The Iliad of Homer
With a Verse Translation
by
W. C Green
London 1884

[Sample from the Opening of the Poem]

SING, goddess Muse, the wrath of Peleus’ son,
The wrath of Achilleus with ruin fraught,
That to Achaians brought unnumbered woes,
And many mighty souls of heroes hurled
To Hades’ home, but gave themselves a prey
To dogs and every fowl. For thus its end
The will of Zeus worked out, since at the first
Parted in strife those twain, the king of men
Atrides and the godlike Achileus.
And who of the gods set these in strife to fight?
The son of Zeus and Leto. He in wrath
Against the king had stirred throughout the host
Fell plague, whereby the troops lay perishing:
Because Atrides shamed his holy priest
Chryses, who sought the swift Achaian ships
To free his daughter, bearing ransom large
Archer Apollo’s wreaths in hand he heldc
Upon a golden staff, and prayed to all
Achaia’s chiefs, but chiefly to the twain
The sons of Atreus, marshals of the host:
“Atridae and well-greaved Achaians all,
O may the gods who hold Olympian halls
Vouchsafe you grace to spoil king Priam’s town
And home return in peace! But set ye free
My daughter dear, and this my ransom take,
In reverence for the Archer son of Zeus.”
Thereto while each Achaian cried consent—
The priest to reverence, the rich ransom take—
It liked not Agamemnon Atreus’ son,
But stern he drave him forth and fiercely spake:
“Thee, greybeard, let me by our hollow ships
Nor lingering now nor e’er returning find;
Lest staff and wreaths of gods avail thee nought.
Her I free not: old age shall find her first,
Far from her country in my Argive home,
Plying the loom and partner of my bed.
Go, chafe me not; so wilt thou safer go.”
He spake: the greybeard trembled and obeyed
The monarch’s word, and silent passed along
The sandy margin of the sounding sea.
Then turned he far apart, and much he prayed
To king Apollo fair-haired Leto’s son.
“O hear me, Silver-bow, who standest round
Chrysa and holy Cilla, mighty king
Of Tenedos, thou Sminthian god: if e’er
For thee I roofed a temple fair to view,
Or burned to thee fat thighs of bulls and goats,
Fulfil thou this my wish! Let now thy shafts
Upon the Danaan host avenge my tears.”

REVIEW COMMENT

Green opens his Preface by stressing at some length and with much common sense that English verse is the proper medium for translating Homer’s poem:

Granted that we do want to know—and to know accurately—what the ancient poet thought and said, I yet contend we can know this better with metre than without. For we best know what an author thought and said, if we receive from the translation the same impression that an intelligent scholar receives from the original. Now to things make up this impression: first, the matter, or meaning of the words; second, the form or metre: how much, the advocates of prose do not sufficiently realize.

Green’s text has the Greek and English on facing pages (“a bold measure, as facilitating and challenging criticism”).

Green’s discussion of the importance of poetry in translations of Homer is welcome. But his own blank verse is hardly distinguished, in large part because his diction and sentence structure are so artificial (“Go, chafe me not; so wilt thou safer go” and so on). Attending to the demands of metre are here clearly not enough to do poetic justice to Homer’s lines.

To access Volume I of W. C. Green’s translation, use the following link: W. C. Green Iliad (the pdf file may take some time to load).

[List of Published English Translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey]