there is room for a translation that
raises the illustration of Homer’s formulae to the top of
its hierarchy. Lattimore’s Iliad pays more attention to
formulae than most do, but they could be handled even more
strictly and made more obvious to the reader by using a
variety of colors or fonts, and cross-references, as
necessary. These formulae include not just repetitions of
entire lines and passages as examined in Chapter Seven, but
also epithets and other repeating but variable phrases. The
larger the scope of such a work, the more apparent the
formulae would become, but a complete version might become
unmanageable for both translator and reader. One book, with

cross-references to others, would be enough. A version such

301
as this would be limited in its appeal, no doubt, because
many other aspects of the Iliad would have to be sacrificed
in order to imitate adequately the formulaic component.

Aside from such specialty versions, however, any new
translation ought to be noble, vigorous, clear, and
emotional. Those versions named above as the best of their
types all have these qualities.

Nobility might best be defined here in terms of its
negative: any new version should be noble in the sense that
it never falls into absurdity. When Rieu makes Hector say
to Patroclus, "So now the vultures here are going to eat you
up," the last word especially brings the speech to the level
of a schoolchild, and in the mouth of Hector it is absurd.
The Graduate of Oxford’s "But thee the vultures shall here
devour" is far more noble.

The latter is not especially vigorous, though. Vigor is
a matter of diction, syntax, rhythm, and the way they work
together, so that strong words in strong places are
naturally given strong emphasis. When Rieu says that
Patroclus is "creeping wounded," the diction is not strong.
When he makes "lion" the Object of a preposition instead of
the subject of the sentence (as in the original), the syntax
is not strong. And in The Graduate of Oxford’s sentence
above, the rhythm is not strong, as the reader stumbles at
"shall here," not knowing where to put the emphasis. When
Bryant has Hector pray for his son with "May they say, /

‘This man is greater than his father was!’" diction, syntax,

302
and rhythm are adequate if taken separately, but they fail
to work together, especially at the last word, "was." When
Lawton renders the same passage as "May it hereafter be
said, ‘He is better by far than his father!’" diction,
syntax, and rhythm come together-~strong words in strong
places, with strong emphasis.

Clarity is the quality that allows nobility and vigor to
leave their imprint upon the reader’s mind. It is not, in
translation, simply a matter of getting equivalent words in
an understandable order. It is achieved in various ways.
Fletcher manages to achieve clarity by risking its loss, by
using unusual verbs (or usual verbs in unusual ways) that
nonetheless ring true:

Lastly the Goddess secreted herself in a slender
fresh veil that smiled as whitely as sunlight.

Logue takes a risk in another way; although he sacrifices
the sort of clarity that helps the reader follow the
narrative, he achieves another sort of clarity with
subjective, impressionistic images:
Swell-water, b1ack-water--
The wind in the cliff pines, their hairpins, their
resin. . . .
Graves manages clarity in another way, by simplifying:
What thanks will future generations give you when your
fame rests mainly on a refusal to intervene while their
fathers were being massacred?

Fitzgerald gets clarity here with an image that is inventive

yet particularly true to the experience of wind and water:

 

 

303

A foaming
dark blue wave sang backward from the bow
as the running ship made way against the sea.

Fagles gets it through unabashedly gory action:
[Hector]

came rushing into him right across the lines
and rammed his spearshaft home,

stabbing deep in the guts, and the brazen point
went jutting straight out through Patroclus’ back.

Matthew Arnold said that if a translator would follow his
first three principles, then the fourth, "nobleness," would
surely follow. I refashion Arnold in this way: if the next
translation of the Iliad is noble, vigorous, and clear, then
surely it will be full of strong and varied emotion--not
simply because emotion always follows the first three in
poetry, but because Homer’s poetry in particular is full of
strong and varied emotion, and so the presence of the first
three qualities in the English will ensure that Homer’s
strong and varied emotion will show through the veil of

language.

 

 

Part Two: Translation

No single choice of form for translating the Iliad in
English has been universally appreciated, and my choice of
quantitative hexameters is no exception. The choice cannot
be justified because of any natural tendency of the English
language toward quantitative meter; without question the
accentual basis of English meters has been established for
centuries. The acceptance of the quantitative hexameter
requires, perhaps, an intellectual and aesthetic leap of
faith--but that leap can, I think, be rewarded.

As suggested above in the Conclusions section of this
chapter, there is more than one way to determine quantity in
English. H. W. Boyd Mackay argues that rules for the
English quantitative hexameter should be based not on
classical rules but on quantities inherent in the language:

The [English-speaking] mind does not take notice of
minute differences of length, but reckons as long every
syllable by which the attention is arrested, and also
every syllable in which it is customary to dwell upon
the vowel, but as short all others. (141)
This argument seems quite reasonable, but the result
suggested by Mackay’s own (non-Iliad) eight-line sample is
that length nearly always corresponds with accent--i.e.,
Mackay’s quantitative hexameters are very nearly accentual
hexameters. The other problem is that Mackay’s "rules" are

so flexible--"the judgment of the ear must prevail"--they

cannot be used to illustrate Homer, whose rules were fixed.

304

 

305

Bridges and Ernle, on the other hand, use classical rules
as the basis for their own. Bridges’ experimental concern,
however, is for the meter itself, and it can be inferred
that he prefers a reading that emphasizes quantity over
accent (2), a feat that requires too great a leap, even for
me. Ernle’s first concern is for translating the Iliad; his
argument (see Chapter Five) allows for a more natural
reading and in no way asks that the language be tortured for
the sake of quantities. Granted, classically-based rules
are somewhat foreign to the English language and will not
accord perfectly with temporal measurements of syllables as
we normally separate them in English. But such rules can at
least be established clearly, and they do have some basis in
real quantities. Most importantly, a quantitative meter
based on such rules need not skew our reading, which will
still be according to the natural accentual rhythm. The
quantitative meter will exist only as a shadow, and the
degree to which it is perceived will depend in large part
upon the sensibilities of the reader. Even if not perceived
(overtly) at all, the meter will exist, and its influence on
each line will be felt in (hopefully favorable) ways.

With the quantitative hexameter based on classical rules,
we gain the following: 1) an approximation of the form of
Homer; 2) an illustration of classical rules; 3) an
awareness of the differences between the prosodies of
ancient Greek and modern English; 4) a loose accentual

rhythm that satisfies contemporary tastes.

306

In the following translation I use Ernle’s rules. In
brief, they are these: "Long syllables are those with a
long vowel-sound; or with a short vowel-sound followed by
more than one consonant[-sound]. Short syllables have a
short vowel-sound followed by a single consonant[-sound]"
(13). There are several exceptions; the most important are
these: "Combinations of l, r, y, and y with other
consonants are frequently treated as a single letter and in
such cases do not lengthen the precéding vowel"; "the letter
h is altogether ignored as a consonant"; "the letter ; is
disregarded when it neither is trilled nor modifies and
lengthens the preceding vowel-sound (as in ‘éérth’,
‘presérve’)"; and "the combination :39 is treated as a
single consonant except where the :g is sounded hard" (13-

14).

 

307

Iliad 16.818-63 in Quantitative Hexameters

Hector watched the big heart of Patroclus, staggering
rearward,

Crippled by one sharp blow from Euphorbus’s bronze
spear.

Hector closed in fast, as he shouldered through battle-
lines, then

Fisting the javelin, he pierced soft flesh just under
the navel,

Driving the bronze-headed spear straight through til
the bloody bright point

Breached the second soft flesh of Patroclus’ back as he
fell hard.

Just as a fierce mountain-cat claws at a bristling,
tuskéd

Boar, contending in high mountains for a springlet of
water;

Swiftly the agile, spirited cat overcomes the huffing
beast.

So Priam’s son with terrible strength came to
Patroclus

(Who killed hundreds himself), cheating him out of his
life-breath.

Standing with raised fists Hector spat winged words at
the victim:

"You expected, Patroclus, to kill us and rape our
daughters,

Carry them off to the ships, to yr homeland, make them
slave-whores.

You fool! For them these stallions stretch forth to

the battle.

I am best of the blood-mad Trojans, first with an ash-
spear.

I will keep our wives our daughters safe from the cruel
and

Filthy hands of the Greeks. For you, many vultures are
wheeling

Slowly above you, waiting to tear out bits of yr soft
flesh.

Poor boy! Your man noble Achilleus was never your
friend.

He stood, no doubt, lecturing and stern--while you
prepared for

Battle: ‘Patroclus, as I warn you, think not to return
here

Until you’ve split murderous Hector’s blood-soaked
tunic--

Then bring it here.’ So he filled your head with
emptiness plus hope."

Speaking slowly Patroclus replied, "Celebrate now,
Hector.

308

Two gods gave you the victory-~Zeus and Apollo brought

me

Crashing down. They tore this war-gear from my
shoulders.

Ten battalions with soldiers like you could never face
me,

All would die, else run for the walls. Two gods’ fury
killed me;

Next was Euphorbus; you were third in my killing. And
I will

Tell you one thing more; so lock it away in a good
place:

Your lot’s been pulled; cold black death stands by you
already.

Noble Achilleus, incomparable warrior, is now

Holding a spear with Hector’s name." Then death
covered him there.

His soul slipped his finger, protesting; to Hades she
flew off

Leaving manliness and youth lying lost on a cold field.

Glorious Hector addressed this lifeless corpse as if
alive:

"Have you the right to predict black death untimely for
Hector?

Maybe Achilleus, son of the fair-haired Thetis, will be
split

Soul from his body, first, on a sharp point--my spear,
his blood."

Having had his say, Hector lifted the corpse on his
spear-point,

Dangling; then with one foot, pushed it off into the
thick dust.

309

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07x500160 00 02 0106 x010 015x00, 0010 66 60002
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60600060 66 06000, 0670 6' 0x0x6 1000 'Ax0100'
00 6' 016 000 0x000010 1600 66100010 x0000,
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60 006 101 0010 00110 06000 606161161' 26011
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0200166010 X11000 0602 01006001 602501.’
00 006 06 0000600, 002 66 006000 000001 06206."

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"060 000, Ex100, 067 01' 60x60' 002 700 660K6
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00 000 010 6206010 16100 00001010 x010¢6
00x0 6' 6x 060600 0100600 A266066 6660x61,
00 061000 706000, 110000' 006001010 K02 0600.
100 K02 16000010 000x0660 00561000 'Ex100'
"H0106x1610, 15 06 001 000166601 02000 0160000;
150 6' 026' 62 x' 'Ax11660, 6611600 0020 00x6001o,
0000 600 000 60002 100620 000 00000 0160001;"

00 000 0000000 6600 x01x600 60 0161100
620006 10E 0000600, 100 6' 001100 00' 000 600060.

(But Hector, when he beheld great-souled Patroclus
drawing back, smitten with the sharp bronze, came nigh
him through the ranks, and smote him with.a thrust of his
spear in the nethermost belly, and drave the bronze clean
through; and he fell with a thud, and sorely grieved the

310

host of the Achaeans. And as a lion overmastereth in
fight an untiring boar, when the twain fight with high
hearts on the peaks of a mountain for a scant spring,
wherefrom both are minded to drink: hard panteth the
boar, yet the lion overcometh him by his might; even so
from the valiant son of Menoetius, after he had slain
many, did Hector, Priam's son, take life away, smiting
him from close at hand with his spear» And vaunting over
him he spake winged words:

"Patroclus, thou thoughtest, I ween, that thou
wouldest sack our city, and from the women of Troy
wouldest take the day of freedom, and bear them in thy
ships to thy dear native land, thou fool! Nay, in front
of them the swift horses of Hector stride forth to the
fight, and with the spear I myself am pre-eminent among
the war-loving Trojans, even I that ward from them the
day of doom; but for thee, vultures shall devour thee
here. Ah, poor wretch, even Achilles, for all his
valour, availed thee not, who, I ween, though himself
abiding behind, laid strait command upon thee, as thou
wentest forth; ‘Come not back, I charge thee, Patroclus,
master of horsemen, to the hollow ships, till thou hast
cloven about the breast of man-slaying Hector the tunic
red with his blood.’ So, I ween, spake he to thee, and
persuaded thy wits in thy witlessness."

Then, thy strength all spent, didst thou answer him,
knight Patroclus: "For this time, Hector, boast thou
mightily; for to thee have Zeus, the son of Cronos, and
Apollo, vouchsafed victory, they that subdued me full
easily, for of themselves they took the harness from my
shoulders. But if twenty such as thou had faced.me, here
would all have perished, slain by my spear. Nay, it was
baneful Fate and the son of Leto that slew me, and of men
Euphorbus, while thou art the third in my slaying. And
another thing will I tell thee, and do thou lay it to
hear: verily thou shalt not thyself be long in life, but
even not doth death stand hard by thee, and mighty fate,
that thou be slain beneath the hands of Achilles, the
peerless son of Aeacus."

Even as he thus spoke the end of death enfolded him;
and his soul fleeting from his limbs was gone to Hades,
bewailing her fate, leaving manliness and youth. And to
him even in his death spake glorious Hector:

"Patroclus, wherefore dost thou prophesy for me sheer
destruction? Who knows but that Achilles, the son of
fair-tressed Thetis, may first be smitten by my spear,
and lose his life?"

So saying, he drew forth the spear of bronze from the
wound, setting his foot upon the dead, and thrust him
backward from the spear.) (literal prose of Murray)

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

An Annotated List of Published Versions

of the Iliad in English

The following list of works includes all complete Iliads,
and partial versions of more than four lines of verse, or
more than half a page or so of prose. An asterisk (*) means
that I have not seen the work listed or a later edition. If
an unseen work is listed in more than one bibliography, I
state only the most recent authored bibliography, or if

none, then British Museum or Widener.

1581

Arthur Hall. o s ' ans f
Ezgggn. books 1-10; alexandrine lines; translated from
French. *The first English version of the Iliad ever
published. Warton's assessment--"This translation has no
other merit than that of being the first appearance of a
part of the Iliad in an English dress" (911)--sums up the
general critical opinion regarding Hall's work, although
Little is slightly more positive (199-200).

1587
Roger Rawlyns ("R. R. of Lyncolnes Inne"). nesgog his
i tilochus: -o It . o ,- t_ue a . - ess' '; . 1 e

1n_§§ggi_. 23.304-25; verse; *listed in British Museum
Catalogue.

1598
George Chapman. e ue ookes o t e d s o m r

pgince of poets. London. also complete (The Iliags of

home; Egince Q: Pgegs 1612); rhymed 14-syllable lines.
The first complete English version of the Iliad. Its

Elizabethan style and diction do not make an easy read for
the present-day student trying merely to learn about the
Iliad. Its ornateness of diction and style is used by
Matthew Arnold as an example of the violation of Homer's
plainness and directness. It is still read and discussed by
those equipped to do so, and so has survived for nearly four
centuries, while countless other translations have been, for

311

312

the most part, forgotten. Discussed in Crossett, Little, H.
Mason, Wilson, "The Elizabethan Homer," and many others.

1660

Grantham. Thomas. Ins_Eirst_Egghs_9f_ngme:L§_Ilinns-
London. also book 3, part of book 2; heroic couplets;
*listed in Bush.

1660
John Ogelsby (or Ogilby). Hgmsr§_lliggs_nnd_gdisss§. (pub-
by) Thom. Tycroft. complete; heroic couplets. The second
complete version in English, it is the first version in
heroic couplets, preceding Pope’s by half a century. It
manages to retain, at times, much of the strength of emotion
and the powerful majesty that are so characteristic of Homer
and are all too often lost in the safer and tamer versions
of later years. The invocation, for example, moves rapidly,
with a suggestion of the violence that is at the heart of
the Iliad:

Achilles Peleus Son's destructive Rage,

Great Goddess, sing, which did the Greeks engage

In many Woes, and mighty Heroes Ghosts

Sent down untimely to the Stygian Coasts:

Devouring Vultures on their Bodies prey'd,

And greedy Dogs, (so was Jove’s Will obey’d;)

Because Great Agamemnon fell at odds

With stern Achilles, Off-spring of the Gods.

1668
John Denham. "Sarpedon's Speech to Glaucus in the 12th of
Homer." 12.309-28; heroic couplets; see Chapter Two.

1675
Thomas Hobbes. o e 's 'ads . London: William
Crook. complete; iambic pentameter quatrains. Hobbes makes
no great claims for his work, but wittily explains:
Why then did I write it? Because I had nothing else to
do. Why publish it? Because I thought it might take
off my adversaries from showing their folly upon my
more serious writings, and set them upon my verses to
show their wisdom. (x)
Pope calls it "too mean for criticism." One anonymous
reviewer (Rev. of Sotheby and Shadwell, Westminster Review)
says that it "seems written by the genius of famine. Each
particular hair of its back stands on end, ‘like quills upon
the fretful porcupine'" (337). Another anonymous critic
("The English Translators of Homer") says of it that "[we]
find all around us fresh grounds to support an indictment
for murder" (286). Even the relatively recent discussion by
Riddebough contains hardly a single positive word. This may
be the only version, through the entire history of Iliad
translations, upon which critics have agreed unanimously.

313

1685

T(homas?) B(rown?). 6.486-506; *listed in Brown.

1685

Anonymous 6-392-50; in W
Eggmg gy Sevgggl Hgnds. pub’d by Joseph Hindmarsh. *listed

in Brown.

1693
William Congreve. "Priam's Lamentation and Petition to
Achilles, for the Body of his Son Hector" (book 24. 468- 512)
and "The Lamentations of Hecuba, Andromache, and Helen"
(24. 695-803); iambic pentameter couplets; in Ig§_ngg;ging
MW:- London: Oxford U P 1928.
Congreve adds to, embellishes, and rearranges the original
material, but usually remains faithful to the sense and
spirit. In "Priam's Lament," for example, at the end of the
old man’s speech, Congreve uses ten of his lines to render
four of Homer's:
Fear the just Gods, Achilles; and on me

With Pity look, think you your Father see;

Such as I am, he is, alone in this,

I can no Equal have in Miseries;

Of all Mankind, most wretched and forlorn,

Bow'd with such Weight, as never has been born;

Reduc'd to kneel and pray to you, from whom

The Spring and Source of all my Sorrows come;

With Gifts, to court mine and my Country's figng,

And kiss those Hands, which have my Children slain.

1694

Arthur(?), Maynwaring. "The First Book of Homer’s Iliads,
Translated from the Greek by Mr. Maynwaring" 1.1-412;
heroic couplets; see Chapter Two.

1694
Thomas Yalden. "Patroclus's Request to Achilles for His
Arms" 16.1-45; heroic couplets; see Chapter Two.

1700
John Dryden. Book 1 & 6.369-502; heroic couplets; in Egpigg
Agcigng & Mggern, London: J. Tonson; discussed in Little, H.

Mason, Wilson, Frost, and others.

1712

J. Ozel, W. Broome, & Oldisworth. (The Iliad) By Madame
Dacier. London. complete; translated from French;
*discussed in Little.

1715

Alexander Pope. The Iliad of Home;. London. complete;
heroic couplets. One of the few to survive its age and
still be published and read. Richard Garnett, in 1889, said

 

 

 

314

that it unquestionably held the post of Britain's national
version of the Iliad, although he lamented that fact and
hoped for a successor. This attitude, plus the more famous
statement of Richard Bentley-~"It is a very pretty poem, Mr.
Pope, but you must not call it Homer"--effectively sum up
the critical opinion regarding Pope's Iliad. Matthew Arnold
used it as an example of a violation of his dictum of
plainness and directness of ideas in translating Homer, just
as he said Chapman had violated plainness and directness of
diction and style. Discussed in Crossett, Little, Wilson,
H. Mason, Lynch, Knight, Shankman, and many others.

1715

Thomas Tickell. WW- London.
heroic couplets; also found in Tn§_flgzk§_gfi_gglgpgg§gg
Anghgzs, 9f Whgse Writiggs there are but sggli_;gmgin§. 2

 

vols. London: Tonson & Draper, 1750. Was published almost
simultaneously with Pope's translation, and was assumed at

the time to be intended as a rival version (Cibber 5: 22).

Cibber and an anonymous critic ("The English Translators of
Homer" 286) suggest that Thomas Tickell is a pseudonym for

Richard Addison. Also discussed in Wilson.

1727

William Broome. "Part of the Tenth Book of the Iliads of
Homer, In the stile of Milton." in Egems on Seggzgl
Qgggsions. London: Bernard Lintot.

1729
T. Cooke. "The Episode of Thersites." 2.211-70; *listed in
British Museum Catalogue.

1749

I. H. Fitz-Cotton. London. book 1; *listed in Bush.
1750

Samuel Ashwick. London. book 8; *listed in Bateson.
1755

Joseph Nichol Scott. n Ess owa s a n 'o o

Homeg’s Works. London: Osborne, Shipton, and Baldwin.
1.43-58; 1.223-84; 3.121-61; 3.340-82; 4.446-72; 6.374-529;
11.521-55; 12.445-71; 13.10-67; 14.211-23; 14.341-60;
14.402-31; 15.605-28; blank verse; discussed in anonymous

reviews in ema 's a a and Monggiy Bevigg.
1762
Thomas Bridges. urles T s t'o o .

revised and bowdlerized by George A. Smith, 1889.

1767
Samuel Langley. (First Book of the Iliad). London. blank
verse; *discussed in anonymous reviews in Critical Review

 

 

315

and uehthly Bevieg. The former includes a sizable excerpt.
The latter states: "Dr. Langley tells us that hhe_:hmhlihg
majesty of Homer's verses is like Jove's thunder; but the
rumbling majesty of the Doctor's translation is like the
thunder of a mustard-bowl."

1773

James Macpherson. Ihe_llieg_efi_fleme;. London: T. Becket
and P. A. De Hondt. complete; rhythmic prose; see Chapter

Four.

1791
William Cowper. Ihe_111eg_efi_fiehez. London. complete;
blank verse; discussed in Crossett, Little, Wilson,

anonymous review in M2D£hll.3§¥i§!. and anonymous letter in
gentieman's Magazine.

1792

W. Tremenheere. London. book 1; *listed in Moss.

1792

Alexander Geddes. e 'rs o o e '

gezhally rendered into Engiish verse. *listed in Bateson.
1801

Gilbert Thompson. Select Iransiehiehs fzoh ghe Wozhe ef
Home; and Horace. London. *listed in Foster.

1805

Hemez's Works in Engiish. *listed in Bush.

1806

P. Williams. The Eiget hooh ef hhe Ilieg.

blank verse; *discussed in anonymous review in EELEQLiQ

Rte—Vigil.

1807

Speeimen of an English Home; in biank verse. 1.1-222 &
6.404-96; *listed in Foster.

1807

C. Lloyd. A Thanslegion of the Igehty-Eeugth 3993 gt ghe
Iiied of Homer. Birmingham. *1isted in Foster.

1809

James Morrice. he d me . 2 vols. London: John

White. complete; blank verse; see Chapter Three.

1814
R. Morehead. The Firs; Booh of Homeg’s Iliad. 1.1-171;

verse; *listed in Foster.

316

1820

William Maginn. "The Wile of Juno," 14.153-353 in
Blechweog'e; Spenserian stanzas; also "Helen's Visit to the
Scaan Gate," 5.121-244 in £zeee;;e (1835); "The Genealogy of
Glaucus," 6.145-211, "The Arming of Achilles" 19.357-end,
"The Genealogy of Aeneas" 3.200-59, and ”Nestor's First
Essay in Arms" 11.670-761 in EIQEEILE (1840-1842); ballad-

measure; later pub’d as flemezie_fielleg§.

1821

"A Graduate of Oxford". Ihe_liieg_ef_fleme;. London.
complete; prose; see Chapter Four.

1825

Blank Blank. Esq. W
London. books 1 & 2; *listed in Foster.

1827

Anonymous. Iliad: Book I; with iiherel Lzeheletien eh she
glen :eeommended by Mr. Locke. London. *listed in Foster.
1831

William John Blew. The Figs; Boek ef the Iiied. London.
books 1 & 2; *listed in Bush.

1831

William Sotheby. Homer's Iii 0. London. complete; heroic

couplets. The subject of Wilson’s series of essays in
filackwood's Magazine (1937), in which it is compared
favorably with the Iliads of Pope, Chapman, Cowper, and
others. One anonymous reviewer (hehhhiy_3eyieg 1831) also
prefers Sotheby’s translation over Pope’s, whose "ambition
seems to have been to construct a perfect poem, without
reference to the defects or peculiarities of the original:
Sotheby aims at giving us a faithful model of Homer" (97).
Another anonymous reviewer (Wesehihete; Review 1845) is less
positive, though:
[Although] Mr. Sotheby's version is more literal than
Pope's . . . Sotheby has sometimes altogether lost the
spirit of a passage, or failed to see it in a clear
light. . . . His line is sometimes slightly opaque. .
. . A stout thought is sometimes cased ‘in too fat a
bark.'" (340)

1831
John Wilson (Christopher North). excerpts; literal prose,
line-by-line; in "Homer and His Translators."

1833
"A Graduate of the University of Cambridge." ' - '
WW Cambridge-

*listed in British Museum Catalogue.

 

 

317
1833
"A Graduate of the University." n o .
, , homer'e llieg. Dublin. *listed in Bush.
1834

Anonymous. Book 1; "literal interlinear translation";
*listed in British Museum Catalogue.

1834

? Tufts. AlQZQDQEIL§_20§K§§- Lexington. *listed in
Widener Shelflist.

1834
(Archdeacon) Wrangham. HQEQIIQE- book 3; verse; *listed in
Bush.

1838

Edwin Guest. 1.1-47; accentual hexameters; in A flietogy ef
English Rhythms. First pub’d example of Iliad in English
hexameters.

1839

William E. Aytoun. "The Twenty-Second Book of the Iliad.
Translated into English Trochaics." couplets; see Chapter
TWO.

1841

Anonymous. Homer’s Iliad. *listed in Bush.

1841

Anonymous. The first i B oks o ’ '

ihterpaged translation. line fer lihe, ehd humegehe hehee.

London. *listed in Bush.

1843

E. C. Hawtrey. "Helen on the Walls of Troy" 3.234-44,
"Hector and Andromache" 6.394-502; accentual hexameters; see
Chapter Five.

1844-45

Lancelot Shadwell ("Philhellen Etonensis"). Ih§_llié§_2£
homey. London. books 1-9.371; accentual hexameters;
*discussed in anonymous review (w/Sotheby) in Wesghihste;

BBVIQW .

1846
Anonymous. homer's Iiieg. London. *listed in Bush.
1846

Anonymous. excerpts; literal accentual hexameters, literal
prose; in "Translators of Homer."

 

 

 

 

318

1846

T. S. Brandreth. The_TTieg_e£_nehe;. 2 vols. London:
William Pickering. complete; blank verse; see Chapter
Three.

1846

William Munford. Heme:;e_llieg. 2 vols. Boston: Little,

Brown. complete; blank verse; discussed in Little, and

"Translators of Homer" and anonymous reviews in £h£i§£i§n

Examiner. W. and W
ew.

1846

Charles A. Elton. Two small excerpts; blank verse; in
"Translators of Homer."

1846
John Gibson Lockhart ("N. N. T."). Books 1, 6.236-516, &
24; accentual hexameters; see Chapter Five.

1847

? Bryce. Homer’s Iliad. London. *listed in Foster.

1850

Anonymous. The Iliad ef home;, she Eigst, SecehdI ehd Third

Cantos. London. "translated in a metrical version most
comfortable, though not identical in construction, with the
original Greek hexameter"; *listed in Bush.

1850
W. G. T. Barter. The Tiiag ef hem :. London. complete

(1854); Spenserian stanzas; discussed in Little.

1851

Theodore Alois Buckley. The Iliad of Home;. London: Henry
G. Bohn. complete; prose.

Although pub’d under Buckley's name only, this could be
considered a revision of "A Graduate of Oxford" (1821).
Buckley did revise an edition of the latter, according to
Little (110), and this version is remarkably similar.

1851
Edward Hale. Excerpts; various verse forms; in "A Piece of

Possible History" in Tf, YesI ehd Perhep .

1855-58
Hamilton 0 Clark. Homer's ' w't ' te
ggahsietioh. Philadelphia. *listed in Foster.

1856
F. W. Newman. I 'ad. London. complete; ballad-measure.

 

319

Most famous as primary target of Arnold's "On Translating
Homer." Also discussed in "The English Translators of

Homer," and anonymous review in AElQDLiQ_MQDth¥o

1858
Ichabod Charles Wright. Ilieg. London. complete (1865);
blank verse; *discussed in "The English Translators of

Homer."
1860
Anonymous. Heme;_fez_hhe_§hglieh. London, Eton. books 5 &

6; verse; *listed in Bush.

 

1860
Anonymous. The_11ieg. books 1-12 6 part of 13; verse;
*listed in Bush.

1861
Matthew Arnold. Excerpts; accentual hexameters; in "On
Translating Homer."

 

1861
W. E. Gladstone. Homer Trans ation th .
London: Strahan. excerpts; ballad-measure; *reviewed in

Lehgeh Quarterly Review (1875).

1861
F. H. J. Ritso. Books 1-3; hexameters; *listed in British
Museum Catalogue-

1861

Philip Stanhope Worsley. Books 1-12; Spenserian stanzas;
later pub’d with Conington 13-24 as The Tiiad ef homer. 2
vols. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1865, 1868.
discussed in Little, and "Translators of the Iliad."

1861-82

(Rev. Dr.) Giles. The_11ieg_efi_flehe1. London: James

Cornish & Sons. complete; "construed literally and word for

word":
A6166 sing, 060 O goddess, 00010 001006000 the
destructive wrath Ax11000 of Achilles H01010660 son of
Peleus, 0 which 600x6 caused 00010 01760 ten thousand
griefs Ax01010 to the Achaeans [Greeks], 0001006 66 and
sent before their time 001100 10010000 00x00 many
valiant souls 00000 of heroes A161 to Hades . . .

 

1862
Anonymous. London. hexameters; *listed in Foster.

1862
Anonymous. London. books 20-22; "literal translation";
*listed in Foster.

320

1862
John Murray. Book 1; quantitative hexameters; *listed in
British Museum Catalogue.

1862
William Purton ("X. Y. 2.") e ' e
C o Homer° b e c ' ans ' i to

English hegoics. books 1-4; *listed in British Museum
Catalogue.

1862

J. T. B. Landon. "Literally translated into English
hexameters"; *mentioned in Arnold; listed in British Museum
Catalogue.

1862
John F. W. Herschel. "Book I of the Iliad." accentual
hexameters; also The Iliad ef hem ;. London: Macmillan,

1866; complete; see Chapter Five.

1862
James Inglis Cochrane. Book 1; accentual hexameters; also
complete (1867); *discussed in Little, reviewed by Whewell,

also excerpt in Bridges, Tben; thcnzi.

1862-65

J. Henry Dart. Complete; accentual hexameters; reviewed by
Whewell, anonymous review in Christian Rememhzaneez,
w/others in anonymous review in London Quegtegly Re yiew

also discussed in Little, Ruutz-Rees.

1862
C. W. Bateman. Books 1-8; "literally translated"; also
complete w/Mongan (1879); *discussed in Little.

1863

Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 8.542-61, in "Attempts at Classical
Metres in Quantity"; also "Achilles Over the Trench" 18.202-
29 in nineteenth Cenhury (1877); 4.446-56, 6.503-14 (c.1863)
unpublished by Tennyson, pub'd in Poems of Tennyson; blank
verse; discussed by Redpath (107-10).

1864
Edward, Earl of Derby. The_Tlieg. 2 vols. London.
complete; blank verse; see Chapter Three.

1864

T. S. Norgate. he ' ' ' W ° t e
efi_1li_n. London: Williams and Norgate. complete;
"dramatic blank verse"; see Chapter Three.

 

 

321

1865
Edwin W. Simcox. The Ili 0. London. complete; accentual
hexameters; *discussed in Little.

1866

John Stuart Blackie. fieme;_eng_;he_llieg. Edinburgh:
Edmonston and Douglas. Vols. 2 6 3. complete; ballad-
measure; see Chapter Two.

1866
"Omega." Book 1, 7.407-65, 8.542-61; heroic couplets;
*listed in British Museum Catalogue.

1866

Charles Stuart Calverley. "Iliad, books 1 & 2," blank
verse, and 1.1-129, accentual hexameters; found in QQEBLQEQ
Works, London: Bell, 1901.

1866
C. S. Simms. Book 1; 14-syllable verse; also six books in
1873; *listed in Foster.

1867

Charles Chorley. The Episode ef Hecge; eng Angzeehe.
6.369-502; accentual hexameters; *listed in British Museum
Catalogue.

1868

John Conington. The Iliad of home:. Edinburgh: William
Blackwood and Sons. Vol. II. books 13-24; Spenserian
stanzas; pub'd with Worsley 1-12; discussed in "Translators
of the Iliad."

1868

E. L. Swifte. homeric Studies. book 1 6 other selections;
"Early-English blank verse"; *listed in British Museum
Catalogue.

1869
Arthur Hugh Clough. 1.1-32 & 121-218; accentual hexameters;

in Eeems.

1869

Charles Merivale. homer’s Ili 0. London: Strahan and Co.
complete; ballad-measure; see Chapter Two.

1869

William R. Smith. Qiomede. book 5; also hey tg The Tlied

efi_flem_;. Philadelphia, 1872. books 1 8 6 and parts of 5 &
2; *listed in Foster.

1870
W. Lucas Collins. Iliad. London. adaptation; prose.

 

 

322

1870
Anonymous. "Suggestive Renderings of the Iliad into English
Ballad-Metre." in ns e 's a az 7 (1871), 597-600;

excerpts from books 1 & 2. Its regular, bouncy rhythm
serves as an example of the ignoble tendencies of the
ballad-measure:
The wrath of dread Achilles,
To Greece the fruitful spring
Of miseries unnumbered,
Come, tuneful goddess, sing.

1870
W. G. Caldcleugh. The_Tliee. Philadelphia. complete;
blank verse; see Chapter Three.

1870
John Graham Cordery. Iliad. London. complete; blank
verse; see Chapter Three.

1870-71

William Cullen Bryant. The Iliae ef hemez. Boston.
complete; blank verse; see Chapter Three.

1871

T. F. Barham. Iliad. gooh T. London. hexameters;

*listed in Foster.

1872-76

P. R. Johnson. Achilles' Wrath: Comeosite translation of
Beek i of the Iliad. *listed in Foster.

1873
Edward Simms. The First Six hooks of hhe Tliag ef homer.

London: Stanford. fourteen-syllable verse, "designed as a
reading-book for colleges and schools"; *(source unknown).

1873
W. M. Adams. lliad, hook 1. hexameters; *listed in Foster.

1873
E. S. Crooke. Iliad. Books XXIII and XXIV. London.
*listed in Foster.

1874
J. B. Rose. Complete; blank verse; *listed in British
Museum Catalogue.

1875
Anonymous. "Shield of Achilles." 18.483-608; blank verse;
see Chapter Three.

323

1875

P. Roosevelt Johnson. Aah111a§;_flzatn. Boston. book 1;
*listed in Foster.

1875

M. P. W. Boulton. om ’ ' o . London. *listed

in Foster.

1876
M. Barnard. Tliad_aad_gdy§§ay. London. complete; prose;
*listed in Parks & Temple.

1877
James A. Martling. Tha_111ad_df_flgma;. St. Louis: R. P.

Studley. book 1; accentual hexameters, "verse for verse";
see Chapter Five.

1877

Charles Bagot Cayley. The Tliad, fldmomatricalTy Tzaaslated.
complete; quasi-quantitative accentual hexameters; discussed
in Little.

1879

H. Dunbar. "A few lines of an attempt to translate (as
nearly literally as possible) the first book of the Iliad"
and "The Deeds and Death of Patroclus." a few lines of 1,
all of 16; *listed in Widener List & British Museum
Catalogue.

1877

W. C. Green. The similes of Homez'a Tliad. London:
Longmans. blank verse; also Iliad (1-12), London, 1884.

1879

Roscoe Mongan. TTiad, Booka IX-XXTV. London. pub'd with
Bateman in 1881; prose.

1880
Charles Wellington Stone. Tliad T. Cambridge. *listed in
Widener List.

1880
Herbert Hailstone. Iliad. London. complete; prose;
*mentioned in Little.

1883
Thomas Allen Blyth. Iliad, Books T-V. Oxford. *listed in
Foster.

1883
Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf, Ernest Myers. Iliad. London.
complete; prose; discussed in Crossett, Little.

324

1885

(A Graduate). Iliadl Bdaka XXI-XXII. London. *listed in
Foster.

1885

Henry Smith Wright. Iliad, deks I-Ty. London.
hexameters; *listed in Foster.

1885-1888

Arthur Saunders Way. Tha_lliad_gf_flgmazd_ 2 vols. London:

Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington. complete; 6-beat
rhymed couplet. Each line has from thirteen to eighteen
syllables of iambs and anapests, with occasional falling
feet at the beginnings of lines. The meter seems like a
good idea in theory, but in practice it does not work so
well. Each line stumbles along till it falls and rests
heavily on the final--rhyming--syllable. Even though the
line is nominally a "hexameter," its effect is far from
homeric. One anonymous reviewer (Spectato; 1886) thought
the translation to be "accurate and spirited" (1055). To
whatever degree those adjectives are accurate, they are
surely overshadowed by the awkwardness of rhythm and
diction:
The wrath of Achilles the Peleus-begotten, 0 Song-
queen, sing,
Fell wrath, that dealt the Achaians woes past
numbering.

1886

Augustus Constable Maybury. IliéQI_BQQK_K!lo London.
"literal English"; *listed in Foster.

1887
R. M. Thomas. Book 24; prose; *listed in British Museum
Catalogue; excerpt in Bridges.

1888
Henry Morley(?) "Introduction by Henry Morley"; *listed in
Foster.

1888(?)
A. W. Bacheler. Tna Iliad. book 1; "a metrical
translation"; *(source unknown).

1889
Anonymous. Homer's ITiad, Bdoka 1-21. New York. "Handy

Literal Translation"; *listed in Foster.

1889

Richard Garnett. "The Encounter of the Hosts" 4.422-45,
"The Trojan Camp at Night" 8.553-65, "Poseidon Going to the
Aid of the Greeks" 13.1-31, "Achilles Recovers the Body of
Patroclus" 18.202-38, "Achilles Arms Himself" 19.349-424,

 

325

and "The Gods Join in the Battle" 20.47-65; heroic couplets;
in "On Translating Homer." In essay he calls for a new
translation of the Iliad in heroic couplets to replace
Pope's version, then supplies his examples.

1889
G. Howland. me ' . Boston. complete; "metrical";
*listed in Foster.

1890
John Henry Freese. Cambridge, London. books 22-24; *listed
in Foster.

1891

Joseph Cross. "A Daughter of the Gods. Ballads from the
Iliad." selections from 1-3; *listed in British Museum
Catalogue.

1891
John Purves. ITiad. London: Percival. complete; prose;
excerpt in Bridges; discussed in Little.

1891
Hallam Tennyson. Book 6; prose; *listed in British Museum
Catalogue.

1893
Richard Williams Reynolds. TTiadL_Badk_XXTT. London.
*listed in Foster.

1894
Richard Moody Thomas. lli§§i_§QQK_XXI¥- London. *listed
in Foster.

1895
William Cudworth. Tliad, Books T, VT, aad IX. Darlington.

blank verse; *listed in Foster.

1898

Samuel Butler. The Iliad of Home , rendered into English
prose for the use of those who cannot read the original.
London: Longmans, Green. complete; prose; discussed in
Crossett, Little.

1900
E. Carpenter. Book 1; verse; *listed in British Museum
Catalogue.

1900
W. J. Woodhouse. Iliad. Books XXTI-XXT . London. *listed
in Foster.

326

1903
William Cranston Lawton. Excerpts; accentual hexameters;
see Chapter Five.

1905-13
E. H. Blakeny. The Iliad. London: G. Bell and Sons.
complete; prose.

1907

Edgar Alfred Tibbetts. Tha_Iliad_afi_flamar. Boston: Richard
A. Badger. complete; ballad-measure; see Chapter Two.

1907
A. J. Church. 0 es t . abridged; prose
adaptation.

1908
C. H. Prichard. Book 9; *listed in British Museum
Catalogue.

1910
Richard J. Anderson. 13.1-38; *listed in British Museum
Catalogue.

1910

Prentiss Cummings. The Iliad of Homer. abridgement;
accentual hexameters; *discussed in Little, anonymous
reviews in Catholic World, Natidn, thlddk, Nx_Tima§_gayl_df
BQQK§o

1911

Arthur Gardner Lewis. Th 0 . NY: Baker &
Taylor. complete; blank verse; discussed in Little, "‘The
Iliad' in English," anonymous reviews in Dial, Indapaadant,
Litazagy Digest, Nation.

1912

Hugh Woodruff Taylor. "The Women of the Iliad: A metrical
translation of the first book and of other passages in which
women appear." New York. *listed in Foster.

1916
Robert Bridges. "Priam and Achilles." 24.339-660;
quantitative hexameters; see Chapter Five.

1917
Anonymous. Homer’s Iliad (Student's Interlinear
Translation). New York. *listed in Foster.

1920

F. S. Marvin, R. J. G. Mayer & F. M. Stawell. Tha Story of
tna_Iliad. London: J. M. Dent and Sons; NY: Dutton.
abridged; prose adaptation; *discussed in Little.

 

327

1922

George Ernle. The Wrath hf Achillaa. London: Oxford U P.
1.1-536; 9.1-713; 16.1-277; 18.1-242; 19.1-424; quantitative

hexameters; see Chapter Five.

1922

C. D. Locock. "Thirty-Two Passages from the Iliad in
English Rhymed Verse." London: G. Allen and Unwin.
selections; "free heroic"; *discussed in Little.

1924

A. T. Murray. The Iliad. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U P;
London: Heinemann. complete; prose; see Chapters 2-7 for
excerpts.

1926
Marshall Macgregor. Selections; prose, iambic pentameter
couplets; in Leaves of Hellag, London: Edward Arnold, 1926.

1927
Frank Lowry Clark. A Study of The Iliad ih Trahslatidh.

Chicago: University Press. selections from all books; prose
line by line. Covers entire Iliad, with translated passages
connected with summaries and commentary.

1928

Maurice Hewlett. The Iliad at Homaz. London: Cresset
Press. books 1-12; blank verse; discussed in Little,
Horwill.

1929

Robinson Smith. The Origihal Iliad. London: Grafton & Co.,
1938. (unpublished version appeared 1929, U of MI library)
selections from most books, 3,423 lines; prose. Includes
all passages Smith deems uninterpolated.

1932
Henry B. Lister. "The Bride of Achilles, a garland of lines
from Homer." *listed in Widener List.

1933

Alexander Falconer Murison. The Iliad a: hgmag. London,
New York: Longmans, Green. books 1-12; accentual
hexameters; discussed in Little.

1934

William Harris. The Iliad o: hamez. London: Oxford U P.
complete; blank verse; discussed in Little; excerpts in
Higham & Bowra.

1938
M. Balkwill. 12.277-89; loose verse; in Higham & Bowra.

 

328

1938

C. M. Bowra. 21.97-135; rhymed verse; in Higham & Bowra.
1938

E. R. Dodds. 17.735-61; verse; in Higham & Bowra.

1938

W- H. D- Rouse. MW London:
Thomas Nelson and Sons. complete; prose; see Chapter Four.
1944

William Benjamin Smith & Walter Miller. The Iliad QT Hohaz.

NY: Macmillan. complete; line-by-line accentual hexameters;
see Chapter Five.

1945
H. N. Couch. 3.121-158; verse; in Beauty and Paghihg.
1945

Mary McCarthy & D. Macdonald. Selections; free verse; in
McCarthy’s translation of Simone Weil’s essay "The Iliad."

1947
Kathleen Freeman. Selections; prose; in The Ggeak Way; an
anthology, London: MacDonald & Co.

1950
Alex Anthony Blum (illustrator). Classics Illustrated #77;
adaptation, comic book; *listed in MSU library catalogue.

1950

Alston Hurd Chase and William G. Perry, Jr. Tha Iliad.
Boston: Little, Brown. complete; prose; discussed in
reviews by Astley-Cock, Robinson, Rose.

1950
F. L. Lucas. Selections; loose six-beat couplets; in Greek
Edahgy for Evehyhah, Boston: Beacon Press, 1951.
Roughly three thousand lines of the Iliad, taken from most
of the twenty-four books. The meter is much like A. S.
Way's, in couplets of 13 to 18 syllables per line, with feet
of anapests and iambs. And again the meter seems, from the
author's explanation, to have good possibilities:
It is, roughly, as if the last syllable of a hexameter
were simply shifted from the end of the line to the
beginning. This slight change turns a falling rhythm
of dactyl and spondee into a rising rhythm of anapest
and iamb, to which the natural run of English speech
takes far more kindly. (xxxiii)
In practice the work fails, however:
Of the wrath of the son of Peleus--of Achilles--
Goddess, sing--

 

329

That ruinous wrath, that brought sorrows past
numbering.

1950
I. A. Richards. The Wrat c eS° d Home .
NY: Norton. abridgement; prose.

1950
E. V. Rieu. The Iliad. Harmondsworth: Penguin. complete;
prose; see Chapter Four.

1951

Richmond Lattimore. Tha_Iliad_hI_flgma:. U of Chicago P.
complete; free six-beat lines; see beginning of Chapter Six;
discussed more thoroughly in Crossett.

1955
S. 0. Andrew & M. J. Oakley. Complete; prose; *listed in
Parks & Temple.

1955
James Maclean Todd. Selections; free verse; in Thiga§_fizgh
and East, London: Phoenix House.

1955
Janet Maclean Todd. Selections; blank verse, prose; in

Voiges Thom the Past.

1956

Jane Werner Watson. T e 'ad and T sse . adaptation
for children; prose; *discussed in "Topless Towers: Tall
Ships."

 

1959

Robert Graves. The An er of Ac ' l s: e ' ' .
London: Cassell. complete; prose and verse; see Chapter
Six.

1959

John Cowper Powys. Homer and The hahh ;. London:
Macdonald. adaptation; prose; see Chapter Four.

1962

Christopher Logue. gatgocleia ofi ham 2. London: Scorpion

Press. book 19; free verse adaptation; also Wag hdsic books
16-19 (1981), and Kihgs books 1 & 2 (1991), and excerpt from
book 21 in Son 5; see Chapter Six.

1963

Enis Rees. The Tliad of Home;. NY: Modern Library.
complete; blank verse; discussed in reviews by Abbott,
Aldrich, Dimock, Jensen, Wilner, anonymous reviews in

thiga, Virginia Quartegly Be yiay

330

1967
William Arrowsmith. "Thetis and Achilles, Iliad 18, 1-147."

in Azigh 6, 346-51.

1968
Ian Fletcher. Ine_nil2sian_Intrusi221.2.Bsstgratign_92megx

yazaigh_gfi_lliad_kly. Nottingham: Byron Press. 14.153-362;

free verse; see Chapter Six.

1968
Edwin Morgan. "Two from Homer." 14.1-108, 17.626-761; in

5:123 7: 102-09.

1969
Kenneth Cavander. Adaptation, radio play; *listed in MSU
library catalogue.

1969
David Silhanek. homer's Iliad ahd Vaggil's Aenaid.

abridgement; prose; *reviewed by Schettler.

1971
M. L. West. "Sing me, goddess; being the first recitation
of Homer's Iliad." book 1; *listed in Widener List.

1973
Robert Lowell. "Achilles to the dying Lykaon." 21.122-35;
loose blank verse; see Chapter Six.

1976

Bernard Evslin. Greeks Bearing Gifts: The Epics gt Aghillas
ahd glysses. NY: Four Winds Press, 1976. prose adaptation.

1977
Elliot Maggin. The Iliad. Marvel Classic Comics #26.
adaptation, comic book; *listed in MSU library catalogue.

1979
Robert Fitzgerald. The Iliad. NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday.
complete; blank verse; see Chapter Six.

1979

Gregory Nagy. Selections; line-by-line, special form; in
e t o h chaea 3: Co ce 3 of e '

Greek Poetry, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U P.

1982
Denison Bingham Hull. e ' o o . Scottsdale, AZ:
pub'd by author. complete; blank verse; reviewed by Dutra.

1984
Anonymous. The Iliad. Pocket Classics C54. adaptation,
comic strip form; *listed in MSU library catalogue.

331

1985
G. S. Kirk. Excerpts from several books; prose; in essay

"The Iliad." in W.

1987
Martin Hammond. The Iliad. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
complete; prose; see Chapter Four.

1990
Robert Fagles. Tha_Iliad. NY: Viking. complete; loose
six-beat lines; see Chapter Six.

1990
Michael Reck. Tha_Iliad_figz_§paaking. Germany: Porpentine

Press. complete; loose decasyllabic verse; *reviewed by
Lloyd-Jones, with excerpts. Does not appear on OCLC

LIST 01" REFERENCES

LIST OF REFERENCES

Abbott, Walter M. Rev. of Tha_Iliad_gfi_flgma;, trans. Ennis

Rees. Amaziga 18 Jan. 1964: 108.
Adams, Phoebe. Rev. of Ths_Anger_9f_89hills§1_n2m9r1§

11199, trans. Robert Graves. "Reader's Choice." aggangjg
Menthly_2os (1960): 98.

---. Rev. of The Iliad, trans. Robert Fitzgerald. Ahlahhig
Monthly 234 (1974): 123.

Aldrich, Keith. "One Iliad, Many Iliads." Rev. of The

Iliad of Homer, trans. Ennis Rees. Sewahaa Baview 71
(1963): 693-95.

Allen, W. Sidney. ygk_§;aaga. 3rd ed. Cambridge:
Cambridge U P, 1987.

Anderson, Warren. Rev. of gatgocleia of home;, by

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