Splendid Strength (Review: The Iliad, Translated by Peter Green)

The Washingon Free Beacon ^ | June 7, 2015 | Kate Harvard

[Kaslin]

[ClearCase_guy]

I'll have to pick this one up.

However, I do love Fagles' opening:

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.

[Mad Dawg]

When it comes to picking a translation of the Iliad or the Odyssey, readers of Homer sometimes feel as if they are being forced to choose between the beautiful and the good.

LOL!

I think I'm in love! What a great way to begin a review!

And yeah, I haven't read the Iliad in too long.

[yarddog]

We had to read the Iliad and the Odyssey when in high school. I have no idea which translation tho I suspect it was Lattimore as that sounds familiar.

I still remember the epithets tho that was over 50 years ago. “Man mountain Ajax”, “Horse tamer Hector”, also such expressions as “The Wine Dark Sea”.

I need to read them again tho I have not read a book except for Matt Brackin’s for several years.

[proxy_user]

I read all of the Odyssey and about eight books of the Iliad when I was in college. I still have my vocabulary notebooks and my copy of Cunliffe’s Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, since I always intended to go back and finish. I can still follow the syntax without much difficulty, but my vocabulary is a wreck.

The Odyssey is much easier than the Iliad in vocabulary and syntax, and many modern readers find it more appealing in various ways. Joyce wisely modeled his modern-day hero on Odysseus, not Achilles or Hector.

[BenLurkin]

[PGalt]

Thanks for posting, Kaslin. This looks like a fantastic translation of one of the great works. HOORAY Kate Havard. HOORAY Peter Green. BTTT!

[dr_lew]

I listened to Fagles’ Odyssey on tape, not long after it came out, and I was quite impressed with it. Of course, I have the Loeb version, and I can satisfy particular questions I might have by looking up the greek ... did you know “eating your heart out” is Homeric?

There is so much in there! It is truly part of the foundation of our culture, and our entire world view.

[Kaslin]

I read the Odyssey when I was younger. Roman and Greek antique history was my favorite subject in school

[Talisker]

What a beautifully written review.

[struggle]

Upon reading Chapman’s Homer is my favorite sonnet and the reason I read Chapman’s Homer my college years.

[AnAmericanMother]

It's RICHMOND Lattimore, not Richard.

That was the go-to "crib" when I was reading Classics, since Fagle is relatively recent.

Fagle is more entertaining, Lattimore is by far the more accurate. Ah, just read it in the original with a crib.

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε,
πολλὰς δ᾽ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
5οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή,
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.

[AnAmericanMother]

I believe that Chapman is better than Dryden, and both are better than Pope. But I like the 17th century.

[ilovesarah2012]

I never had to read any but my mother did. She went to school in a small town in TN and got a much better education than I did.

[Chainmail]

Great stuff!

[yarddog]

Other than Dr. Agnew at Troy, I don’t think I have ever known anyone other than my Granddaddy who could read Greek.

I assume he got his lessons at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY in the early 1900s. He also attended Stetson but I bet it was Louisville.

Dr. Agnew who was probably the smartest man I ever knew personally, could read Greek, Latin, German and probably several others.

The reason I know he could read German is that one day before class, I was early and I wrote a quote from Bismark on the chalk board in German. Since I flunked German I made a couple of mistakes.

Dr. Agnew walked in, glanced at it, then walked up and corrected the spelling and punctuation then erased it. What a perfect putdown I got.

[proxy_user]

I love the placement of 'ἡρώων' in that passage - there's probably some technical term of rhetoric for it.

The opening of the Odyssey is even better:

ἄνδρα μοιἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν:
πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω,
πολλὰ δ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν,
5ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
ἀλλ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ὣς ἑτάρους ἐρρύσατο, ἱέμενός περ:

I love the way that the various nations of men have multiple cities but only one mind, and the contrast between 'ἴδεν' and 'ἔγνω' - he saw the cities, but knew the mind. It is kind of a premonition of Plato's ideas, which were baked into the Greek language anyway.

This is why you can't really read Homer, or for that matter Plato, in translation. Their thoughts are interwoven with the language they expressed them in.

[IrishBrigade]

I believe that Chapman is better than Dryden, and both are better than Pope.

different strokes, and all that sort of thing...Pope’s version sings to me...

[IrishBrigade]

There is so much in there! It is truly part of the foundation of our culture, and our entire world view.

unfortunately, what most people know about the Iliad they learned from the Brad Pitt movie...

[yarddog]

The Brad Pitt movie had huge errors such as Hector killing Menelaus who survived the war and returned to Sparta with Helen and apparently patched things up. Telemachus visited them and Helen and Menelaus showed him great hospitality but could not give him any information on Odysseus.

At least they called swift footed Achilles’ men, “Myrmidons” as they had been created from ants.