THE
WRATH OF ACHILLEUS
TRANSLATED FROM
THE ILIAD
INTO QUANTITATIVE HEXAMETERS
By GEORGE ERNLE
London 1922
[Sample from the Opening of the Poem]
THE WRATH OF ACHILLEUS
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.
What God aroused contention amongst these so to divide
them?
’Twas the son of Cronides and Leto. He in
his anger
Sent Agamemnon’s army a foul plague, and the Achaeans
Lay ever dying of it; for why, Agamemnon Atrides
Shamefully used Chryses, God’s priest, when bearing
enormous
Wealth to redeem his daughter, he ventured unto the
swift ships,
And carrying the fillets of a priest of Phoebus
Apollon,
Bound on a golden scepter, besought the Achaean
Assembly,
Turning him especially to the two Kings, children of
Atreus.
‘Ye Sovereigns and people of Argos, may the eternal
God, dwelling in the Heavens, vouchsafe your army to
conquer
Priamos and carry home your spoil to the country you
came from:
Only allow my daughter to go free, taking an ample
Price for her, and reverence God’s son, far-darting
Apollon.’
With one accord the remaining Achaeans bade
Agamemnon
Show the prophet reverence and take so noble a ransom,
Howso this pleased not their lord Agamemnon Atrides,
And he reviled and drove him away and rudely denied
him.
‘Quit my sight, greybeard, and do not let me
behold you
Loitering or coming here henceforward unto the
warships,
Lest chaplets and scepter avail no longer to save you.
I’ll never free your daughter. The years shall find
her in Argos,
Find her a slave dwelling in my halls far over the
water,
Pacing at her loom there and sleeping nightly beside
me,
So disappear, and quickly, before I do you a
mischief.’
Such was Atrides’ answer. The old man trembling
obey’d him,
Pass’d from him in silence by plunging thunderous
Ocean,
And when alone, uplifted his old voice, crying in
anguish
On the son of bright-hair’d Leto, King Phoebos
Apollon.
‘Lord o’ the Bow of Silver, who art as a tower to
Chryse,
Guarding us, and rulest Tenedos with mighty dominion,
Smintheus, hear and help me! If I have builded a
gracious
Temple,—if I offer up fat goats and slaughter the
choicest
Bulls in it, oh suffer this my boon to be duly
accomplish’d;
Smite the Achaean people,—avenge my weeping upon
them.’
So he besought. His prayer was heard by Phoebos
Apollon,
And he descended lofty Olympus, flaming in anger,
His quiver fill’d with arrows, his bow on shoulder
behind him:
And the arrows rang again for his heart’s wrath,
rattling at every
Stride of him. Invisibly, as night falls, so he
descended,
And sat apart, looking over the warships of the
Achaeans,
Whence as he loosed the arrow, his bow clang’d, evilly
sounding.
First Phoebos smote only the mules and sharp-eyed
watchdogs,
But very soon turn’d unto the men’s selves, loosing
his awful
Archery; and bodies of dead men burn’d numberless
alway.
REVIEW COMMENT
Ernle’s preface, which pays detailed attention to
metre, contends that he is trying to “naturalize” the hexameter and has come up
with the idea of putting the verse line on a “quantitative basis”:
The stress-rhythm will still remain strong, insistent
and of primary importance, as it must always be while English retains its
present qualities; but it will acquire a new liberty, the liberty which it
already enjoys in the English iambic. As in the latter, stresses will no long
be bound to fall upon particular feet; if the effect requires it they may fall
elsewhere, may be muffled, may be omitted altogether. On the other hand the
stress-rhythm must not lose touch with the quantitative rhythm to an extent
which throws too great a strain upon the latter. . . . Those who stubbornly deny
the existence of quantity may maintain that the foundations of my hexameter are
imaginary. Yet our verse will still attain as effective a support from the
stress-rhythm as our English iambic, and I trust that it will be as clearly
distinguishable from prose.
Interesting as such discussions may be, they are
largely irrelevant compared to the pragmatic test of reading the result, and one
cannot say that Ernle’s rendition of Homer is successful as English poetry (for
any number of reasons), no matter what theoretical justification he tries to
offer for the rhythm he has chosen. It is startling to realize that in England
this sort of poetry was being offered up to the public in the same year that T.
S. Eliot's Waste Land appeared.
Readers who would like to inspect the full text of the
Ernle translation should use the following link: Ernle
Iliad.